Hey everyone, I'm Sheila Jenkinson and you are listening to the Growing Small Town Nebraska Podcast where my co-host, Marcie Sextro, and I ask community leaders and business owners about their efforts in revitalizing the Cornhusker State. If you love your small town and you're looking for ways to make it even better, or maybe you're interested in what this revitalization movement may mean for you and your family. Join us as we talk with small town Nebraskans making our state the definition of "The Good Life."
Hello, everyone. I'm Marcy Sextro. We are coming to you from the Intersect Co-working and Incubator podcast booth here in downtown Norfolk. Intersect is a co-working community that gives workers the spaces and tools they need to succeed. Join a like-minded community of founders, remote workers, startups, and freelancers with 24/7 access to a dedicated office or private desk. They have extremely fast internet and as much coffee as your heart desires. Intersect is your place to collaborate with others and get things done. Find out more on their website intersectcoworking.com or follow them on Facebook or Instagram.
Beemer Plays is back! Gather the family and head to Beemer on July 21 and 22nd for horseshoes, inflatables, tractor pulls, and so much more. Join in on the pitch tournament held at the Legion Hall from 1030 to one, and then enjoy the parade at 2pm. Beemer's Main Street will be full of yummy eats, including cotton candy, an ice cream truck, and Beemer Burgers. Saturday afternoon play bingo at the Legion and bid on the array of items at the silent auction. Round out your evening with the music of the 70s Band on Main Street. Go to Beemer Nebraska Facebook page to check out all the details.
GROW Nebraska started in 1998 and is a 501C3 educational nonprofit foundation that focuses on helping Nebraska entrepreneurs get access to the global marketplace. They strive to help Nebraska entrepreneurs get more visibility online whether through social media or other platforms and get the connections they need to move their business in a forward direction of growth. They offer a free training to the public every third and fourth Thursday of the month. GROW Nebraska is also a Google premier partner and offers a free Google training to the public every first Wednesday of the month. To learn more about GROW Nebraska you can visit grownebraska.org
Hello everyone. We are joined in the intersect coworking podcast studio today by Jody lamb, a former agricultural journalist who minored in Anthropology and History. Her career has taken her into agriculture based public relations, advertising, and now into film production and writing on agriculture. Welcome to the podcast. Jody, we're happy to have you with us.
Great, thank you so much. It's great to be here.
Oh, we're so glad you're here. So tell us where you're from.
So originally, I'm a native of Scottsbluff county; way out in Western Nebraska. But currently, my family and I live in Ashland, Nebraska, between Lincoln and Omaha.
Thank you for joining us here in the studio.
What factors led to your decision to go into agricultural journalism?
When I was a journalism student at the University of Nebraska, I would have majored in ag journalism had that degree been available. At the time it was not, so I strictly went into journalism. However, I was able to get a job on East Campus while I was in school as a writer in the ag communications department. And that really is what spurred me into that sector. Besides being a rural Nebraskan, I just had a great interest in agriculture and knew that noone in my journalism class had that interest. So I got the beat for our student produced paper. And my professors, we tell the story in our book, A History of Nebraska Agriculture: A Life Worth Living, I tell the story of how I got the agriculture beat for the newspaper. I had that as my third choice because I didn't even know that I would be interested in doing that beat. I thought, you know, the police beat or the sports be you know, I could be I could be on the sidelines during the Husker games. I thought, oh my goodness, that would be so exciting. And then I put agriculture down as my third choice. And my professors were ecstatic because they usually had to assign that beat to one of the students because no one ever chose it. And when I chose that, they said, it's yours. You got, I go, I have the Ag beat that was my third choice. They said you got it.
And how was that for you? I'm sure that you learned a lot of things with it. But did it really spark this love of agriculture? I mean, I'm sure you've had it from before, but to go into it so heavily for your career. Was that helpful for you?
