Front Porch Magazine for Winter 2020

WINTER 2020

Training the Future Workforce

Plus, a trip to Johnny Cash’s Boyhood Home p. 18

APRIL

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Park Re-opens

during Arkansas Folk Festival APRIL

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Arkansas State Championship Dulcimer Contest

(free) MAY

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Xaris Waltman (folk-country)

Feature Concert MAY

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Mother’s Day Buffet

at the skillet restaurant MAY

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MAY

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Arkansas State Championship Thumbpicking Contest Layton Hollow Gals (country-bluegrass)

Feature Concert

SOAK UP THE SOUND AND THE SOUL OF THE OZARKS

This state park honors the culture of the Ozarks with demonstrating craft artisans, music shows, an award-winning restaurant and modern, comfortable lodging.

Open seasonally, cabins open year-round.

OzarkFolkCenter.com PARK INFO: 870-269-3851 CABIN RESERVATIONS: 870-269-3871

CONCERT TICKETS: OzarkFolkCenter.TicketLeap.com Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday, April 17 through November 14, 2020

Porch Front

6 CONTENT Farm Bureau Matters

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Helping Farmers, Helping You

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Rich Hillman

Warren Carter

Help Wanted Dwain Hebda

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Rural Road Stories

18

Member Services Update

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Keith Sutton

Autumn Wood

Taste Arkansas

Keith Sutton and Ashley Wallace

Delta Child

Talya Tate Boerner

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Cover design by Bryan Pistole Cover image by Keith Sutton

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ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU • WINTER 2020

FARM BUREAU MATTERS

with Rich Hillman

ARFB PRESIDENT

Rich Hillman of Carlisle was elected president of Arkansas Farm Bureau at the organization’s annual convention in December. Hillman raises rice, soybeans and wheat in Lonoke County.

He has been a member of the ArFB state board of directors since 2001 and served as vice president of the board for 11 years before being elected president. He is also vice chairman of Riceland Foods and is chairman of the Arkansas Foundation for Agriculture. He and his wife Tina have a son (Collin) and a daughter (Caroline).

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s I sit down to pen this first message for Front Porch readers, I can’t help but think of all the people who have forged my path with Arkansas Farm Bureau.

There are the obvious names of past leaders, my family and my parents, but also many people who have – probably unknowingly – made an impression on me. I could name them, but I would unintentionally leave someone out. Many of you will know I am referring to you. Others may not even know they have indelibly affected my life.

From the time I was 10 years old through my college years my father was a member of the state board of Arkansas Farm Bureau, so I literally grew up as a part of the Farm Bureau family.

So you can image the humbling emotion that overwhelmed me as I stood to address the delegate body at the ArFB annual convention in December, having been elected president of an organization that I have admired and respected for much of my life.

My respect is rooted in the organization’s unwavering commitment to Arkansas farmers and ranchers, the backbone of our state. I have seen, heard and felt the impact the organization has made on our state.

I am a rice farmer, proud to be a sixth-generation farmer, as well as a son, brother, husband, father and uncle. My family means everything to me, just as I know family is vitally important to each of you.

My commitment to you today is that I will always keep the Farm Bureau membership in my mind on all decisions that come before this organization. We will endeavor to empower and incorporate even more people in the grassroots mission of this organization. Without people who have the ability to educate and lead others and influence policy at the local, state and national level, we can’t carry out the mission of the organization.

The mission of Arkansas Farm Bureau is to: • Advocate the interests of agriculture in the public arena • Disseminate information concerning the value and importance of agriculture • Provide products and services which improve the quality of life for our members Arkansas Farm Bureau leaders, in every county of Arkansas,

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ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU • WINTER 2020

representing every city, town and community in this great state, have made the 85-plus years of this organization an unassuming yet obvious success.

Truly, I have been blessed throughout my life. I’ve been blessed to serve Farm Bureau, to serve with a great state board, and for the past 11 years to serve with Randy Veach, a dedicated man with uncompromised integrity and deep faith.

He has taught me so much and has graciously included me in everything involved with running this great organization.

Randy, again, thank you.

Without question, there are some important and challenging issues facing agriculture and Arkansas Farm Bureau. The continued relevance and impact of this organization is tied directly to the men and women who love the land, care for their animals and provide such meaningful stewardship over our soil and water resources.

One obvious need is to appeal to the young people of agriculture to invest their time and energy in this organization.

We will redouble our efforts to engage tomorrow’s leaders today, and include them in the meaningful grassroots process that defines this organization’s policy-making decisions.

It is imperative that we work to stabilize what has been a very rocky agriculture economy. Farm bankruptcies and loandefaults have been alarmingly high across our country, further thinning the number of farmers and ranchers.

We need more people involved with farming, though the trends reflect fewer and fewer farmers and ranchers to feed an ever-increasing need around this country and the world.

The name Farm Bureau means something to people across our state, from our advocacy work to our insurance companies.

We are committed to enabling new ideas and providing additional avenues for success for all segments of Farm Bureau.

