Nostalgia reminds me of a warmer end to prolonged Missouri winters

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In days of yore, I went to Spring instead of it coming to me. After the first week of February I flew to Arizona, leaving in 18F degrees and arriving Phoenix at 68F.

I’d pull off winter garb waiting for an airport shuttle to Mesa. My mother went to her winter home there. I joined her for a couple of weeks ending of winter.

What relief! Of course, our winters were much worse back then, I recall.

A treat was to flee from what we called Ag Science Week on the MU Campus when all commodity groups and farm organizations got together. College of Ag alums came back to MU to mingle. The high point was Ag Day Barbecue, emceed by Cordell Tindall, farm editor and sharp jokester. It was held in the then new Trowbridge Livestock Center.

It was an exhausting week for news group writers in the Agricultural Editors Office. That was a different era, when the ag school and extension could work together in promoting farming.

Teaching through the media was easier. There were no distractions from so-called “social media.” It’s what I now see as “anti-social media” where folks do their own thing without regard to facts. Faculty and administrators want to tell stories their own way. They don’t worry about readable content or reading-ease scores. Academic and science jargon flows freely; in what some country editors call PR puke.

The editors’ office even taught media use and writing. Back then media meant newspapers, magazines, radio and TV. We earned a share of power of the press. I think people read more then. At least they read stories longer than 288 characters.

Stories used verbs, not fluffy adjectives, to tell stories. Oh, the power of nostalgia.

Back, to our approaching spring. No matter what your ground hog saw, we’ll see plenty of winter. And, I won’t go down the cactus trail.

Long ago, I resolved to never get on an airplane again. My life will be simpler if I drive there or go by train. Staying close to home gives plenty to write about.

I was reinforced at recent Show-Me-Select Heifer training meetings. Beef farmers assure me they want to read my stories. Those are in newspapers and magazines.

Maybe I can extend my retirement career a bit longer. There are still readers waiting to read.

I recall when our then Dean told a group of farmers that the College was going digital. No more print on paper. All stories and guides would be on their computer screens. He learned a quick lesson from his outspoken audience. They assured him they wanted to read stories on paper and in their newspaper.

Today, even young farmers tell me they want print. Our web sites are too confusing. Too much junk to wade through. They get cut off, unlike a newspaper in hand.

Back to traveling, it’s not that it isn’t educational. When I went to visit my mom, we drove a few miles south of her house to find the biggest dairy farms existing back then. Miles of Holstein cows lined up in confinement. Those lay between fields of irrigated alfalfa. That’s before we worried about impact on climate.

I didn’t know then that huge dairies would become where our milk comes from, trucked in.

A story last week told of some 800 small dairy farms lost in Wisconsin last year. A former MU dairy specialist tells he’s visited a 7,000-cow dairy up near his old home.

Times change. When I started writing Extension stories, small dairy herds gave beginning farmers a start. Milk cows took lots of labor and little cash.

Now our President says we must buy bigger tractors and get more land. His destruction of foreign trade for farmers ends. He says. Can farm kids still grow up with 4-H and learning hard work?

Tell me in 288 characters, more or less at duanedailey7@gmail.com.