Wessels Living History Farm

Dancing is an ancient pastime and an important forum for social interaction, especially in rural areas. During the early part of the 20th century, rural Americans found inexpensive ways and places to dance. In this video podcast, Nebraskans Carla Due and Millie Opitz remember the fun they had.

Every year, there are well over 225 antique tractor in the US. At each, seemingly sane men and women bring out tractors that they have spent untold hours and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars restoring. In this video podcast, we ask what about tractor shows drives men to the brink of madness.

As the most recent U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser could live anywhere. He chooses to live in the middle of the Great Plains in Nebraska. He says that I started this poem trying to write a "snotty" poem because he had not been invited to a writers event. Instead he discovered ways in which he loved his home state.

Across rural America, the number of farms is declining and abandoned farm houses are often just left behind. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser writes about an "Abandoned Farmhouse" and finds clues to lives left behind in the details that he finds.

In this video podcast, former U.S. Poet Laureate finds life in leftover fence wire, stones, No Hunting signs, dry horse tanks, and a moth harried by sparrows.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser (right) finds poetry in old barns. In this video podcast of his poem "Riding the Bus in Midwinter" Ted looks out the window and imagines what would happen if a barn "could loosen itself from its old foundations and start out rocking and creaking over the fields."

The Great Plains are a semi-arid place. Water is scarce. So, folks here have for hundreds of years come up with their own methods of predicting the weather. In is poem "How to Foretell a Change in the Weather," Ted Kooser records some of the methods he's heard. They involve the behaviors of cattle, sheep, dogs, cats, pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, peacocks, guinea fowl, sparrows and even frogs (among others).

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser says he's always been fascinated by Osage, "a wood that's really as tough as nails." In this video podcast, Ted reads an ode to wood that was used by Native Americans for bows, by settlers for hedges and fence posts and by poets for wonder.

Great Plains in Winter is Ted Kooser's evocation of the silent time when snow covers a moonlit landscape on the plains. Not all of the poems of the former U.S. Poet Laureate are about rural themes, but we've chosen some of his best for this rural collection.

At its height, the Omaha Livestock Market processed six to seven million head of cattle, hogs and sheep a year. There were 300 to 400 people working to help livestock producers from 30 states and Canada to buy and sell their animals. The livestock pens covered 250 acres in the middle of Omaha. In this video podcast, both farmers and workers remember how the market operated and what it meant to them.

Ted Kooser says that one of the things "poets can do for people when they're lucky is to give them ways of looking at the world afresh." In this video podcast, the former U.S. Poet Laureate reads "Spring Plowing" and says that at least one reader was so moved that she wrote Ted that she would never look at a newly plowed field in the same way again.

On any given day, you might find former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser touring some of the country cemetaries around his rural Nebraska home. He says that a small fact that he noticed on these visits became the title of the poem he reads in this video podcast, There Is Always a Little Wind.

When horses were introduced to the North American continent by the Spanish explorers, the lives of Native Americans, European settlers and American farmers changed profoundly. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, in this video podcast, reads a short poem about the primal power of the "Horse."

Former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser remembers meeting "The Great Grandparents" at the train depot. In this video podcast, Ted talks about the sense of history that they brought with them in their "old tools, old words, old recipes, secrets."

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser remembers listening to war news on the radio at the knees of his grandmother during World War II. In this poem entitled "Zenith," Kooser conjures up the way that he and his sister felt like they were part of the war effort. "[We] sat there at the rear of the action, a patrol / in the weak yellow glow from the war."

For 20 years, former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser wrote a new poem each Valentine's Day. He sent these as postcards to his wife as well as friends of his across the country. In 2006, Ted wrote the last one in the series and collected the poems into a limited edition book entitled, "Out of that Moment." In this video podcast, Ted reads a Valentine's Day poem that still has a rural theme, "Barn Owl."

Dr. Norman Borlaug remembers how the Mexican Agricultural Program developed the first high-yield, dwarf varieties of wheat that went on to help produce the Green Revolution. In this video podcast, he reviews how the program started with the help of Henry Wallace, the technical challenges the plant breeders faced, the public relations and political problems of introducing the new varieties, and the results. Mexico became self-sufficient in wheat production in only 12 years, and the Mexican wheat varieties were exported all over the world.

In the 1960s, population scientists predicted that millions would die of starvation in India and Pakistan. That was before Dr. Norman Borlaug and other agricultural scientists introduced dwarf hybrid wheat varieties and modern farming practices into the subcontinent. In this video podcast, Borlaug talks about overcoming technical, psychological, economic and political obstacles to save the lives of millions.

Norman Borlaug says serendipity led him from a background growing up on a farm in Iowa to the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Green Revolution. In this video podcast, Dr. Borlaug says his first life ambition was to be the second baseman for the Chicago Cubs. His second was to be a science teacher with a degree from Iowa State. But a wrestling scholarship led him to the University of Minnesota. He earned a degree in forestry, but then met Dr. E. C. Stakman who convinced him to study cereal grains. That led to his development of high-yielding wheat varieties that saved the lives of millions.

The former U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser, reads "Tillage Marks," a poem about the marks that farm tools make on stones in a farmer's field.

How did a nation of pioneers settle down and accept the limits of civilization? Former U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser, reads "City Limits."

In this video podcast, former U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser, reads "Memory" that, he says, is about the way memory works for writers. It's also about some of the touchstones of rural life.

In the 1950s and 60s, center pivot irrigation systems were the cutting edge of agricultural technology and Robert Daugherty was a young entrepreneur in search of new products to weather an economic slow down. Daugherty remembers how he bought the patent for the first center pivot system and then spent years improving the reliability of the system. Today, pivots create green circles in fields around the world and Valmont is the world's largest manufacturer of the systems.

In this video podcast, Ted Sorensen says the future might have been very different if John F. Kennedy had lived -- different for young people and minorities, different for the economy, and different for the Vietnam War and prospects for peace.

Ted Sorensen remembers that early in the Cold War governments and families built fallout shelters and practiced "Duck and Cover" drills to try and survive a nuclear attack. Sorensen wonders if they would have been effective.

Theodore (Ted) Sorensen was President John F. Kennedy's speech writer and special assistant. In this video podcast, Sorensen talks about Kennedy's farm programs -- he may not have understood them, but JFK was able to relate to farmers in the same way he related to other voters.

In October 2006, dozens of antique tractor owners gathered at the Wessels Living History Farm at York, Nebraska, to show off their restored machines. This video podcast highlights the traditional Parade of Power.

August 15, 1945, the news broke that World War II was over. Victory over Japan was celebrated all around the world – including the small city of North Platte, Nebraska. This video podcast features historic footage of the celebration in North Platte.

In the early 20th century, threshing was a critical economic and social event. Members of several neighboring families would gather to separate wheat from the chaff using huge steam engines, horse-drawn wagons and threshing machines. In this video podcast, oral history interviews take you back to those days.

All across the semi-arid West and around the world, center pivot irrigation systems produce huge, lush crop circles. In this video podcast, a crew overcomes long days, a parts list with thousands of items and even a tornado to build a center pivot system.