On July 4, 1776, our Founding Fathers signed a transformational document full of beautiful principles that would come to define our great nation. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Thomas Jefferson famously wrote before outlining those principles.

DEATHS Wesley Darwin Klein, 84, November 27, 2020, Gregory, SD. David John Steffen, 74, March 25, 2021, Rapid City, SD.

Memorial services to be held for Ruby Graham Memorial services for Ruby Graham, age 77, formerly of Springview, NE, will be held on Saturday, July 10, 2021, at 10:30 a.m. at the United Methodist Church, Springview, NE.

Governor Kristi Noem signed an executive order on Tuesday, June 29, declaring a statewide state of emergency for drought conditions and allowing ditch mowing in eastern South Dakota to begin effective immediately. As drought conditions continue to negatively impact feed availability for livestock across South Dakota, this order will increase access to hay for farmers and ranchers.

I am back and want to share my observations on the events of the last 2 months. This was the longest time that I have ever been away from my Canadian home so I had 7 months of farm papers to catch up on. The John Deere Furrow confirmed a couple of things, Sask. has 40% of Canada’s cropland and climate change causing longer frost free periods, is allowing grain farming north of Lake Superior. This is also happening in Alaska. Climate change is also unpredictability, when I got up there it was 84 F and very dry. Two days later we had freezing rain and snow and in a week 4” of rain. On the first day of summer it froze at a number of locations across the province. There have been two separate occasions of 65+ mph winds with much damage around my home area. But water holds heat better than air and shifts in ocean currents have been observed which could have very serious effects on weather patterns.

With the completion of the Fort Randall Dam in 1956, many sites and features of deep historical interest disappeared as the bottomlands were flooded. This included twenty-five historic islands which were identified by Merrill Mattes in his “Report on Historic Sites in the Fort Randall Reservoir Area, Missouri River, South Dakota.”