I am confident and optimistic that this organization can, and will, have a positive impact on the issues that face agriculture. I know this, without hesitation, because I stand amongst a family, and an organization, that I have been around almost my entire life. I know this because I know the positive impact you have made on me. •

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Porch Front

Official membership publication of Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation mailed to almost 190,000 member-families.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Included in membership dues ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU OFFICERS:

President • Rich Hillman, Carlisle Vice President • Mike Freeze, Little Rock Secretary/Treasurer • Dan Wright, Waldron Executive Vice President • Warren Carter, Little Rock DIRECTORS:

Jon Carroll, Moro Joe Christian, Jonesboro Terry Dabbs, Stuttgart Sherry Felts, Joiner Chase Groves, Garland City Tom Jones, Pottsville Terry Laster, Strong Jeremy Miller, Huntsville Gene Pharr, Lincoln Caleb Plyler, Hope Rusty Smith, Des Arc Joe Thrash, Houston EX OFFICIO

Magen Allen, Bismarck Dustin Cowell, Mount Judea Kerry Stiles, Marianna Reed Storey, Marvell Executive Editor • Steve Eddington Editor • Rob Anderson Contributing Writers • Ken Moore, Gregg Patterson, Ashley Wallace, Keith Sutton ADVERTISING

Contact David Brown at Publishing Concepts for advertising rates dbrown@pcipublishing.com (501) 221-9986 Fax (501) 225-3735 Front Porch (USPS 019-879) is published quarterly by the Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation 10720 Kanis Rd., Little Rock, AR 72211 Periodicals Postage paid at Little Rock, AR POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Rhonda Whitley at rhonda.whitley@arfb.com Front Porch • P.O. Box 31 • Little Rock, AR 72203 Please provide membership number Issue #114 Publisher assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation reserves the right to accept or reject all advertising requests.

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ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU • WINTER 2020

HELPING FARMERS, HELPING YOU

with Warren Carter ARFB EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

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rkansas Farm Bureau had more than 170 attendees at the American Farm Bureau’s 101st Annual Convention in Austin in late January. They heard from national leaders (including USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue and President Donald Trump), learned from recognized experts and industry leaders, participated in competitions and spent time with fellow farmers, ranchers and Farm Bureau members from around the country.

Arkansas Farm Bureau was recognized with American Farm Bureau Awards of Excellence in all available categories – Advocacy, Engagement and Outreach, Leadership and Business Development and Membership Value – and it was a tribute to the hard work of staff and volunteers from the county level to the state. We provided support for Arkansas FFA and 4H officers to attend the conference and our Young Farmer & Rancher representatives made their presence felt through outstanding performances in the various competitive events. Matt and Terrie Shekels competed in the Excellence in Ag Award competition, Mark and Shay Morgan made the Top 10 for the American Farm Bureau Achievement Award and Taylor Wiseman made the Sweet 16 in the Discussion Meet.

On the final day of convention, the voting delegates came together to finalize the policies that will guide our organization throughout 2020.

It’s often said that nobody likes to see “how the sausage gets made” in terms of lawmaking in our country, but I can honestly say that the Farm Bureau process I’m privileged to witness at convention is inspiring, even when there’s time-consuming debate.

Watching our Arkansas delegates engage with others from around the country and push forward resolutions that originated with our members at the local level is the capstone to a year of hard work by volunteer leaders, staff and our members and it is extremely gratifying.

This year happened to be very successful in terms of Arkansas resolutions being adopted to national policy. Here is a list of issues pushed by the Arkansas delegation that were approved: • Support for allowing producers and livestock haulers ability to complete delivery of their cargo beyond current hours of service.

• Support for GPS mapping services designating major commercial routes, to ease pressure on secondary roads caused by “shortest distance” mapping.

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• •

Support for an uncapped agricultural visa program.

Support for applying the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (H2-A workers) at signing to the life of the contract Supporting efforts to harmonize food safety audits to reduce duplication.

• A motion restricting federal funds for feral hog eradication to states that limit the take of feral hogs on private land.

• Support for a rule that all grain elevators have graders who are certified and licensed to GIPSA standards.

• Support for allowing the USDA to hire retired employees on a temporary basis.

• Support for allowing USDA providing county personnel based on workload, acreage and number of farms.

• Support for dredging the lower Mississippi River for Post-Panamax ships.

On top of these resolutions from our state, our delegates backed the adoption of policies that will have an impact on our state’s farmers and ranchers, including farm machinery “right to repair” guidelines, support for an overhaul of national dairy policy, support for new guidelines for synthetic food production, and support for the Market Facilitation Program to help producers hurt by trade disputes.

Nevertheless, as satisfying as it was to see our delegates and our young people succeed and be recognized by their peers and to have our important ideas become official American Farm Bureau policy, all of us who attended the convention left knowing that the work was just beginning.

Now that we have policy, we must turn to action. Our policy teams, our members and our leaders will now work to ensure that these policies aren’t left as words on the pages of a growing book, but instead become laws, rules and guidelines that help our farmers and ranchers thrive and continue to care for their land and animals and provide the food, fiber and shelter we all require.

We must also return to our roots – the grassroots – and begin this critical and rewarding process again. We must continue to support and nurture our youth and engage our Young Farmers & Ranchers and Farm Bureau Women’s Leadership Committees to prepare for future success.

I look forward to the work that lies ahead in 2020 and to seeing it all pay off in 2021 and beyond. •

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HELP W ARKANSAS DEALING WITH

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ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU • WINTER 2020

WANTED SKILLED LABOR SHORTAGE

by Dwain Hebda

A shiny red semi anchors one end of the high school parking lot. On all sides, streams of students, high school and younger, mill around, check out the graphics and await their turn inside. It’s one of hundreds of scheduled stops the rig will make this year, from high schools and two-year college campuses to community festivals and other events.