I am so beyond thankful for the opportunity to be the ag writer that that I was at the communications department, because I met my mentor Dick Fleming, who has since passed away, but he was an inspiration. He is actually the one that started getting that degree available at the University of Nebraska because he had started at Kansas State where he went to college. And I didn't understand or realize all the job opportunities through that type of writing, and just where that career would take me, you know. I thought at the time, that may be the only opportunity I would have, is to work at a newspaper or at a TV studio, something to that extent, but it took me into public relations and marketing, working at the largest ag-based client based agency in America.
That's awesome. So, impacts of agriculture on our state is huge. We are probably pretty unique in some ways. And being in the Midwest, we all are agricultural based, but Nebraska just has a huge impact on the food industry and what we're able to produce here.
Absolutely, I think we take it for granted that we are number one in so many different genres. And we're the number one popcorn producing state, we go back and forth being the number one beef producing state, we have the number one great northern bean grown in our state. So if you're eating chili, anywhere in the United States, you've probably are eating a bean that was grown in Western Nebraska. We do have wheat, but there are so many commodities that are grown here, we just take for granted. And I tell people all the time, you never want to be reliant on any other country for our food sources. We want to keep agriculture at the forefront here.
You know, when you're talking about those things, I think Nebraska is taken a little bit for granted. And maybe people don't realize all of those great things. From your research. Jody, can you share some of those not-so-well-known inventions, innovations, or maybe some of those ag practices that have been produced by Nebraskans?
Part of the reason we wrote our book was because we wanted to tell the untold and forgotten stories of our agriculture history and to show people that these great inventors or commodities that you don't understand or realize are part of your everyday life. And this...one of my favorite stories was about T.J. Lockwood. He was born and raised near Albion, and his family moved to Kimball county or near Kimball, Nebraska. He invented the potato grater machine. What does that mean?
Hashbrowns?
Yeah, well...
I love me some hashbrowns.
Yeah, well, it leads into that. But potatoes was a crop that was grown widely in western Nebraska because of the climate. It was a crop that can thrive there, in what we call the dirty 30s. You know, after the depression era. Honestly, I credit T.J. Lockwood for my grandfather being able to find a job during that time period, because he lived in Sheridan County and the work there was just not really existent. So he had to come down to Scotts Bluff County and worked in the potato fields to make ends meet. So thankfully, T.J. Lockwood had a machine that would really help the potato producers find the largest potatoes to get the most yield for, you know, putting into the bags. He had over 200 patents at the time of his death, which he only lived to be 40 years old.
Oh, my goodness.
He died of a brain tumor within six months.
Oh, how sad, but what an impact.
I mean, seriously, there's a company in North Dakota that bought the technology, and they are still using Lockwood equipment and things that T.J. invented back in the 30s and 40s, today.
Wow, that's amazing.
Yes.
Any other interventions that you feel like were impactful?
Well, I think the fact that the great northern bean and some of our dry edible beans are grown in western Nebraska, that's not something that was originally part of our landscape. When you think of western Nebraska and just the uniqueness of that climate and how it is able to grow a crop like that, that came about later (in) in the 40s, after the establishment of some of those communities. Because if it wasn't for irrigation, which is another invention that is credited to Nebraska, we wouldn't have these crops even to be able to grow them here, because water was not a resource that people understood could be brought out of rivers where we weren't just relying on the water underneath the ground. We were using dams to dam up rivers that didn't even exist within the state. Nebraska is so unique in the fact that if you took every single river and stream and put it together, you'd have over 80,000 miles or more rivers, which is more than any other state in our country.
That always amazes me. And that's a great fact to share, because people be like Nebraska...there's like no water there. Well, there's no ocean. But there is quite a bit of water here.
Yeah, there is. You just can't see it. It's either, you know, in the streams or rivers or it's underneath us. And I always say during my presentations when I'm traveling the state, because I am a speaker on the Nebraska Speaker's Bureau, I have different programs that I feature. But I always tell people, I just wonder, all those people that pass by Chimney Rock on their way out west gold, if they would have realized the gold was right underneath their feet in the form of water. And, all the people who are out west now that are in this drought situation, if their ancestors would have stopped in Nebraska, perhaps they wouldn't be experiencing this, you know, in their lifetime right now. I know, just recently to Western Nebraska got over seven to eight inches of water or rain in the last couple months. So the pictures that I'm seeing on social media, I mean, it looks like Ireland, it looks like a different country.
