Rural

Not long after Beau Braden moved to southwest Florida to open a medical clinic, injured strangers started showing up at his house. A boy who had split open his head at the pool. People with gashes and broken bones. There was nowhere else to go after hours, they told him, so Dr. Braden stitched them up on his dining room table. They were 40 miles inland from the coral-white condos and beach villas of Naples, but Dr. [node:read-more:link]

Imagine the farm that raised the chicken that produced the meat that sits in your sandwich: a few workers, thousands of birds, tens of thousands of pounds of white and dark meat, work that starts before dawn and ends after dusk, uncertain revenue, slim profits. There are thousands of these small farms in the United States, and they benefit from millions of dollars of taxpayer support each year. Chicken is America’s favorite protein, after all. Family farms are one of its most prized institutions. And farming is tough business. [node:read-more:link]

Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development Anne Hazlett announced that USDA has formalized an innovative agreement in which a nonprofit organization will purchase homes from the Department and convert them to transitional housing for people recovering from opioid misuse. “From quality of life to workforce and economic opportunity, the opioid crisis is impacting rural prosperity in communities across our country,” Hazlett said. [node:read-more:link]

Thousands of scrap rubber tires have been recycled and repurposed into material used in construction of a local road.  Nearly 14,000 recycled tires were used during construction on West W Avenue from the Schoolcraft village limits to Portage Road in early August, implementing rubber technology never used before in the United States. "Scrap tire innovation is nothing new to the state, however the type of recycled tire material used for this project has not been used here before," Managing Director Joanna Johnson said.   [node:read-more:link]

Craft beer fans seeking different flavors are accustomed to hitting the road to taste offerings from breweries both near and far from home. Special releases of new and limited-run creations are a big draw, but so too are the breweries themselves. As the craft beer industry has blossomed over the past decade, so too have options for such visits. [node:read-more:link]

General Mills is more than tripling the length of its paid maternity and parental leave policies, introducing paid caregiver leave, and boosting its bereavement and short-term disability benefits. The packaged food company announced the changes Wednesday as part of an overall U.S. employee benefits upgrade that goes into effect Jan. [node:read-more:link]

Smoke from wildfires clogged the sky across the U.S. West, blotting out mountains and city skylines from Oregon to Colorado, delaying flights and forcing authorities to tell even healthy adults in the Seattle area to stay indoors. As large cities dealt with unhealthy air for a second summer in a row, experts warned that it could become more common as the American West faces larger and more destructive wildfires because of heat and drought blamed on climate change. [node:read-more:link]

Before the current farm bill expires on September 30, House and Senate conferees will sit down and try to put the finishing touches on a new, thousand-page bill that speaks to all aspects of the nation’s agriculture policy, from farm subsidies to crop insurance to conservation programs. [node:read-more:link]

Billed as “The World’s Largest Potluck (in Meadville),” the gathering organized by My Meadville lived up to both its tongue-in-cheek name and the community-oriented spirit of the My Meadville project. “It’s not the world’s largest potluck, but as Mayor (LeRoy) Stearns said, it is the largest potluck Meadville has ever seen,” said Autumn Vogel, My Meadville project director, in a reference to Stearns’ introductory comments as visitors began gravitating toward the long line of tables heaped with food that bisected the park. “It’s more than a giant party. [node:read-more:link]

If you want good local leaders, look for the people who finish projects, not just start them, says the mayor of Granby, Colorado, a small town in the Rockies. In our series on small-town leadership, Paul Chavoustie shares how the drive to succeed in the private sector blends with the community vision of the public sector. [node:read-more:link]