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The trailer of the gleaming rig, branded Be Pro Be Proud, contains a bevy of hands-on multimedia displays set into several stations. Each station highlights a different skilled career – welding, plumbing, et cetera. But there’s one purpose they all share: Inspiring the next generation of skilled labor in Arkansas.

continued on page 8>>

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“I think the Be Pro Be Proud program is a hallmark of what we’re up to and it’s changing the conversation,” said Randy Zook, president and chief executive officer of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce and the Associated Industries of Arkansas. Zook’s team created the program and the concept has been so successful, ASCC has sold licenses for the idea to Georgia and South Carolina for use there.

“We’ve had about 75,000 student visits across the platform to date and it’s booked solid,” Zook said. “It’s in great demand at the campus level. It’s compelling and informative for kids and gives them an inkling of what a given career field is involved with. It’s getting some traction, there’s no question about it.”

Be Pro Be Proud is just one initiative that has come out of the business, civic and educational sectors of the state, each trying to jigsaw a piece of the skilled labor shortage puzzle. All across Arkansas, from major manufacturers and multi-state construction firms down to Main Street plumbing electrical companies, existing skilled workers are getting older with far fewer young craftspeople waiting in the wings to take their places.

The primary reason for the shortfall is a one-two punch of the tsunami of Baby Boomers reaching retirement age and years of selling high school kids on four-year degrees as the lone path to career and financial success, said Dr. Robin Myers, chancellor of Arkansas State University-Mountain Home.

“We’re trying to overcome two or three decades of heavy marketing of a four-year degree, you need a professional degree.

That’s what’s been drilled into the parents of young people coming through the school systems now and the young people themselves,” he said.

“I think the message is finally getting out there that there’s something really great and wonderful about a technical education and having technical competencies and the ability to work with your hands and create things. I think that message is beginning to resonate and we’re beginning to overcome that indoctrination that’s gone on for so long.”

In trying to address the problem, companies and communities often hamstrung their own efforts by rowing in separate directions. Today, however, ASU-Mountain Home and its Secondary Technical Center, are good examples of the collaborative strides that have been made in many communities to combine economic development, higher education and other industry stakeholders.

“Not just speaking for us, but all the two-year colleges in the state, we work very closely with our local industries,” Myers said. “We look at what the demands are out there in the workplace for the skillsets that we’re proposing and in almost every single case, the industry is directly involved in the development of the curriculum so that it fits the needs of what they are looking for in their workforce.”

“Our mechatronics program, for instance, was designed

Inside the Be Pro Be Proud trailer there are a number of stations, each highlighting a different skilled career, like welding, plumbing and truck, train and heavy equipment operation.

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Students from Cabot High School get some hands-on experience in the Be Pro Be Proud truck for the kick-off of Career and Technical Education Month.

for a person who’s a technician on a robotic line and able to troubleshoot problems and devise solutions. All of the courses in that curriculum were skills that were needed and identified by our employers as what we needed to incorporate into the training program.”

Another shining example of collaboration lies in Fort Smith where K-12, secondary education, industry and the local chamber of commerce have aligned to craft an ambitious plan for the future.

“In 2017, when I got here, we started talking about strategic planning and how to have dialogue with our community about what we wanted our district to look like in five years,” said Dr. Doug Brubaker, superintendent of the Fort Smith Public Schools.

“One of the big needs we were hearing was the need for enhanced opportunities for career and technology education to build opportunities so our kids could either walk across the stage and secure a high-paying job in a high-demand field, or potentially use the relevant experience they get to further their education at a post-secondary institution.”

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The school district joined the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce, the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and area businesses to build a strategic plan for the tentatively named Career and Technology Center. In May 2018, citizens passed a millage increase to pay for the $13.7 million facility, which is expected to come online next year and enhance, in a big way, existing resources in the area.

“Our existing partnership with Western Arkansas Technical Center, which is UA-Fort Smith, includes some really great instructors and some great programs in our district,” Brubaker said. “(The new center) becomes a site where those programs can be expanded. We found that about six to seven percent of our kids were engaged in (technical) classes and opportunities. We really need to expand the bandwith so that we’re serving two to three times that many. That’s the goal.”

Zook graded Arkansas’s labor development efforts at about a B on the strength of such efforts, but said there was still work to be done. In particular, he said as educational efforts multiply – notably the state’s secondary technical centers that today continued on page 12>>

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SUCCESS SNAPSHOT

CONNECTING THE DOTS

M

MIKE ROGERS, TYSON FOODS

ike Rogers got his first taste of a career in high school and it’s stayed with him ever since. At 16, through a cooperative education program, he met David Evans, a northwest Arkansas entrepreneur. Over the next 20 years, Rogers worked for Evans on a variety of endeavors, including various maintenance jobs at Springdale’s Frez-n-Stor, a refrigerated warehouse of which Evans was president and CEO. That experience solidified in him the value of exposing young people to skilled trades early on as a pathway to a rewarding career. It also guided his 20 years as a teacher at Career Academy of Siloam Springs. There, he developed the blueprint for the training and career development programs he now heads at Tyson Foods as senior director of maintenance and refrigeration, starting in 2017.

“Internal candidates are always our first option for a skills transfer, somebody who has currently proven themselves as a dynamic team member,” he said. “We also find a lot of success, maybe even a fourth of our maintenance techs, from the production floor. A front-line team member that has demonstrated interest, works in a protein-centric environment and comes to maintenance is worth double what they were in production.”

Rogers’ system implements a highly integrated and clearly defined skills improvement path for employees looking to move up in their career, either through the company’s internal network or by taking classes through one of the 40-and-counting community colleges that partner with Tyson all over the country.

