Features

When Americans conjure a place called “Columbus,” many imagine Ohio — home of The Ohio State University and its legions of Buckeye football fans.

There is, however, another Columbus not too far away — west across the state line to just south of Indianapolis. While its population is only about 45,000, the town enjoys an outsized reputation as a modern architectural Mecca.

It’s a little-known fact that several Ohio agricultural cooperatives — livestock producers, dairy farmers, and crop associations — can trace their roots to the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation. The same holds true for Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives (OEC) members.

Willie Ludwig usually can tell when the Isaac Ludwig Mill resonates with visitors. “People will walk into the mill, look around, take a big sniff, and smile,” he says. “Then they say it smells just like their grandfather’s old timber-frame barn smelled when they were kids.”

Buckeye Chuck, Ohio’s official weather-prognosticating groundhog, does not live what anyone would consider a tough life; after all, he’s called upon to work only one day a year.

But oh, that one day: Groundhog Day, February 2 — the day the entire world watches with bated breath to see what he sees when he comes out of his den.

Charles Young was born into slavery in Mays Lick, Kentucky, in the time just after Abraham Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation and just before the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

His parents, technically still considered runaway slaves, carried him as an infant across the Ohio River to the freedom granted them when his father enlisted in the Union Army.

When it comes to adopting new technology, electric cooperatives are David beating Goliath.

“The smaller size of co-ops allows us to be more nimble because we have fewer consumers,” says Pat O’Loughlin, president and CEO of Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives, the wholesale power supplier and trade association for the 24 co-ops serving the state. “We can try new things and deploy them faster than some big utilities.”

A look back

Country Living came into being at a time when the country was still getting used to the idea that farmers could get electricity from a centralized power plant, just like urban dwellers could.

A little more than 20 years had passed since Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed the Rural Electrification Act, which allowed for the creation of electric cooperatives to illuminate the mostly dark countryside. By October 1958, 28 electric cooperatives had formed and were successfully providing electricity to rural areas — mostly farms — in the Buckeye State.

Large windows inside Howard Miller’s office give him a prime view of Hartville Hardware’s main floor; he often leaves his desk to watch folks navigating his store.

Down on the sales floor, shoppers might run across anything from a bright green John Deere Gator to a hot pink, Lil’ Pig Traeger grill. From time to time, someone looks up, spots Miller at the window, and waves. Miller always eagerly waves back. “I grew up with so many people that work and shop here,” he says.

The highlight of February’s Winterfest in Perrysburg will be the U.S. National Ice Carving Championship, but Chad Hartson, who owns one of the nation’s largest ice-sculpting companies — Ice Creations in Napoleon — and is himself a former world champion, won’t be a contender. “The National Ice Carving Association (NICA) sanctions the event,” explains Hartson. “Since I’m president of its board and helping organize the championship, I can’t be competing too.”