Columns

This week I’ve decided to highlight a new conference that is coming to Lincoln for women involved within the agricultural industry, with a specific focus on women in beef production. This sounds like an excellent program as the following information and a specific agenda can be found on the UNL Women in Ag website.

The Nebraska Women in Agriculture program along with the Nebraska Beef Quality Assurance Program are excited to announce the first annual Herd That! Conference on Sept. 15, in Lincoln.

The conference will focus on the five areas of risk management specific to livestock. The highlight of this year’s inaugural event will be a live cattle handling demonstration with Temple Grandin, Ph.D., Colorado State University and Dean Fish, Ph.D., ranch manager, Santa Fe Ranch.

Nostalgia often times can be a bit overwhelming, but when you’re thinking back about the “good ole’ days,” no matter what era you grew up in, perspective is the biggest point of view, at least in my mind, in what leaves you about nostalgia.

A week after my annual vacation break, I caught myself thinking back to the era in which I went through my youth-growing years. Things were just different, as we didn’t have the distractions like social media, smartphones and other devices that keep kids inside these days.

I grew up outside, and honestly, it wasn’t unheard of that the neighbor kids, or friends of mine would run out the back door and we all converged on somebody’s sandbox.

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This week it was my turn to get away for a vacation, so I am taking time to spend with family and purge my house of things I don’t need anymore.

By the time of writing this I’ve already spent time at my parent’s house and had a sister’s day with Zoey.

I have come to the conclusion that I lack serious energy and keeping up with a 4-year-old is really exhausting by the end of the day (serious kudos to all parents/guardians/daycare centers, etc. because I don’t know how you do it).

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Senators approved an increase in state spending on initiatives such as broadband, foster care reimbursement rates, pay for people who provide services under Medicaid and rail industrial parks during Nebraska’s 107th legislative session, which adjourned on May 27. Senators also focused on cutting taxes and designated a portion of the state’s FY 2021-22 $4.8 billion budget toward tax relief, according to the 2021 general fund budget summary.

Sen. Dan Hughes of Venango said this session was different because there was more money to work with. He said since the state’s largest industry is agriculture, Nebraska’s economy wasn’t hit as hard by COVID-19. The stimulus money from the government was also helpful in boosting the economy.

Hughes said the Legislature allocated much of the money to tax cuts, including exempting retirement income for military retirement, cutting social security tax, and cutting corporate income tax.

Two measures from the Health and Human Services Committee to expand benefits to Nebraskans struggling with food insecurity and utility bills were vetoed by the Governor but overridden by lawmakers.

Senator John McCollister’s measure (LB108) would expand food assistance eligibility to 165 percent of the federal poverty level until Sept. 30, 2023, when it would return to 130 percent.

Senator Tom Brandt’s bill (LB306) increases the eligibility threshold for the low-income home energy assistance program from 130 percent of FPL to 150 percent.

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On Jan. 27, 2021, President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. signed his “Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.” In this order, President Biden set a “goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.” At the time of the signing, very little information was released by the Biden-Harris Administration. We only had the few paragraphs of text in the order and a short fact sheet from the Department of Interior stating “that only 12 percent of lands are permanently protected.”

Collectively,we took about 4,860 photos throughout the duration of Dugout Days.

*This did not include fireworks because, well, I just put that in its own category.*

Anyway, between four people we took that many photos; I only counted the ones uploaded to our server...who knows how many each of us deleted as we went.

Thursday and Friday seemed to drag on for me while waiting for events to begin. Granted, there were morning and afternoon events on Friday, but I wasn’t put down to cover those, so I waited for the Sutton VFD BBQ, carnival, and Ian Munsick concert.

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Sutton’s big celebration has come and gone, but as I look back on the Dugout Days/150th celebration this past weekend, and all the preparation that went into the special event for the community, there are a few things that I didn’t even think about last week when I wrote the column about the monumental celebration.

Indeed the Sutton Area Chamber of Commerce and the Sutton 150th Celebration Committee put in hours and hours of time and effort to make this past weekend such a wonderful and amazing experience, but lost in all of the celebration and the hard work leading up to the big weekend was truly the support of the entire community.

Sutton’s business community and citizens and even alumni who at one point lived in the Sutton area, really stepped up in a big, big way to make this past weekend happen.

Celebrations come and go, but once in a while, a celebration can be of monumental stature, and this week, that monumental moment comes for the Sutton community. Dugout Days 2021 will celebrate Sutton’s Sesquicentennial...“150 Years of Hometown Pride.”

While I’ve only been in Clay County for 12 full years, I’ve come to know a great deal about Sutton’s history, mostly through reading the Sutton Historical Society’s blog, written by Jerry Johnson, or simply listening to lifelong residents of Sutton, and the history is certainly monumental.

The lineage of last names, where families came from that settled in the Sutton area are stories that I’ve greatly appreciated hearing over the course of my 12 years at the Clay County News.

You will notice this week that your paper is packed full-on, page after page of Sutton-specific information about the history and such.

Have you ever noticed that walking a block back and forth for a few hours feels differently when you’re doing something exciting?

Example: The carnival was set up in Sutton for Dugout Days by Monday morning, and usually walking back and forth from the end of the block by Sutton Vision Center to the corner by Brown’s Grocery would feel taxing and probably pointless if you do it for a couple of hours.

However, if you’re walking up and down that same block for hours, but doing so at a carnival, suddenly this task isn’t so bad.

Granted, I don’t know anyone who just walks up and down the same block for hours on end, but you get the idea, right?

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