Country Lifestyles
***November profile**** The Art of Living – Jack Stevens
By Jessica Crabtree
Jack Stevens of Iowa Park is best known as an artist. His life-size sculptures can be seen around local schools, universities, and cities in the Wichita County area. Stevens’ uncanny ability also allows him to direct detail and life-like characteristics into each painting and drawing. His pieces typically showcase the western lifestyle from bucking broncs to wagons, Native Americans and horses.
All of the artist’s work comes from ideas, images and experiences throughout his life. As early as Stevens can remember, he had an admiration for horses. As he grew, that fascination was enhanced, becoming an understanding, possibly because as a young boy, he related to the young colts. He understood their fear.
You see, Stevens never formally took art classes, or was ever given an art set as a child. His art ability started back on the banks of Holliday Creek with charcoal embers from a fire and creek mud. His upbringing was of the most modest kind. Stevens’ parents, Margaret Olley and Cliff Stevens, lived in a small 16X16 tent north of Holliday Creek in Wichita Falls. Times were hard for the Stevens family— indescribable if not witnessed. Not knowing how she was able, Stevens said his mother worked cultivating cotton and still cooked three meals a day. Margaret, the caring, nurturing kind, would take in multiple other mouths to feed. Stevens, the youngest of nine, was born in 1934. To read more pick up the November 2015 issue of NTFR.
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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