Winter poses a particular set of challenges to your electric cooperative’s commitment to provide members with an uninterrupted supply of power every hour of every day of the year. Winter storms in particular can wreak havoc on electric lines, and often result in longer outage times because icy roads and fallen trees and limbs make it even more difficult to mobilize people and equipment to the areas that are hardest hit. Access to downed lines is slow and tedious, and working conditions that lineworkers face when they arrive to make repairs are often difficult and even dangerous.
I’ve been chasing wild turkeys, both with a shotgun and a camera, for more than 40 years, but April 2022 was my most satisfying spring hunt ever.
The history of the wild turkey in Ohio is one of boom and bust. A bird of mature woodlands, turkeys thrived in pre-settlement times when our state was 95% forested. In 1915, a researcher by the name of Wright, after reviewing records from the 18th and early 19th centuries, wrote, “In all the United States, no state had more turkeys than Ohio and her neighbors.” Just how many wild turkeys existed in the Ohio country hundreds of years ago is anyone’s guess — a million, perhaps?
When stockings are hung by the chimney with care, they cry out to be filled with made-in-Ohio gifts that help Santa not only enchant everyone’s nearest and dearest but also give a boost to entrepreneurs and artisans throughout the state.
American Classic Snack Company, Wadsworth
Using locally grown corn and ingredients such as homemade caramel and toffee, American Classic Snack Company has produced handcrafted, small-batch popcorn snacks for more than 30 years. While Buckeye Blitz is a year-round favorite generously coated with peanut butter and chocolate, the company’s palate-pleasing treats also include Bear Claw with Cashews, Beer Cheese + Bourbon, Caramel Apple, and Pumpkin Pie Crunch.
Plump hens and toms are living on borrowed time these days at Bowman and Landes Turkeys near New Carlisle in Miami County.
Baby turkeys, known as poults, arrive at the farm the day they hatch, each weighing one-fourth to one-third of a pound. The poults initially spend time in climate-controlled barns but quickly move, at 6 to 8 weeks of age, to outdoor ranges equipped with feeders, water, and shade shelters. Fencing keeps them in and predators out.
In the middle of one night this past July, Pioneer Electric Cooperative experienced an outage affecting 1,041 members.
Leading the way
Electric cooperatives are not strangers to overcoming challenges. Co-ops were born because bringing power to rural America was (and remains) a difficult task that for-profit utilities wanted no part of.
That explains why, from their beginnings, electric cooperatives have been at the forefront of developing, adopting, and using cutting-edge technology — not because it’s fun and fancy, but because it’s a necessity.
For more than 80 years, electric cooperatives — and our business model — have proven to be resilient. In fact, most electric cooperatives are as vibrant and healthy today as at any point in our history. Much of this success can be attributed to the founding principles that electric cooperatives have adhered to through generations of members and cooperative leaders.
A Mac Worthington piece of art is almost instantly recognizable. Worthington’s work (he’s best known for his metal sculpture) can be found in public, private, and corporate collections across the country and around the world.
Worthington was born in Canton, the son of artists. His father, Jack, made many of the bronze busts in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His mother, Marion, worked with enamel and silver.
Before turning to art, Worthington built washing machines, served in Vietnam, and worked for a finance company — all good experiences that proved useful when he opened his own galleries.
Got trees? Most co-op members do. If you’re among that group, the U.S. Department of Agriculture wants you to be on the lookout for yet another invasive insect species attacking woods in the Buckeye State: the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB).
The ALB is a wood-boring bug that attacks a dozen types of hardwood trees in North America, including maples, elms, buckeyes, birches, and willows. Infested trees do not recover. They then weaken and become safety hazards, especially during storms, and eventually die.
When you think about cooperative businesses, what comes to mind? For most reading this, it’s probably the local electric cooperative.
The Center for Cooperatives opened in 2017 at OSU’s South Centers in Piketon. Faculty and staff work with businesses throughout the state with a focus on cooperative education, applied research, and support.
Program director Hannah Scott grew up in an agricultural community and says she appreciates the unique approach of how co-ops conduct business: The members own it, benefit from it, and make decisions about it.