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“We have computer-based training and I have groups of people that travel out to plant locations and do training events at the location,” he said. “We have corporate facilities with each one of our major plants having a maintenance training lab with simulators and computers. And, we have maintenance-trained supervisors from across our company who develop the skills within our team members.

“I’ve taken what I did in Siloam Springs and I’ve got people working in my group now that have done that at 60 other locations across the company to develop the incumbent team worker to, for instance, get their electrical license or to get their apprenticeship.

And that apprenticeship piece has been really good because that counts toward 24 hours of college credit at our partner schools.”

Rogers’ system also strengthened the process for reaching potential employees in high school and community colleges to help them align their classroom training with in-demand skills at Tyson. It’s a highly collaborative process which he said the company is proud to partner in for the good of the company and of individual communities.

“We also see this as corporate responsibility,” he said. “Our communities are very important to us, making sure that we’re a good life partner and financial partner for our organization and our community around us. When we do these initiatives with technical schools, we make it a point to be a contributor and stakeholder.”

“We want to be the catalyst; we don’t want to Tyson-ize a system. We want to find folks who will match funds, who will match vision, who will match partnership with us.” •

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TECHNICAL

Careers & AVERAGE SALARIES

INDUSTRIAL MAINTENANCE $43,442

MAINTENANCE COORDINATOR $43,679

AMMONIA REFRIGERATION $48,938

MAINTENANCE PLANNER $58,203

MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL TECH $60,427

AUTOMATION TECH $66,900

PSM COORDINATOR $66,937

MAINTENANCE/REFRIGERATION SUPERVISOR $69,632

MAINTENANCE/REFRIGERATION SUPERINTENDENT $76,955

ROBOTICS TECH $86,985

MAINTENANCE MANAGER $103,442

PLANT ENGINEER $113,400

Locations in Arkansas With production facilities across the globe, there’s good chance your passion is close to home here in Arkansas.

Learn more at TysonFoodsCareers.com.

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reach all but two Arkansas high schools with concurrent skills training by local colleges – state funding must keep pace accordingly.

“There’s still room to improve and grow that system with continuing and expanding support,” Zook said. “The system is better and it’s more readily available than it’s been in the past.

It’s a matter of making sure now that funding is kept in line with growth and with inflation costs.”

“There has been absolutely zero dollar increase in career and technical ed funding for, like, 15 years. It’s the same exact amount of around $20.5 million a year and clearly you can’t keep current equipment with a static, inflexible funding source. So, that’s the next big opportunity to improve the system across the state.”

Another area of improvement is creating smoother and more accessible pathways for adults looking to train for a new career. Arkansas Sen. Jane English of North Little Rock (R-34), an outspoken proponent of career development, said more can be done to help these adults, especially those attempting to reset their lives following incarceration or addiction.

“I think there is a gap there,” she said. “I have always said education is kindergarten through career. We spend a lot of time and energy talking about K-12 and that’s where we spend the biggest bulk of our money. Then we talk a lot about higher ed. But there is this gap in between.”

“In Arkansas, we have something like 50 percent of the people in the workforce. So, we’ve got a lot of people who aren’t. We need to try to figure out how we reach some of those people to help them upgrade their skills. From my standpoint, everybody that wants a better job should have

the opportunity to increase their skill level. That’s what makes our economy grow.

“There’s not a concerted sit-down at the table, and that’s where my focus has been. Too often, I think, much of our adult education stuff is tied up in federal programs and it’s hard to get people to sit down at the table and figure out how do we make all that happen at the state level, because our adults need that same opportunity.”

The issues Arkansas faces are not limited to The Natural State. Last year, Deloitte Consulting and the Conference Board released a study that placed the gap between manufacturing jobs and the skilled workers needed to fill them at more than 500,000 positions. Meaning, Arkansas cannot rely on simply importing workers from elsewhere to meet its needs.

Given this, English said communities must be accountable for future-focused thinking when it comes to career development programs. She also said the state must respect the line between enabling these local efforts and interfering with them.

“I think (Arkansas is) getting better. There’s a much larger conversation today than there was 3 to 5 years ago which pleases me to no end,” she said. “There are a lot of things going on and where it’s really happening is at the local level.”

“The state can do a lot of things to set up opportunities and clear the way for schools, whether secondary schools, colleges or whatever, to do some things. But at the end of the day, a lot of it depends on that local community and what they decide to do for a future and what that future is going to look like.” •

Arkansas Farm Bureau Senior Education Coordinator Matt Jackson takes students through Farm Bureau’s new, state-of-the-art mobile teaching tool, the AgTech Training Lab, during a visit to Arkansas Tech University. Part of Arkansas Farm Bureau’s Ag in the Classroom program, the AgTech Training Lab features realistic simulations of what it’s like to operate farm equipment.

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SUCCESS SNAPSHOT

THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY

J

JASON GREEN, ABB

ason Green, vice president of human resources for ABB’s Fort Smith manufacturing facility, is on the front line of the skilled labor shortage. So, it’s probably no surprise he and his ABB team have been proactive in developing internal and external workforce training programs.

“One of the things about western Arkansas, we’ve been fortunate that we’ve had good career technical education efforts for a number of years,” Green said. “We’ve got a really good foundation in place. But we knew we had to do more.”

A little over three years ago ABB, a leading manufacturer of industrial motors, started benchmarking corporate and community technical training programs around the country to find best practices. The effort yielded some valuable insights.

