Producer Features

The Phelps and Gorham Purchase of 1788 was an acquisition of 6 million acres from the commonwealth of Massachusetts for $1 million (to be paid in three installments) and the preemptive right (first option to buy) to the title from the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy for $5,000.

The soil at Table Rock Farm, in Castile, New York, is no longer the same as it was decades ago. Jeffrey Jordan, crop specialist, should know.

The drought of 2012 left many ranchers across the U.S. de-stocking rangeland. Steve and Sheila Grudzinski’s 400-head cow-calf herd in Loup City, Nebraska, on the Split Ear Ranch was among the casualties.

Beginner’s luck is usually reserved for bowling games and slot machines, and is often given the same credence as Bigfoot sightings, but every once in a while, it’s impossible to miss.

2016 was year one in the custom haying business for Allen Hatch, and it went something like this: “I have been running ragged, but I have learned a few things … We have had a setback or two, maybe 12.”

“When we came, there were fences here, but you couldn’t find them. They were buried in the bushes and trees, and we had to tear them out, clean them up, tear out the wire – and most of them were six- or eight-strand barbed-wire fences with hog wire in them. So it’s been a chore.”