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Kansas Profile – Now That’s Rural: John Martens – NMotion UAS

Posted on by Mary Lou Peter

The fire is raging through the building as the firefighters hurry to the scene. They need to identify the location of the fire and determine the safest and most efficient tactics for dealing with it. If only they had a quick, practical way to get an aerial view of the building…that is the thought process which led a Kansas entrepreneur to create an innovative new business using unmanned aerial systems to enhance public safety.

John Martens is the founder of NMotion UAS, the company which is doing pioneering work with unmanned aerial systems and technologies. John grew up at Hesston and went to K-State. He became a firefighter in Manhattan and then moved back to get closer to family.

johnmartensdrone
John Martens

John still works as a firefighter. His wife is also from Hesston and teaches financial planning at K-State-Salina. On the side, John started working in digital media, including video production. In order to get aerial views, he began using unmanned aerial vehicles – sometimes referred to as drones – for filming video.

Then commercial uses of these drones were blocked by the FAA as the agency developed drone regulations. John was frustrated, but as he looked into the matter, he found that the use of drones for public safety purposes was still permitted through an authorization process. As a firefighter, he immediately recognized the benefit of using unmanned aerial systems to help at a fire scene or other emergency by using a piece of remote-controlled equipment for recon instead of a human.

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Kelly Love – NDII Basketball

Posted on by Mary Lou Peter

March Madness. It’s the time when fans are filling out brackets and cheering on their teams. In addition to high school and college basketball, there is another basketball tournament going on in Kansas with an even higher purpose.

Dale and Kelly Love
Dale and Kelly Love

Kelly Love is director of the National Division II Christian Homeschool Association Tournament which happens each spring in Kansas. The tournament, called NDII for short, is for qualifying homeschool groups with organized basketball teams.

Kelly was a basketball player herself as a young girl. Born in California, she and her family moved to central Kansas when she was nine. Here in Kansas, she found love – in more ways than one. In fact, she met and married her husband Dale Love. She and Dale raised a son and two daughters on their family farm. While the kids were still little, the Loves felt a calling to try homeschooling their children. They found it very worthwhile.

The Loves’ children started playing on the local homeschool families’ basketball team, the Reno County Sabres. Kelly even coached the team for four years, including their participation in an end-of-season Kansas homeschool team tournament that had been founded in Wichita in 1996.

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Kansas Profile – Now That’s Rural : Shane Tiffany – Part 1

Posted on by Mary Lou Peter

“From bombs to bovines.” That sounds like an unusual transition, and it is. It describes a transformation of a former Army air base in central Kansas which became a cattle feedlot and is now part of one of the state’s leading cattle operations.

IMG_20150128_114336917Shane and Shawn Tiffany and their wives are the owners and operators of Tiffany Cattle Company, whose feedyard is built on a former Army air base near Herington. Coincidentally, Shane and Shawn grew up on this place because their dad managed the feedyard from 1988 to 2002. Their father then moved to take over their grandfather’s silage harvesting operation.

Shane and Shawn went to K-State where they participated in the livestock judging team. Then they started into corporate careers. Shane worked at the Kansas City Board of Trade and then went to Texas as a cattle buyer.

In 2007, the owner of the feedyard on the Army air base back in Kansas contacted them. He was ready for an ownership transition and wanted to see if they were interested in buying.

“After much prayer and discussion, we took the jump,” Shane said.

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Kansas Profile – Now That’s Rural: Geff Dawson – Poetry Rodeo

Posted on by Mary Lou Peter

The rodeo is coming to town! But this isn’t a competition of riding bulls or roping calves. This competition takes the form of rhyming words. For the first time ever, the National Cowboy Poetry Rodeo is coming to Kansas.

Geff Dawson is the new organizer of this event, which he is bringing to Kansas for the first time. Geff grew up at Abilene, where he was always around horses and rodeos. After studying at K-State, he and his wife Dawn bought a place in rural Wabaunsee County north of Alma, population 785 people. Now, that’s rural. Geff worked at the Aye Ranch for a time and now manages the Illinois Creek Ranch.