“First, we had to make sure we understood what our current and future needs were,” Green said. We also had to start much earlier to introduce career opportunities to more middle school students.

“The other thing we discovered is this had to be a businessled initiative. We’re very fortunate we have higher education and K-12 partners, but most of what they’ve developed over the years is what they think we needed in our facilities. We finally realized business and industry had to be much more vocal about our actual needs.”

Behind Green’s leadership, ABB became a key player in a local coalition among industry, education and the local chamber of commerce to develop a comprehensive plan for fostering young peoples’ interest in skilled careers and backing that up with targeted technical education.

“Most communities take a really shotgun approach to careers,

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offering programs in every career imaginable,” he said. “That’s good, but at the same time, you’ve got to make sure supply and demand are aligned.”

At the community level, existing programs were enhanced among the most in-demand skillsets – advanced manufacturing, health care and information technology. The coalition also rallied community support in 2018 to publicly fund a $13.7 million career and technology center to be administered through the K-12 school district and benefiting stakeholders community-wide.

Internally, ABB provided students with innovative opportunities to round out classroom skills with real-world applications.

“The students we have today, who have these great concurrent classes to take advantage of, were missing real world application of the skills they are learning,” Green said. We launched our first youth apprenticeship program in June 2019 with seven high school seniors and two college freshmen, working in our plant.

“In the past if you’d asked me would you ever have somebody younger than 18 working in your manufacturing plant, I’d have said absolutely not, can’t even imagine it. But it’s that very pool of talent we need. We also want to develop that relationship with them, as future employees.”

The system worked so well ABB is replicating it in its other facilities across the country. And, Green said, other Arkansas communities are reaching out for help in duplicating its success.

“This model is replicable in other parts of the state,” Green said. “We are committed to doing whatever we can do to ensure that not only our region, but the entire state is successful when it comes to career development and technical education.” • Front Porch

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ADVERTORIAL

F

or centuries, the Arkansas Delta and other river floodplains have been bountiful sources of food and habitat for migrating ducks.

Greentree reservoirs on public and private land are a crucial component of this habitat.

Greentree reservoirs, largely developed in the 1950s, are bottomland forests that are artificially flooded by land managers to provide duck habitat and duck-hunting opportunities.

These reservoirs offer red oak acorns and invertebrates for food as well as thermal cover and pair isolation — nearly everything ducks need during mid- to late-winter stopovers.

AGFC manages nearly 50 GTRs across the state, providing more than 50,000 acres of flooded forests for waterfowl habitat and worldrenowned public hunting opportunities. AGFC staff, along with other expert habitat managers, began a formal assessment of forest health conditions within these GTRs in 2014.

Forest health data indicate the composition and health of these forests have gradually changed and declined, leaving these habitats less valuable to ducks. The most beneficial red oaks have proven especially susceptible to years of prolonged and growing season flooding, but even more water-tolerant species are showing stress.

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“Many years of artificial water management that differs substantially from natural conditions have stressed many tree species in these sites,” said Luke Naylor, AGFC waterfowl program coordinator.

Scientific information gathered during the last few decades calls for a more natural and sustainable management philosophy for these habitats. For the last several years, AGFC has started to deploy different strategies to provide high-quality waterfowl habitat, and hunting, for the long term.

Delaying intentional artificial flooding to a more beneficial time of year, the adoption of new management plans and infrastructure renovation are all geared to reduce stressors on water-intolerant trees and improve management capacity. Additional forest health assessments have been initiated as well as detailed reviews to evaluate hydrology, identify needed infrastructure changes and develop restoration plans for each GTR. To date, GTR reviews have been conducted on 12 WMAs resulting in preliminary restoration plans and infrastructure modifications. “These renovations will not be cheap,” Naylor said. “Many GTRs have a large amount of infrastructure installed over many decades.

Much of this infrastructure is in poor condition and in need of major repair.”

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BY THE NUMBERS More than 300 miles of levees and more than 400 water-control structures regulate the water on public GTRs in Arkansas, and most of this infrastructure is now 50-60 years old.

Current GTR restoration plans are identifying the most critical renovations needed to better manage the flow of water through these habitats.

The AGFC and partners must be creative in funding these vital projects. Luckily for the Commission, the hunters and the ducks, help is available. In addition to traditional wildlife management funding streams, competitive grants are available through programs like the North American Wetlands Conservation Act.

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Public Greentree Reservoirs in Arkansas

50,000-plus

Acres of flooded forests for waterfowl habitat and hunting

300-plus

Miles of levees

400-plus

Structures regulating water on public lands in Arkansas

Henry Gray Hurrican Lake WMA GTR - shows timber loss due to prolonged flooding from new precedent of high water events and U.S Corp water management.

The act, created in 1989, conserves North America’s waterfowl, fish and wildlife resources while producing a variety of environmental and economic benefits. Its success is driven by partnerships involving federal, state and local governments, nonprofit organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, and community groups.

AGFC has partnered with Ducks Unlimited to submit the first two of many expected NAWCA grant proposals to help fund GTR renovation projects. The first two proposals Front Porch

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are linked to GTR projects on Earl Buss Bayou DeView WMA, and Ducks Unlimited has stepped up to administer these grants and provide engineering design support.

AGFC expects the next set of NAWCA grant proposals will be for GTR projects on Henry Hurricane Lake WMA. “Securing external funding takes time, and necessary changes won’t happen overnight,” Naylor said. “We’re in this for the long haul and there are no quick fixes.”

