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.