Kerry Hoffschneider

5 days ago | yorknewstimes.com | Kerry Hoffschneider

Take me to where the wild things grow in ditches along country roads, where no plow has touched and no seed was sown, except those scattered by bird, wind or animal running free. Take me there, and let me brush my hands over leaves and stems rooted deep in the earth—so deep I dare not try to tug them free. Oh no, these are perfectly rooted, precisely where they are meant to be. These are the flowers and freest leaves that make the most sense to me—the ones that don’t really need my care or company.

1 week ago | yorknewstimes.com | Kerry Hoffschneider

A rhyme for our times:Rubber bullets fly while leaders — supposed to be the adults in the room —whine with narrow-minded entitlement, and everyday people are just trying to be fine. Are we immersed in learning all of human history — or just our own version of the journey? The more we think we know it all, the more we go astray in our delusion. If we heard each other’s stories, would we really listen — truly see — that each of us carries different histories?

2 weeks ago | agupdate.com | Kerry Hoffschneider

The biggest thing Heather Faye learned when she and her husband Mark moved a dairy from Wisconsin to Kansas, is that farmers and ranchers need community again. “Everyone in agriculture is on a journey and we don’t need to do it alone,” she said. Faye has a lot of empathy for agriculturists facing change in their operations. While there are challenges when making vast changes, the Faye’s have found there are some amazing opportunities, too.

2 weeks ago | yorknewstimes.com | Kerry Hoffschneider

“I guess you could say you don’t get to where you’re supposed to go without doing it,” Larry Hafer of Hafer Cattle Company said. “Because you have to.”Hafer grew up near Seward, Nebraska, on an acreage. His family did not farm themselves, but they worked with farmers and livestock producers all over the area. Hafer was excited to be involved with 4-H and FFA and to be around the other kids who were showing cattle with him.

3 weeks ago | yorknewstimes.com | Kerry Hoffschneider

On Memorial Day weekend, I did some reflecting and wrote a “memo to what’s real.” The following were my “MemoREAL Day” musings. Here’s to the playing of “Taps,” the song bursting from a trumpet’s horn, catching a ride on prairie winds across cemeteries, conjuring tears in even the most stoic eyes, then fading into the memory of another day. Another Memorial Day. Even the brass bugle will someday grow tarnished and tired and take another form.