Yeah, compared to us on this side of the state. Yeah, as someone who did, irrigation, pipe irrigation and held those pipes and those things when I was a kid out there, just to be able to have that irrigation made such a huge impact on our crop and the ability to get the water where we needed it to. So we didn't have the big overhead irrigation. We were out there twice a day moving pipe and doing pipe irrigation.
Oh wow.
So, but it was fantastic. I mean, that was what we did. That's how you, you know, took care of your water. And it was always available, so...
Sounds to me like I should be thankful for the irrigation system my dad had.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. I grew up on the north side of Lake Minitare, and people who get to go to these lakes for recreational purposes, they don't realize that that lake was actually established so they could grow crops in the area. You know, so they didn't build that lake for boats. They built it for irrigation purposes and had the 1902 Reclamation Act not passed, who knows where Western Nebraska would be, because really the towns out there weren't established until the late 1900s. Now my grandmother was born in 1900. She was as old as some of the towns that were founded in that part of the state.
That's amazing. Agriculture...alot of people talk about it. And they think like, well, you know, it's tough, economy's tough all the way around. Are there really jobs in agriculture? Are there really things that we can do in small towns that we can build off of the agriculture industry that we have here?
So what I learned as I was traveling across the country working on different projects is...we became associated with the National Ag in the Classroom. And their statistic at the time was that over 25,000 jobs in the agriculture sector go unfilled every year. So I would, I tell teachers every time that I travel, if you want curriculum, to teach these kids in your classroom, what ag careers are available, go on to the National Ag in the Classroom websites and pull down the curriculum and start teaching them the Ag jobs that are available, not only nationally, but just in your own area. So if I was to encourage any of our youth to look for jobs today, and current potential careers, I would tell them to go into agriculture.
Great.
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Well, Jody, you wear a lot of hats and you do a lot of different projects. You're just a go getter and that's what we loved about you when we met you in Kearney at MarkeTech. And just we had to talk to you, but you know in 2017 is when you started American Doorstop Project. Can you tell us about that?
Absolutely. So the wheels on that project actually took place much earlier, the American Doorstop Project was founded by Melody Dobson and myself while I was still living in Billings, Montana. W had been traveling the country working on other projects collaboratively, and we were coming into communities and seeing these interesting bits of history or ag history (we said ) and at the time, we couldn't really find any more information. And in fact, I had some of my own interests that I couldn't go into a library and find a book about some things that I had some interest in. So I suggested to Melody and she had kind of put some thoughts together on another project. And I said, what if we took the interests that we have in agriculture, and made it into a project where we could start promoting and preserving these agriculture history stories, and developing them to the point that we give people a place to go and see this history? Maybe it's gone. But maybe there's a museum that's featuring it. And if we can't find a book about it, why don't we write one. And that's what we were encouraged to do.
So I love the SPICE formula that you have. So share about that a little bit. Because that's such a great premise for the projects you're doing.
Well, you can imagine, as we're traveling, many people say, Oh, I have this story. And let me tell you all about it. And two hours later, you know, it may or may not have a bigger impact that we could use. So we decided to create a formula that we called SPICE, and we talk about the spaces, like this, or a building, you know, something within a location or the places like a particular town or regional area; inventions, that's what the "I" stands for, or inventors; commodities, which would be a particular crop and events. All these things equal the spice of life and how we can use agriculture to tell people story. And course we say that the people are the salt and pepper. We just enjoy talking about the accomplishments of people, you know, for men and women. But had these things not had happened, our agriculture and our, our history might look a little bit different.
Yeah. Some of our listeners may not know that in Nebraska history, we have Hall of Fame restrainers. I did not know that.
Yeah.
You tell their story in your Born to Rein video. How did that project get started and tell us a little bit about it.
