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Featured Sponsor:
Look for these sponsors' logos throughout the various sections of this site.
Sustaining Sponsors:
This month's featured sponsors:
Our Latest Rural Business Opportunity:
Watson's Steakhouse & Saloon
Just Listed in Minden, NE
Our Latest Rural Housing Opportunity:
Nice Woodwork and Plenty of Storage
Just Listed in Palisade, NE
Rural Success Stories: 6 Acre Wood Farm
From the garden to your door is goal of 6 Acre Wood CSA farm
by Misty DeLashmutt
The idea of locally-grown food is not new; however it is a growing movement that in the last 20 years has spawned a new type of niche market.
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a simple idea that creates rewards for both the farmer and the consumer by allowing consumers to buy local seasonal food that is delivered directly from the farm to the table. more...
Rural Success Stories: Schwarz Farms
Making more dollars per acre is goal of Bertrand organic farm
Tom Schwarz believes that farming the organic way is definitely more of a challenge but may also be a bit more fun than conventional farming.
“As a conventional farmer, I just plant, spray, and harvest. But growing the organic way requires us to think more about every process, think through our choices. For example, we choose from many more plant varieties than a conventional farmer.” more...
Rural Success Stories: Hot Rocket Fireworks
Fascination with fireworks sparks an explosive business for Oxford family
Hot Rocket Fireworks Owner Craig Hamre describes himself as a fireworks fanatic. As a kid, he was the one saving money all year long to buy fireworks, and he sheepishly admits the police might have made a few house calls to kindly remind him of the legal times to shoot off those fireworks. more...
Rural Success Stories: Besler Industries
Quality is key to success for Cambridge ag products manufacturer
by Gene O. Morris
Whether it's a cotton farmer in Georgia, a rancher in Montana or a corn farmer just down the road in Nebraska, the products of Besler Industries, Inc. of Cambridge are making a difference in American agriculture. Since starting in a tiny building behind the Cambridge bowling alley in 1973, the business founded by Herb Besler has become known for flawless quality and cutting edge craftsmanship.more...
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Articles & Essays: Burton's Bend
Burton's Bend Music Festival is foot-stomping good time
by Bob Bell
Burton’s Bend was the name given to the first permanent settlement in Furnas County, at present-day Holbrook. Burton’s Bend also lends its name to the Burton’s Bend Music Festival, a lively, quirky, two-day event where amateur musicians rub shoulders with the pros, and everyone has a foot-stomping good time. more...
Articles & Essays: Concerts on the Creek
Concerts on the Creek series is pure delight for chamber music lovers
Chamber music is, by definition, intimate. And no matter how much you spent on your home sound system, there’s no recording in your collection that can match the experience of a live concert. more...
Articles & Essays: Summer Honors Program
Summer Honors program brings world-class education to rural studentsby Jennifer Chick
Some might think that students in larger cities always get the best education. After all, urban students have diverse museums, expansive libraries, and large universities practically next door; they simply have more opportunities at their fingertips. more...
Articles & Essays: 50 editions later, Nebraska Rural Living is going strong
by Phil Soreide
This is the 50th edition of Nebraska Rural Living. And while, granted, it’s not our 50th anniversary, it’s still a milestone worthy of reflection. We’ve covered a lot of ground. more...
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Rural Foodies: Farmer's Market
Farmer’s Market Throwdown yields our best fresh summer meal ever
As regular readers know, the Rural Foodies usually visit a restaurant – some of them pretty off the wall and out of the way – in search of something to pique our culinary interest. But the essence of our mutual attraction is not restaurants, but food, and for people who like to eat, a farmer’s market in August is practically sensory overload. more...
Rural Foodies: Bonfire Grill
Chef‘s influence evident at Broken Bow‘s Bonfire Grill
by Pam Soreide, Betty Sayers and Phil Soreide
One of the least profound insights the Rural Foodies have gained from a year or two of seeking out the best dining experiences to be had in rural Nebraska is that who’s in charge in the kitchen makes a huge difference as to what ends up on your plate. more...
Rural Foodies: Palace Steakhouse
Nebraska beef is focal point of Red Cloud's Palace Steakhouse
by Phil Soreide, Betty Sayers and Pam Soreide
We have come to poke around Red Cloud a bit before trying out dinner at the Palace Steakhouse, which we’ve been told is a venerable landmark in downtown. Venerable it certainly is, and so what if decorating isn’t their longest suit? We understand they make it a point to serve Nebraska beef, and that’s what we’ve come for...or at least what some of us have come for.more...
