Fifty years ago, when two generating units at Cardinal Power Plant were first placed into operation, Buckeye Power was a newly minted generation cooperative, formed and owned by all of the electric distribution cooperatives in Ohio. American Electric Power (AEP), which built the Cardinal plant, offered a unique partnership agreement to Buckeye Power and its member cooperatives: AEP and Buckeye Power would each own one of the two units, and AEP would operate the plant — at cost — for its partner.
Not many people get excited upon seeing a rat, at least, not in a positive way. But there is a group of folks in southern Ohio who go absolutely giddy when spotting one. They are wildlife researchers, and the object of their ardor is the Allegheny woodrat, a state-endangered species.
I had the opportunity to tag along with this group of dedicated wildlife biologists on a perfect early-fall day. The prior evening, they had set more than 50 live traps in a steep, heavily wooded valley in the sprawling Edge of Appalachia preserve in Adams County, near the Ohio River.
Ohioans face some significant choices as they enter the voting booth next month — not the least of which are whom to elect as the next governor and which candidate will best represent the state in the U.S. Senate.
Knowing the importance of electric cooperative voters in the campaigns, the major-party candidates for the two offices took some time recently to answer questions that are crucial to Ohio Cooperative Living readers.
While driving to an alpaca show in Kentucky a few years ago, Debbie Patonai and Spencer Reames decided to listen to music on their cargo van’s radio. Among the alpacas they were transporting that day was Phlint, a male who spontaneously started singing along with the radio. “Phlint sang all the way to Louisville,” says Patonai. “He kept making his humming noise, and whenever we changed the station, Phlint hummed differently.”
Clusters of apples begin to decorate trees in Dennis Thatcher’s orchard throughout each spring and early summer, promising the reward of sweet fruit and jugs of freshly pressed cider in the fall.
Thatcher and his wife, Angela, who reside in rural western Logan County and who are members of Logan County Electric Cooperative, established Thatcher Farm in 1972, when he planted a few apple trees. Today, the farm has more than 420 trees that produce 25 varieties.
Farm life often is seen by outsiders as slow, easy-paced, even leisurely. Actual farmers, of course, know that’s not the case, as the nearly endless to-do list almost always seems to require 26 hours in a day to complete, even at top speed.
So perhaps folks will be inspired by some of the work going on at Ohio State University’s Center for Automotive Research — a piece of which will be on display in the Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives Education Center at this year’s Farm Science Review, Sept. 18–20 at the Molly Caren Agricultural Center just outside London, Ohio.
The notion seems so fanciful: A U.S. Navy ship sinks in Ohio, not in Lake Erie or the Ohio River, but over the Appalachian piedmont of Noble County. It was a rural, bucolic setting — a patchwork of woodlots and farm fields split by fence lines and hedgerows and narrow roads with curves that followed the contours of the hillsides.
And the sky! An ocean blue that seemed meant for sailing — this, after all, is not a maritime tale, but rather, an aviation story.
