North Dakota

From the rolling row crops in the east to the rugged wheatfields of the west, North Dakota’s electric cooperatives have a top priority for everyone in the field: ensuring every farmer returns home safely.

Power lines are necessary to deliver electricity to hardworking farmers and ranchers, but those same power lines can be deadly if not treated with respect. While farmers need to focus on the field and their machinery, your local electric cooperative urges you to also watch for electrical hazards.

President Theodore Roosevelt found adventure, purpose and healing in the rolling hills of the North Dakota Badlands. While Roosevelt always had an affinity for the wild world, his time in North Dakota inspired his groundbreaking conservation efforts and eventually earned him the title of America’s conservation president.

Though President Theodore Roosevelt called New York home, he was an intermittent North Dakotan. And he ate like one, too.

“The president lives very plainly. He prefers plain, wholesome food to the most elaborate menu,” the former White House chef Henry Benoit told The Lafayette Sunday Times in 1903.

One of his favorite dishes? A sirloin steak, potatoes and gravy. As a sportsman, he was also fond of all types of game, especially quail and venison. And, he had an affinity for his mother’s cooking. Relatable, right?

This summer promises to be one for the North Dakota history books.

As communities across the nation prepare for America’s 250th celebration, commemorating the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, North Dakota also eyes the July 4 grand opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora.

Bill Lowman says there are two kinds of cowboy poets.

There are those who love the life, but don’t have an opportunity to live it.

“We call (them) the wannabes. They’ll write the perfect cowboy poem every time to prove that they belong,” Lowman says.

The other ones live the cowboy life. Their routines are all too common.

I tell people I have the best job in North Dakota.

I get to tell stories about North Dakotans, about rural people and rural places, about co-ops and co-op people.

I grew up drinking the co-op Kool-Aid. My family was a Farmers Union family, which meant we were a co-op family.

My mom, Pam Musland, was even the magazine’s local pages editor for KEM Electric Cooperative when I was a little girl in Ashley. My name was first mentioned in the magazine when I was 2½ years old.

When Rebekah Engebretson talks about the meaning of homesteading, she keeps coming back to the same word.

“Simplicity,” she says. “That’s the word I go back to a lot.”

For her, homesteading isn’t about doing everything yourself. It’s about building a life that feels intentional.

In 2011, Rebekah and her husband, Dale, bought 20 acres with the hope of raising their four daughters in the country. The McKenzie Electric Cooperative members wanted wide-open space, room to grow and the chance to build a life that felt less overwhelming.

At the senior center in Hebron, 12 aging community members sit around a television. Caramel rolls and coffee, puzzles and magazines set on the table behind them. They follow exercise commands from an online video – some in light-hearted protest – then play along with “Wheel of Fortune” (the real reason they are there).

Kyla Sanders, the program coordinator for NDSU Extension’s Aging in Community Project in the western Morton County area, knows all of them and their stories by heart.

Data centers, seeking land and electricity, are top of mind in rural America and for good reason.

Expected to lift new U.S. energy demand by 30% by 2030, data centers are setting their sights on electric co-op country, where power is affordable and reliable, and they have acreage to spread out.

North Dakota Living has been named the 2025 George W. Haggard Memorial Journalism Award winner by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). The national award recognizes the top statewide magazine in the electric cooperative network for overall quality and for supporting the national objectives of electric co-ops.

This is North Dakota Living’s 13th Haggard Award and the first for Cally Peterson, who has been editor since 2019.