Clarice L. Kesler

If you’re a garden lover in North Dakota, the planting season may not be long enough to satisfy your yearning to connect to the earth.

However, you can extend the season by planning and preparing prior to planting.

Considering the season’s last frost usually happens between May 16 to 30, depending on where you live in North Dakota, you have some time over the next two months to get a few things ready to make your growing season more productive.

 
TAKING CARE OF YOUR TOOLS

When you sign up to belong to an electric cooperative, know that members matter most. It’s a philosophy deeply held in the hearts and minds of both the directors who represent you and the employees who serve you.

If you’re thinking about planting a garden this spring, look to perennials to provide seasons of beauty, low maintenance and a good return on your investment.

What is a perennial? A perennial is a plant that regrows and lives more than two years. Unlike annuals that provide a season’s worth of blooming before they die, perennials bloom for a few weeks. After the blooms fade, the plants’ foliage remains intact until dying back after a freeze, but their robust root system stays warm underground and allows the plant to return to the garden for several more years.

POLLINATION
Of the 1,400 crop plants grown around the world – those that produce all our food and plant-based industrial products – almost 80 percent require pollination by animals.

Pollination also helps provide more flowering plants, which help clean the air and purify water by preventing erosion through their root systems that hold soil in place. The water cycle also depends on plants to return moisture to the atmosphere.

In many ways, growing a garden that attracts pollinators benefits all of us.
 

Today, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the only national cross-industry measure of customer satisfaction in the United States, Touchstone Energy Cooperatives consistently rank among the highest for customer satisfaction in the energy utility sector.

This can be credited to the directors who listen to the needs of the membership and govern the cooperative based on those needs. Directors lead the cooperative while keeping local, reliable, affordable electric service at the forefront of their decision-making.

Callers told her flames from a fire that started in the family’s pole barn were shooting over their “shome” (a home and shop combined into one living quarters). Since the shome and pole barn were only 20 feet apart, Klocke feared she and her husband, David, would lose everything they’d worked for, including the family business, which took more than four decades to build.

You could call them nature’s fireworks. With bursts of gold, yellow, rust and burgundy, chrysanthemums, or “mums,” fill gardens with bountiful beauty each fall. And while potted versions last for a few weeks, plant them as a perennial in the spring to enjoy them for a few years.

In that same spirit of unity, co-ops also cooperate with other co-ops.

A golden example is a national network called Touchstone Energy^® Cooperatives. It is the co-brand you’ll often see attached to your local co-op’s logo. But what does it mean exactly?

Co-ops across the country formed this national brand in 1998. Through research with members, the name, brand and tagline were formed.

Electric cooperatives chose “Touchstone” as the name, because it means the highest or “gold” standard.