Visit AGFC.com for more information about Greentree Reservoir Management in Arkansas. •

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HISTORIC DYESS COLONY AND JOHNNY CASH BOYHOOD HOME

by Keith Sutton

O

ne would be hard-pressed to find an Arkansan from any era more famous than Johnny Cash. Known to his fans as “The Man in Black” because of his favored stage attire, Cash was a towering presence in the music industry for decades. He recorded more than 1,500 songs, many of which he wrote himself.

Among many other accomplishments, he won 11 Grammy awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll, Country Music, Rockabilly, Gospel Music and Nashville Songwriters halls of fame.

It would be incomprehensible to imagine what American music would have been like without his contributions.

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In late 1968, Johnny Cash and his wife June visited Dyess for a story in Look magazine.

Cash visited his old home, which was then empty, and was photographed on the back porch there by Look photographer Joel Baldwin.

Source: Library of Congress.

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Now, thanks to a large group of interested citizens and organizations, the house and part of the agricultural community where Cash spent his childhood have been acquired and restored as one of Arkansas State University’s Arkansas Heritage Sites. Those who visit the site in Mississippi County come away with a much better understanding of the hardscrabble life that instilled in Johnny Cash a reverence for family, God and truth that influenced his music throughout a half-century career.

The story begins in Kingsland, (Cleveland County) in 1932. On Feb. 26 that year, a baby boy was born to Ray and Carrie Cash. They called the child J.R., short for John Ray. He was the fourth of seven siblings, the others being Margaret Louise, Jack, Joanne, Reba, Roy and Tommy.

Times were tough in Depression-era Arkansas, and people were looking to the government for relief. The Cashes were among them. Ray’s farm had failed due to plummeting cotton prices. With their family facing poverty and hunger, he and Carrie were desperate.

Help came through an innovative program created in 1934 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Works Progress Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration had acquired 16,000 acres of swampy, forested land in Mississippi County and divided it into 20to 40-acre potential farmsteads. Families that applied and were accepted would each receive one of the plots, complete with a five-room house, barn, chicken coop, smokehouse and enough money to begin the arduous task of clearing the land and growing crops. Colonists were expected repay the government after converting the land to agricultural production.

A community center, administration building, schools, a theater and other buildings rounded out the small community. At first the settlement was simply called Colonization Project #1. But when it was officially dedicated in 1936, a year and a half after the first 13 families arrived there, it was renamed the Dyess Colony in honor of its founder, William R. Dyess, a plantation owner from Mississippi County and the first head of the Works Progress Administration in Arkansas.

Nearly 500 out-of-work Arkansas farm families — 2,500 people total — eventually settled at Dyess, including the Cashe’s, who moved from Kingsland in 1935 when J.R. was just three years old. The boy spent much of the next 15 years out in the farm fields, working alongside his parents and siblings to help pay off their debts. It wasn’t an easy life, and music was one of the ways the Cash family found to escape from some of the hardships. Songs surrounded the young J.R., be it his mother’s folk songs and hymns or the working music people sang out in the fields.

Young Cash also soaked up church music, country/ western from radio station WMPS in Memphis and broadcasts from Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. At night, he often stayed awake to listen to music drifting up from Mexican border stations.

J.R. never learned to read music. He started singing at age 4 when he accompanied his mother in the house. She bought him his first guitar for his tenth birthday, and when he was just a teenager, he performed on radio station KLCN in Blytheville.

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ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU • WINTER 2020

Johnny Cash died in 2003, but fans still travel from around the world to see the place the music legend often described as key to his development: his boyhood home in the northeast Arkansas community of Dyess.

Photo by Keith Sutton

Johnny Cash’s brother Tommy Cash and sister Joanne Cash Yates assisted ASU historians in the authentic restoration of the house where they grew up, right down to the color of the flowers in the kitchen.

Photo by Keith Sutton continued on page 20>>

19

<<continued from page 19

Most of the original buildings and colony houses are gone now, but Arkansas State University, in partnership with the city of Dyess, has restored the remaining Dyess Colony Administration Building, turned the old movie theater and pop shop into a visitor center and completely renovated the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home.

Stop in the visitors center at 110 Center Drive in Dyess to begin your tour. Inside you can watch an orientation video, see historical exhibits and visit the gift shop. Next stop is the Administration Building museum next door with exhibits related to the establishment of the colony, lifestyles of typical colonists and the impact that growing up in Dyess had on Johnny Cash and his music. From there, visitors are shuttled to the completely renovated Johnny Cash Boyhood Home, less than two miles from the Colony Center. It is furnished as it appeared when the Cash family lived there, based on family memories.

“We’ve had visitors from all 50 states and 65 foreign countries,” says Aimie Taylor, interim curator for A-State’s Heritage Sites. “Surprisingly, it’s harder to get local people to come out here than it is to get international visitors to cross the ocean. For many Arkansans, the history of this area is taken for granted. But every time we get people to visit, they find

Cash’s high school yearbook photograph, 1950. Shortly after this picture was taken, Cash volunteered for the Air Force.

When he graduated from Dyess High School in 1950, he enlisted in the Air Force. After serving his hitch, he eventually made his way to Memphis’ Sun Studios and began recording music under the name Johnny Cash. It was there, at the Birthplace of Rock and Roll, where the world was introduced to his singular voice and compelling songwriting, through such eternal classics as “I Walk the Line,” “Big River” and “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Clearly, many of his songs reflected his early life at Dyess.

