Professional Portfolio
About Me
![Gil with pheasants.JPG](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/039e42_18faa70af40f4e0e979051bf03696b00~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_164,h_164,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/Gil%20with%20pheasants_JPG.jpg)
Growing up, I wasn’t your typical farm kid. Granted, one of my first memories was falling through a hole used to pitch straw up in our barn right into a pen with a sow that had just given birth to a litter of pigs. (As I remember, the sow looked as surprised as I was.) I was more interested, though, in the world outside me.
Agriculture didn’t interest me as a career until my high school started an FFA chapter during my senior year. My vocational agriculture teacher, Floyd Lehman, perked my interest in the field. This merged with a lifelong interest in writing piqued by two great high school English teachers—Mrs. Sanderson and Miss Wolf. At South Dakota State University, I merged both interests into an agronomy major and a journalism minor. After graduation, I was off to the races with a career in agricultural journalism.