Geff Dawson, cowboy poet.
Geff Dawson, cowboy poet.

Like me, Geff is a cowboy poet. Like me, it was not something he planned to do.

“I’d come home from work at the ranch and tell my wife about something funny that happened that day,” Geff said. “She’d say, `You ought to write that down.’”

He wasn’t very quick to take the time to write those things down, but one day when he did sit down to record the day’s events, he tried to write in rhyme. He found it was a fun way to tell a story. Geff became a cowboy poet.

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Deanna Munson – Munson’s Prime

Posted on by Mary Lou Peter

It’s time to name the Grand Champion at the American Royal. And here it is! But this isn’t the grand champion steer, it is the grand champion steak. The American Royal has wisely started to honor a top quality end product, in the form of a steak, as well as the traditional grand champion steer. The Grand Champion steak for 2013 is from the Munson Angus farm near Junction City, Kansas. The Munson family are high quality beef producers and innovators in marketing their product all the way to the consumer.

IMG_20150128_135714421-1
Deanna Munson makes ice cream at Munson’s Prime restaurant in Junction City, Kansas.

Deanna and Chuck Munson are owners of the Munson Angus farm and a new restaurant, Munson’s Prime, in Junction City. Counting their grandchildren, there have been six generations of the Munson family in Geary County going back to the 1870s. In 1924, they started breeding Angus cattle for their superior meat production and quality.

Charles and Deanna and son David now operate some 200 Angus cows and 2,000 acres of pasture plus 3,000 acres of crop ground. Friends and neighbors started buying Munson beef directly from the farm and then the Munsons opened a retail outlet for fresh beef in Junction City. One constant through all the years had been the hearty meals prepared for family and farmworkers each day, and those could be marketed to others too. The Munsons discussed trying to get all their enterprises under one roof.

Meanwhile, a Munson steak was entered in the competition at the American Royal. The purpose of this competition is to identify the best tasting steak in America. The winner, based on a sensory lab and trained judges, was the steak from Munsons.
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Kansas Profile: Now, That’s Rural – Huck Boyd – Phillipsburg

Posted on by Ron Wilson

By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.

Today marks a first. Today we begin a weekly blogpost which describes examples of innovative Kansans from every corner of our state. One such special leader was Huck Boyd.

Who the heck was Huck? In short, he was a newspaperman who loved rural Kansas. McDill “Huck” Boyd came from the northwest Kansas town of Phillipsburg. After college at K-State, Huck came back into the family newspaper business where he became editor and publisher of the Phillips County Review. With support from his family, he became deeply involved in his community, working on issues of economic development, rural health care, and more.

Huck BoydHuck got involved. He became county chairman of his political party, and worked his way up the ranks to become national committeeman for Kansas. Senators and Presidents would call on him for advice. He was nationally influential yet he lived in a rural setting. After all, Phillipsburg is a community of 2,602 people. Now, that’s rural.

In the1980s when the Rock Island Railroad took bankruptcy, it proposed to abandon 465 miles of rail line across the heartland — including Huck’s hometown. Loss of the rail line would have been devastating to the region.

I was working in Washington, D.C. at that time, as a rookie staff member for Senator Nancy Kassebaum. She introduced me to a man who was visiting from Kansas: Huck Boyd. He was in Washington leading the fight to maintain rail service for his region. The “experts” in Washington DC said it couldn’t be done, but Huck set out to find a way. He came up with an idea to create what was called a port authority to buy the line and continue rail service. Again, the lawyers stopped the idea in its, um, tracks. “No,” they said, “such ownership is unconstitutional in Kansas.” For most people, that would have ended the fight right there, but Huck was a man who would not give up. His answer to the lawyers was simple: “Well then, let’s change the Kansas Constitution.” As unlikely as that sounds, Huck led a bipartisan coalition which proposed amending the Constitution to make this change possible. It was overwhelmingly approved by the voters of Kansas. Continue reading “Kansas Profile: Now, That’s Rural – Huck Boyd – Phillipsburg” →