No one has ever considered me a hippie environmentalist. But if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people who treat the land like it’s one big trash can.
Growing up on the farm, it was pointed out to me from a young age that my grandpa wanted the farm to look clean. The grass was always to be kept cut and neat, machinery was parked in rows or in a shed, garbage was meant for the can and junk shouldn’t be left sitting around.
I often wish some people I encounter around Dickinson would have grown up in a similar atmosphere, where lessons about cleanliness and respect for the community and land sometimes go out the window — quite literally in one case.
NEW ENGLAND — The company that withdrew its application to build a $250 million wind farm in eastern Stark County isn’t giving up on southwest North Dakota.
A spokesperson for Florida-based NextEra Energy Resources said Thursday that it is “looking at multiple options” in the area for a future wind project.
“That’s about as specific as I can be at this point,” Steven Stengel, NextEra’s director of communications, said Thursday in an email to The Press. He added that NextEra is continuing to speak with its stakeholders about projects that will address their concerns.
As shoppers took the first items off shelves of the new Cash Wise Foods on Wednesday morning, dozens of community members gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony and official grand opening outside of Dickinson’s newest supermarket.
The store is opening in the Prairie Hills Mall in the space that for 37 years before it housed Kmart. It took nine months to turn KMart into Cash Wise.
Check out the video above to hear store director Matt Sellers’ take on the store’s opening and what Cash Wise has to offer.
Jim Kerzman, a former state legislator from Mott, holds a lamb on his farm in this undated photo. The state representative of 20 years who also farmed near Mott for a half-century died Saturday in a tractor accident on his farm. (Submitted Photo)
MOTT — Jill Kerzman said her husband wasn’t perfect — but he was close.
Now, as she prepares to say goodbye, she said she’ll forever remember how he tried to treat others with care and help those who were less fortunate.
James Kerzman, a state legislator of two decades who farmed near Mott for a half-century while raising 10 children, died Saturday in a farm accident involving one of his tractors. Details of the accident have not been released by the Hettinger County Sheriff’s Department.
“He was one of the kindest men I will ever know in my life,” Jill Kerzman said in a phone interview. “He was a humble, hard-working man who really got into his life and got dirty.”
Kerzman, 68, was a Democrat who represented District 31 from 1990 to 2010. After his political career ended, he stayed busy as a member of the Slope Elective Cooperative and the North Dakota Farmers Union boards, and was an active member of St. Vincent’s Catholic Church in Mott while also being heavily involved in the Knights of Columbus.
“His heart was as big as the prairies of North Dakota, but it was also as gentle as the little lambs he raised on his farm,” said Aaron Krauter, a former Democrat state senator from Regent.
Dustin Monke 