Country Lifestyles
Cowboy Culture – Poor Boy
By Clay Reid
When I was a kid, to say that I was a poor boy might just be a gross understatement. Although my mom and dad did their best for us little hobos, we were never going to be misidentified as rich folk. I can remember I was about 10 years old before we got our first TV and the same year we got our first air conditioner.
The TV was an old rickety thing that we had to use a pair of pliers to change the channel. With that we only had two channels to actually watch, which were CBS and NBC. Every now and then we could get ABC, but to do so one of us kids would have to sit close to the TV in a rocking chair and hold the rabbit ears antenna with our toes. But even if it did come in, it was usually in a snow storm or at least that’s what it looked like anyway through the static.
The high dollar air conditioner I speak of was another hand-me-down piece of crap everybody knows as the old swamp cooler. Even though it wasn’t much account, I loved this sucker better than my sister and brother both put together. You see, for 10 years I had known nothing other than sweaty sleepless nights in the hot Texas summers where 100 degree temps were a commonplace. Although I didn’t really know what the heck my daddy was rolling into the house with on that Sunday afternoon, when he plugged that sucker in and went and sprayed water on the outside of that thing, I thought, “Boy, I will never see another poor day.”
To read more pick up a copy of the August 2017 NTFR issue. To subscribe call 940-872-5922.
By Martha Crump
That old adage, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.,” may have some basis in truth when applied to minor situations. However, when what you don’t know is presented in the form of a “Trojan Horse” and is what amounts to an incredible attempt to fleece American property rights, it becomes a different story altogether.
To put this unbelievable tale together, we need to step back to Joe Biden’s 2021 Executive Order which pledged commitment to help restore balance on public lands and waters, to create jobs, and to provide a path to align the management of America’s public lands and waters with our nation’s climate, conservation, and clean energy goals.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
By Lacey Vilhauer
Ingredients:
1 whole lemon, seeded and roughly chopped
2 cups sugar
2 pounds strawberries, hulled
Juice of 1 to 2 lemons
¼ cup water
Directions:
Place the chopped lemon and sugar in a food processor and pulse until combined. Transfer to a large bowl. Puree the strawberries in a food processor and add to the lemon mixture along with juice of one lemon and water. Taste and add more juice as desired.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
By Nicholas Waters
As winter plods along – come Spring and gopher mounds – homeowners and farmers find themselves playing a familiar song – fiddling while Rome is burning.
Let’s make a mountain out of a molehill. Those mounds on your lawn and pasture could be moles, but they’re more than likely gophers; Plains Pocket Gophers to be pragmatic – Geomys bursarius to be scientific.
These rodents dig and chew, and the damage they can do goes beyond the mounds we mow over. Iowa State University cited a study in Nebraska showing a 35 percent loss in irrigated alfalfa fields due to the presence of pocket gophers; the number jumped to 46 percent in decreased production of non-irrigated alfalfa fields.
The internet is replete with academic research from coast-to-coast on how to curtail gopher populations, or at least control them. Kansas State University – then called Kansas State Agricultural College – also published a book [Bulletin 152] in February 1908 focused exclusively on the pocket gopher.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
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