“Pickin’ Time,” for example, recorded in 1958, includes these lyrics: I got cotton in the bottom land It’s up and growin’ and I got a good stand My good wife and them kids of mine Gonna get new shoes, come Pickin’ Time Get new shoes come Pickin’ Time.

Ev’ry night when I go to bed I thank the Lord that my kids are fed They live on beans eight days and nine But I get ‘em fat come Pickin’ Time Get ‘em fat come Pickin’ Time.

Another hit song, “Five Feet High and Risin’” (1959), was inspired by the Tyronza River floods the Cash family endured: Well the rails are washed out north of town We gotta head for higher ground We can’t come back ‘til the water goes down, Five feet high and risin’.

As he grew older, Cash often talked about the influence his childhood on the farm in Dyess had on his music and his life. In one interview he said, “When we grew up … it was second nature that we wouldn’t live in Dyess when we were grown. It was the aim of every person to get a better job. But if I hadn’t grown up there, I wouldn’t be what I am now. It was the foundation for what I became.”

20

After being located and preserved, the piano that belonged to Johnny Cash’s mother Carrie can now be seen inside his boyhood home. Photo by Keith Sutton something that connects them to that past, and they think, I should have come here a long time ago. I didn’t know it was like this back in those days.

“I think that’s probably the most meaningful thing we can offer to our Arkansas visitors. They tell us their stories as much as we tell them about Johnny. So a lot of the times there’s this kind of just sharing and celebration of northeast Arkansas history.”

Tours begin at 9 a.m. Mondays through Saturdays (except when noted for holidays), with the last tours of the day departing for the house at 3 p.m. General admission is $10 ($8 for seniors, $5 for students).

Visitors coming from Interstate 55 should take Exit 41 (State Highway 14). Travel west 5.9 miles, then turn left onto State Highway 297 (the Johnny Cash Highway). Drive 1.4 miles to the Dyess Colony Center.

For more information, visit DyessCash.AState.edu. •

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ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU • WINTER 2020

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2020 schedule

To the Innovative Farm Leaders of North East Arkansas

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ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU â&#x20AC;˘ WINTER 2020

21

M E M B E R S E R V I C E S U P D AT E

New 2020 Member Benefit

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e’re kicking off 2020 with an exciting announcement: The Arkansas Farm Bureau welcomes DTN to our new member benefit program!

DTN provides expert analysis of commodity markets; hyper-local weather and insights on disease to help guide planting, growing and harvesting operations; and real-time news about the industry so they know what’s happening and how it may affect your operations. Arkansas farmers and agribusinesses are doing their part to feed the world and DTN’s tools can help them be more productive and profitable.

DTN has been supporting producer business and operational decisions since 1984, using industry-leading information and solutions, including unique newsroom content and unmatched forecast accuracy across rural America. They also own and operate Progressive Farmer magazine, which has offered fresh perspectives on topics and issues that matter to farmers for more than a century.

Because DTN is a new Arkansas Farm Bureau benefit, the company will offer members special discounts on some of their best and most popular products:

22

by Autumn Wood

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• Three FREE issues of Progressive Farmer magazine • $250 off DTN Ag Summit registration fees We invite you to learn more at www.dtn.com/arfb. If you are interested in purchasing one or more of these products with the Farm Bureau discount sign up for the demo and one of DTN’s representatives will get you set up and introduced to the product. You can also contact their sales desk at 877-806-6620.

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ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU • WINTER 2020

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Home Cooking: ANITA’S SPECIAL CHOCOLATE CAKE

By Keith Sutton Photos by Ashley Wallace

I

e t s Ta ansas k r A

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ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU • WINTER 2020

A

nita Vandiver grew up with her seven siblings in a quaint 950-square-foot home situated in a St. Francis County cotton field. Her parents, James and Lola Ethridge, moved the family to another house when Anita was just a teen, but the original five-room dwelling — two bedrooms, living room, kitchen and bathroom — remained on the property near Colt.

“For a long time, it was used as a rent house,” Anita says.

“Then, in 2009, the owner told my husband and I he was going to tear it down. If we wanted to come see it one more time, we needed to do so because it would soon be gone.”

That old house place had a lot of sentimental value to Anita.

Her father had farmed cotton there while keeping a full-time job in Forrest City, and her mother had raised eight kids within the little home’s walls, cooking every meal for them while also growing a garden and canning the produce they harvested.

“When we went out and looked at it for what we thought would be the final time, I realized it was still a very solid little house,” Anita remembers. “When I got home, I asked my husband if he would consider moving it to our son Kevin’s farm on Crowley’s Ridge. He thought that was a great idea, so we hired a house-moving company and had it moved to its current location off Highway 284. It’s now part of Vandiver’s Newcastle Farms, a place where friends and family can stay when they visit Kevin and his wife Jenny, and a place where I can do my baking and canning.”

During the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season, most folks visit the farm to buy one of the Christmas trees Kevin grows there. But most will also go home with some of Anita’s baked or canned goods, which are made in the old family home and sold in the farm store. The food items are branded “Lola’s Table” in honor of Anita’s late mother, whom she credits with all her cooking skills.

“It’s so comforting to be there and do all my cooking in the same little kitchen where my mother cooked,” says Anita. “I started baking bread to help with a fundraiser at church more than 40 years ago. That’s one way I learned, and I still cook for a lot of different organizations.” continued on page 30>>

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ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU • WINTER 2020

29

<< continued from page 29

Anita’s Special Chocolate Cake Cake:

1¾ cups all-purpose flour 2 cups sugar ¾ cup cocoa 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup buttermilk, shaken ½ cup vegetable oil 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon pure vanilla 1 cup brewed hot coffee

Frosting:

6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate 2 sticks butter (room temperature) 1 egg yolk (room temperature) 1 teaspoon vanilla 1¼ cup powdered sugar

Cake Instructions: Preheat oven to 350

degrees. Butter and flour three 8-inch round pans.

