Community

Some people say they sense their deceased loved ones. They see them in a cardinal, smell them in a soup recipe or hear them in a Johnny Cash song.

Tony Fisher and his family will sense his grandfather with every row tilled on the family farm near Ypsilanti.

Described as “neat, orderly and innovative,” Tony’s grandparents, the late Darwin and Helen Fisher, kept an organized farmstead – where every item has a place. Many of the items are original Darwin purchases and still in use on the Fisher family farm today.

North Dakota Living, the state’s largest-circulated publication and statewide electric cooperative magazine, will conduct a readership survey later this summer. If you are randomly selected to participate, we ask you to consider taking the survey.
Magazine readership surveys are conducted at regular intervals, ideally every three to five years. The last North Dakota Living readership survey was completed in May 2020.

A 5-gallon bucket of carrots, “unwashed and dirty,” and three ice cream pails of chokecherries.

“That’s how my business got started,” says Diane Schmidt, recalling her first sales attempt at the Mandan Farmers Market nearly 40 years ago.

Schmidt was a single mom at the time. She’d haul kids and carrots to the farmers market on Saturday mornings. She can still picture her young boys, in 1986, sitting on the curb while Mom made sales.

You’ve likely heard the old adage, “They don’t make ’em like they used to.” And when it comes to frozen confections, the people of northwestern North Dakota know that sentiment to be true. That’s because the small town of Stanley is home to a nostalgic ice cream treat – one that can only be found at Dakota Drug.

Another dream streaming from the imaginative mind of sculptor Gary Greff, “Sir Albert” now majestically guards the castle, fending off a fierce fire-breathing dragon.

The 41-foot-tall knight, clad in shining armor made of tin, towers over the grounds of the Enchanted Castle in Regent. Nearby is the knight’s nemesis, a green dragon measuring 42 feet tall and 100 feet from nose to tail and clad in chainlink fence to replicate scales.

The clock ticks past 7 a.m. as the whooshing of casting lines simultaneously erupts. Plop. Plop. Plop. Hooks drop into the water as fishermen up and down the bank begin their pull-and-reel rhythms until their lines once again reach shore and it is time for another cast.

Lineworkers are superheroes who fight to keep power flowing no matter how tough the conditions. When severe weather rolls in or the lights go out, they mobilize. And their jobs are unlike any other – they chase storms, climb poles and work on high-voltage power lines.

Working in this dangerous profession requires constant safety training, so crews are prepared to respond in the event of an emergency. And while this training is intended for on-the-job emergencies, cooperative lineworkers are dedicated and ready to assist when members are in need.

The average age of the American farmer is 58.1 years old, and nearly 40% of producers in the United States are age 65 or older, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) 2022 Census of Agriculture released Feb. 13.

Surprising? No.

The gym is empty, though not for long. Soon, fans of basketball will fill the stands. But not before Catherine Howard, a Spirit Lake tribal elder, performs a ceremonial smudging of the Four Winds Community School gym.

Whoever said “rain is a good thing” wasn’t referencing late December rain in North Dakota. Christmas Day rain blanketed southeastern North Dakota in a sheet of ice, which caused major damage to the electric system and left some North Dakotans without power for 11 days.

Electric cooperatives described it as “the worst ice storm since 1997.” Dakota Valley and Cass County electric cooperatives were hit hardest by the storm, while KEM, Mor-Gran-Sou, Nodak and Northern Plains electric cooperative members also experienced outages.