Rural Foodies: Back Alley Bakery
Artisan breads are just the beginning for the Back Alley Bakery
by Phil Soreide, Betty Sayers & Pam Soreide
Technologically speaking, retained-heat brick ovens are way dark ages, in use by ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans thousands of years B.C. So why, in an age of microwave Hot Pockets and dough-in-a-can, do people still make bread this way? Oh, you poor creature. If you have to ask, for the sake of your culinary soul, schedule a trip immediately if not sooner to the Back Alley Bakery in Hastings. more...
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Dynamic Towns & Cities: Eustis
In Eustis, your “Wurst” day might be your best day ever
Founded in the late 1880s by immigrants mostly from Stuttgart, Germany, it’s no wonder this friendly town still honors the sausage with an annual affair drawing thousands of visitors from all over Nebraska.
On the second weekend in June, you can dance to polkas and country songs under the stars, smell authentic German-style sausages roasting on the barbecue, knock back a freshly-brewed beer, and savor German pretzels rolled and baked by Eustis bakers. But the Wurst Tag (Sausage Day) celebration in Eustis is really just a single example of the kind of community spirit that makes Eustis an appealing place to live.
Even if you’ve read our profile of this charming town before, we’ve updated it for this issue with new information and quotes and news from some of Eustis’ movers and shakers, along with some terrific new pictures by Eustis’ own, Don Brockmeier. more...
Dynamic Towns & Cities: Oxford
Village of Oxford Proves Good Things Come In Small Packages
Cruise into the small (pop. 900) Village of Oxford in south-central Nebraska, and you’re greeted by a main street broad enough to park cars in the middle as well as at the curbs. The first Oxford citizens designed a spacious community with room to expand. Clean, wide streets and sidewalks with big, shady trees welcome customers and visitors. Twenty-two businesses comprise the business district, first laid out and built in 1880 when the Republican Valley Railway Company (later to become the Chicago, Burlington and Quincey) crossed Harlan County and into the fledgling town.
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Dynamic Towns & Cities: Minden
If the perfect small town exists, it just might be Minden
If you could sit down at a drawing board to design the perfect small town, you’d start with a superb education system, then add in gracious and affordable homes. You’d want to make sure you had a prosperous manufacturing sector so there would be good jobs and a sound economy, then perhaps you’d want to add some interesting retail enterprises on wide, safe streets. You’d want to make sure to design in a strong sense of community, with a lot of citizen participation in community decisions, quality healthcare facilities and nearby opportunities for camping, hunting and fishing. Put down your pencil. You’re describing Minden.more...
Dynamic Towns & Cities: Red Cloud
Red Cloud is an Historic Treasure...and a Treat For The Eyes
Gracious homes, buildings and more remind visitors of Nebraska heritage. Red Cloud’s place is unique in American and Nebraska history. Celebrated author, Willa Cather’s best-known work, My Antonia, was inspired by the town, the land and the hardy pioneers in Webster County. Cather lived in rural Webster County and the town of Red Cloud until she left in 1890 to attend the University of Nebraska. Red Cloud’s strong literary heritage is juxtaposed with a hunting and farming culture, a theme woven into many of her stories. more...
Welcome to Nebraska Rural Living
Nebraska Rural Living is the brainchild of two sisters who returned to their small town roots after a life pursuing their dreams in big cities. Nebraska Rural Living's mission is to market the very real benefits of a rural lifestyle by highlighting the amenities of rural communities and spotlighting successful entrepreneurs, who make good livings, free of the stress of urban environments. We offer links to a wide variety of sources and resources.
If you miss the safe, quiet streets, the wide-open sky, the sense of knowing – and caring about – your neighbors, we urge you to register and be a part of our community. And perhaps after you join us in spirit, you’ll join us in fact. more...
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What's Going On in Rural Nebraska
Cure for the summertime blues: Harlan County Lake
Remember winter? It is, after all, right around the corner again.
If that by itself is not enough to enhance your appreciation for high summer on the Great Plains, a trip to Harlan County Lake should probably be on your immediate agenda. Whatever stirs your summertime soul, this area of south-central Nebraska likely offers it. more...
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Also Featured This Month
You can take the girl out of Nebraska
“I have been gone from Nebraska for many, many years,” writes Geraldine Kilgore, who left the state in 1953, “and one would think I would get it out of my system. But I haven't.”more...
Franklin’s Down Home Café offers a real “home-cooked” restaurant experience
If you’ve ever pulled a sublime dish out of the oven — done to perfection, the air filling with the rich redolence of Good Food — and said to yourself, “What’s Wolfgang Puck got that I haven’t got?” you have to appreciate what Alicia and Michael Williams have done.more...
Father and son speed shop builds engines for sprint car customers worldwide
Sprint car racing is one of those sports that’s a little hard to imagine until you have experienced it. What it is, in essence, is twenty smallish open-wheeled roadsters powered by engines putting out 800+ horsepower, racing wheel-to-wheel at speeds up to 150 mph on short oval, often dirt, tracks.more...