Sift dry ingredients into the bowl of an electric mixer. In another bowl, combine buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the liquids to the dry ingredients. Keep your mixer on low and add the hot coffee and mix just to combine. Scrape the bowl of the mixer to make sure all the ingredients are well mixed. Pour into your pans and bake 35 minutes.

Frosting: Chop the chocolate and place in a pan over simmering water. Stir until just melted and set aside to cool to room temperature. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter on medium-high until light yellow and fluffy (about three minutes).

Add the egg yolk and vanilla, and beat three more minutes. With the mixer on low, gradually add the sugar and beat on medium until smooth. Add chocolate. Spread on the chocolate cake.

When we visited Anita, Kevin and the rest of the family during their holiday business season, she shared several recipes with us, but we particularly liked her delicious made-from-scratch chocolate cake. Give it a try for your next birthday or special event.

To learn more about Vandiver’s Newcastle Farms, visit https://newcastlefarms.com/. To learn more about Anita’s story and more recipes, visit TasteArkansas.com. •

30

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D E LTA C H I L D In Delta Child, author Talya Tate Boerner draws on her Mississippi County childhood to deliver readers back to a simpler time when screen doors slammed, kids tromped cotton, and Momma baked cornbread for supper every night.

Boerner, a fourth-generation Arkansas farm girl, has been published in Arkansas Review, Ponder Review, and Writer’s Digest. Her award-winning debut novel, The Accidental Salvation of Gracie Lee, is also set in northeast Arkansas. Follow her blog Grace Grits and Gardening (www.gracegritsgarden.com) for more tales of Arkansas farming, gardening and comfort food. Her second book, Gene, Everywhere, will be available March 2020.

by Talya Tate Boerner

The Saturday Trail

S

aturday afternoons were for running errands with Momma and getting stuck behind the train in Osceola.

The railroad tracks cut straight through downtown between all the good stores — Newcomb’s Drug Store and Sterling’s on one side; Belk’s and Silverfield’s on the other. I remember the flashing lights and clanging bells and the way Momma stopped the car right away. Even when the train was a whole block away, she never tried to rush over the tracks.

That’s one of the things about Mommas.

Sometimes when I’m back home visiting, I drive downtown just to go over the train tracks. Just to remember the Saturday morning train. Even in the dead of winter, I can see summer’s heat hovering over sidewalks and streets.

I can hear Nancy Sinatra singing These Boots Are Made for Walking. Momma would turn up the radio, and my sister and I joined in, trying with all our might to memorize the words to the song.

Our desire for go-go boots grew stronger with each singing of the song.

Cars were bigger back then, and the seats in Momma’s Oldsmobile were as long as church pews. While the train passed in a rhythmic blur, my sister and I counted the boxcars from our front-row view. Some boxcars hauled grain. Some hauled coal. Other tanks flashed by with warnings of flammable contents on board. A few empty boxcars passed, their side panels open wide.

Never did we see a hobo, although we looked every time.

Would the caboose ever go by? It seemed to me that while the locomotive must surely be pulling into the city limits of Luxora, the caboose was just passing the cotton gin in Wilson. And as for us? No matter which side of the tracks we were on, we needed to be on the other side.

One Saturday, while the train thundered along, I asked Momma, “Have you ever seen a penny flattened by a train?”

“I don’t think so. Have you?”

“Yeah. Last week, a boy at the swimming pool showed

32

me one. It had been squashed so flat President Lincoln’s face had been smeared. Almost erased even.” I thought of the penny he’d dropped onto my palm and even let me hold for a minute.

“Do you think a flattened penny would still buy a piece of bubble gum at Big Star?” I asked Momma.

“I don’t know. It probably depends on how bad the coin is damaged.”

That day at the pool, I’d asked the boy why he would want to ruin a perfectly good penny. He’d shrugged and looked annoyed. “I was trying to make the train jump the track. But it didn’t work. The train kept right on going,” he’d said. I thought that was a mean idea to want to wreck a train.

I gave the coin back to the crazy boy and stayed away from him for the rest of the summer.

Today as I think back on those days, I doubt my sister and I ever successfully counted all the boxcars of a single Saturday morning train. Distractions of one sort or another always disrupted us. Conversation led to giggling. Songs on the radio led to singing. Or, we simply stopped counting when the train juddered to a halt and began backing up.

Oh, the backing up of a train…

To this day, I consider it one of life’s great mysteries.

We pressed hands to foreheads and moaned and groaned, but really, it was all part of the fun, the waiting to see if it would stop, knowing it would, and feigning exasperation when it happened. Although the process of backing up never lasted very long, for a little while, time stood completely still.

I had the same fleeting thought every Saturday — what if we are stuck behind the train for the rest of our lives?

Finally, with a wave to the caboose, usually red, but sometimes not, we bumped over the tracks and went on about our day. The train gave us a lonesome whistle goodbye.

It moved on with its day too, delaying other people in other places. Probably Blytheville. Maybe even all the way to St. Louis. •

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ARKANSAS FARM BUREAU • WINTER 2020

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34 hft_frontporch_winter2020_M-REG171601.indd 1

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