So growing up in Western Nebraska, I always knew the name John Narud or at the time it was pronounced in my world as neared. And when my husband and I lived in Billings, Montana, and my daughter Jessie started kindergarten and my son Mark was already in school, I decided to start my own public relations and marketing business. I opened my office at Billings Livestock Commission, and I decided to sit down one day and just learn a little more about the history of Billings Livestock; of course, I went to the library to find a book and the library and looked at me like there is no book. I don't know what you're talking about. So I had to go to the archives in the Research Room and start just looking up individual articles. As I was learning more about the history there, I finally tracked down the former owner of the livestock commission. His grandfather had actually started the commission and I, after a year's time, I was able to sit and have lunch with him and asked him, can you tell me more about your grandfather and how the history of this place got started? And where was he from in Montana? He said he wasn't from Montana. He was from Nebraska. I said, I'm from Nebraska. This is interesting. That leads me to Nebraska. And that actually leads me to Grand Island and Columbus, where I got to learn more about the Marion and Jack Van Berg family, and how they started their businesses in Columbus, and how that their careers led into a very thriving thoroughbred horse racing business. But growing up my dad was always a avid fan of thoroughbred horse racing. And again, the John beard or Nerud name was always coming to fruition to me and my dad always said, if you are going to be interested in in thoroughbred horses make sure they breed back to Dr Fager. That was the horse that John Nerud was responsible for. I didn't know much about John at the time, but I grew up with people in our area that were relatives of his. So that's how I got to know the name. In Nebraska. They pronounce it neared. And everywhere else in the world they pronounce it nay-rude and it's spelled the same. It's N E R U D. John was born and raised in western Nebraska and he was born in 1913. By the time he was six years old, America had their first Triple Crown winner, Sir Barton. John graduated from Minitare High School where I graduated from...56 years apart, we weren't classmates. John went on and had a very illustrious career. But he credited his Nebraska upbringing for what he was able to do. And the same with the Marion and Jack Van Berg, father and son team. They all went on outside in Nebraska to do what they were able to accomplish. But John, in I would say, going around the United States, New York, Kentucky, Florida, California, if you mentioned the name, John Nerud, everyone that you talk to knows who this man is, I can mention his name walking down in the hometown where he graduated from and not too many people know what he did or what he accomplished, he co-founded the Breeders Cup, and that is the most prestigious, you know, set of races that you'll ever have the opportunity to go to. What he accomplished, and the people that he influenced, is making a lasting legacy in the thoroughbred horse racing industry.
Well, Jody, this has been fantastic. And we appreciate the impact that all of your projects have had on the state of Nebraska. So keep up the great work. We're going to make sure that our listeners have some links and can find all of that information on all of these things that you've shared with us today. We do have one final question for you. And that is why do you love living in small town Nebraska?
Why I love living in small town Nebraska is because it's genuine. There is no other place I can imagine living and I have lived in other places. I never tire of meeting new people or just learning more about wherever I am. I just think that you can get everything in small town, Nebraska, that is real, that is heritage, culturally relevant. I believe in you know, the faith, family and farm. And I believe that we are the backbone of this country.
I do too. Thank you so much, Jody, for coming in today. And we really hope that we will be able to visit more with you in the future as you have more projects coming out.
Absolutely. We plan to make some announcements for 2024 Very, very soon.
Oh, how exciting. You'll have to share them with us so we can share with our listeners.
Yeah, thank you so much for being on our show.
Thank you.
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The Norfolk Area Concert Association is excited to bring world class entertainment to northeast Nebraska for its 70th season. Performances presented throughout the series season are selected to appeal to all ages and an affordable membership price. The 2023 -024 Season showcases six concerts including the Phat Cat Swingers, the Folk Legacy Trio, Sinta Quartet, Pop Rock, Abracadabra, and Divas 3. Season tickets for all six shows are $60 for adults and $10 for students. The concerts are held in the Johnny Carson theater. So get your tickets today by going to the Norfolk Area Concert Association website. Here's looking forward to seeing you at what will be another year of sensational productions. The Norfolk Area Concert Association is a local nonprofit organization supported entirely by subscriptions and patronage.
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