Features

A Scottsville couple have been named winner of Kentucky Farm Bureau’s annual Outstanding Young Farm Family contest.

Bart and Sarah Jones received the first-place award last week at Farm Bureau’s annual meeting at the Galt House Hotel.

Twenty-eight farmers from the Hardin and LaRue County area met with Farm Market Analyst Jason Moss to review and discuss the new farm environment and how producers will need to compete in the 21st century.

Moss – part of the nationally known Brock Report Team – delivered the message that the U.S. farm economy has undergone profound changes over the last few months with rising commodity prices, roller coaster economics and adjustments in hedging and margins, bringing a whole new set of risks to farming.

Dwayne Whitlock retired last week from a job he truly enjoyed. For 34 years, he worked as a district forest ranger for the Kentucky Division of Forestry.

He plans to “just kick back and take it easy for awhile,” but it’s obvious he can’t get the forestry service out of his blood. After all, he lives on a tree farm (although it is no longer on the state’s tree farm registry) and was once willing to dress up as Smokey Bear in a parade to promote the care of woodlands.

Early winter is an optimum time to prepare spring-calving herds for reproductive success. Adequate nutrition from about 50 to 80 days prior to calving is critical to maximizing a cow’s ability to rebreed and maintain a 365-day calving interval. If a cow gets inadequate nutrition or is thin at calving and breeding, she will take longer to come into heat and will require more services to conceive.

In 1935, Washington County residents gathered at Lincoln Homestead State Park to celebrate the wedding anniversary of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks.

They also gathered to celebrate the legacy of Hanks by dedicating a memorial to her just a few feet from the cabin where she grew up.

On Feb. 10, 2007, Illinois senator and former civil rights lawyer Barack Obama declared his candidacy for the U.S. presidency.

How fitting that Obama – now the first black president-elect –  made the announcement while standing in front of the same building Abraham Lincoln made his famous “House Divided” speech against slavery 150 years ago.

Like Lincoln, Obama asked his country for unity.

Anyone who passes by the yellow frame house across from the LaRue County Courthouse in Hodgenville will immediately notice two unusual things: lighted candles in each of the windows, and painted rocks, small, big, yellow, green, solid colors, mixed colors, polka dots – encircling the house’s foundation.

“Those rocks and candles are a statement of our faith,” said Geri Stanley, whose daughter Jessi, has painted almost all of them. “The lights will remain on and the rocks here until our daughter is healed.”

In this age of rocket thrusters and afterburners, 1999 LaRue County High School alumnus and Navy pilot Jonathan Whelan flies a propeller plane that, in comparison to the FA 118, F-122 and other jets is like matching the tortoise to the hare.

But this aircraft, the P-3 Orion, is perfectly suited to the crucial military missions it performs and wouldn’t be as effective at supersonic speeds.

He jumps on the couch and curls up in a ball. The fuzzy black and white dog is oblivious to the sounds around him, even though the barks and meows are bound to disrupt his nap.

So begins another day at the Taylor County Animal Shelter – the facility that houses LaRue County’s strays.

Those wanting to adopt a stray animal have been able to do so for just a $20 donation for nearly a year. As a result, Director John Harris says, the shelter’s adoption rates have just about doubled.