Joanna Larson

For 27-year-old Joanna Larson, the desire to return home to take part in the family farm operation in Sheyenne has as much to do with building community as it does farming. A strong independent streak also doesn’t hurt.

She’d like to see things done differently and wants to put her stamp on the farm and further afield.

That includes eventually transitioning to more sustainable agricultural practices at the family farm.

train derailed and caused a massive fire

On July 5, Carrington Fire Chief Ken Wangen had a call for a “locomotive fire.” When he arrived on scene about 9 miles southeast of Carrington near Bordulac, he found 29 rail cars carrying hazardous materials, including anhydrous ammonia, had derailed, causing a massive fire.

Thanks to the quick response by Wangen and other local responders, and with assistance from urban and rural fire departments in Jamestown, Kensal, Pingree, New Rockford, Sykeston, Harvey, Devils Lake and Rugby, there were no casualties.

Fisher family

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.

ND living cover

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.

Diane Schmidt

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.

41-foot-tall knight and a 42 feet tall and 100 feet from nose to tail green dragon

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.