Growing Up Ozarks

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Summer Hummer. A hummingbird makes its way to a feeder on our porch overlooking the Mill creek drainage. Watching the humming birds is a big summer activity for our family.

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Young Ozark Love: Taylor and Trey, ages 20 and 21, got married on land that’s been in the family for 3 generations, a pasture that belonged to the groom's grandfather. They'd dated most of high school and had been planning this day for over a year. The ceremony was in the afternoon, followed by a potluck under a nearby oak tree. It was after that, that the younger crowd moved to where the trucks were parked to start their after party.

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To feed the pigs. Our neighbor boys bundled up during the record cold snap in order to go feed the piglets they are raising to sell.

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The Introduction: Will and Rachel introduce their newborn son Kal to Pistol, one of their ranch horses. They run a fourth-generation cattle farm here in the Ozarks of Arkansas and horses are a part of their everyday life. Currently, they keep 7 horses that they've trained for riding and working cattle and use them in the day to day operations of the ranch. This is their second child and will be the fifth generation to farm on the same soil if baby Kal chooses that path.

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Our Road. My kids were making their way up our dirt road to the neighbor's house to drop their dog back off that had made it's daily trek to our house. I was following behind in the car to drive them back home.

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The Nightly Neighbor Visit. Just about every day, the neighbor's dog decides to make the 1/4 mile trek over to our house. Each evening we bring him back home and end up visiting. It's brought us closer together as friends and I am thankful for that.

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Baptism in the River. Abigail, age 13, is baptized by Bishop Charles Hamilton in the water as members of the Little Flock church gather at the Buffalo River among public canoeists and river recreaters for two baptisms of church members Abigail Bear and Kristofer Auker after their Sunday Service at Tyler Bend on the Buffalo River in St. Joe, Arkansas, USA. Little Flock Christian Fellowship out of Harrison, AR is a Mennonite church congregation that has always held it's baptisms down at the river.

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Front Porch Kids. The neighbor kids were out on the front porch waiting for me as I walked up. At this time, they belonged to one of the local Mennonite churches, so Kynzlie is wearing a handmade dress and the boys in collared shirts.

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Summer Feet: After an evening of playing with the neighbor kids down the road, my kidsput their dirty feed on the center console of my car ride during back to our house. All summer long, these two don't wear shoes. They have one pair of sandals for when we go to town.

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Summer Jeans. 10-year-old Kyler sits in a camping chair, manning his lemonade stand at the family yard sale. The knees in his jeans, evidence of the hard work and play he does everyday here in the hills of the Arkansas Ozarks.

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Turkey Season: The neighbor boy was practicing for youth spring turkey season which opened the following weekend. 'Youth turkey' is for ages 6-15 and marks the opening of Spring turkey season in the Ozarks. Dad here has always been an avid hunter, so he is bringing his son up the same. Besides hunting for turkey and deer meat, their family also raises meat pigs and chickens.

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Gaming in the Ozarks. Kaedon is one of the children in a family of five that live here in the Ozarks. Everyone had finished eating dinner, so he headed down to the 'man cave' to play the videogame Fortnite with a friend via Wi-Fi, so had his headphones on communicating as they worked through the game. Trophies of animals they’ve hunted on their land hang on the wall.

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Arriba the Tarantula. My daughter and I were walking to the edge of our woods in the Ozarks of Arkansas when all of a sudden, she felt something race across her bare foot! We searched the ground and saw the tarantula (Aphonopelma hentzi), a native critter of the Ozarks, but not commonly seen. It was hunkered under some foliage, so we called the neighbor kids up to come over and see it with us. 10-year-old Kyler had watched his dad pick them up before, so he gave it a try and it crawled right onto his hand and slowly up to his head. We let it walk back into the woods soon after and have only seen it once since that day.

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A young black bear passes through our front yard shortly after my kids had come inside from playing. Black bears are common in the woods around our home in the Ozarks.

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Chicken Scratch. My daughter loves hanging out with our chickens as they graze in our yard in the Ozarks of Arkansas. She's discovered her own ways to interact with them like putting scratch on her feet and letting them peck it off.

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Porch Time. Steve Treat hangs out with his grandson Liam on his front porch. On about his fifth life, Steve had his first heart attack while in his 30s and a liver transplant in his 40s. His health has always been his nemeses, but you wouldn’t know it from talking to him. He’s a good-natured man who grew up in the Ozark hills and has endless stories to prove it. Unfortunately, at the time this was taken, he was in full liver and heart failure. Steve claims he’d be ready to die if it weren’t for his 15-month-old grandson Liam. Steve passed away in October 2020.

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Talking to Dad. May 6, 2019. Dad is away on 2-week wildfire assignment, so he’d made his evening call home to talk with the kids, while they happened to be playing on the porch with some baby blue jays we’d found abandoned earlier that day.

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Baby Shark. Young Karoline was sad about something, so all the girls which are siblings, cousins, neighbors, were sitting on the four wheeler singing her Baby Shark to cheer her up, her favorite song.

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After harvesting some of the potatoes from our garden, my daughter and I lined them up by size just for fun.

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Baby Jensen. Baby Jensen, the son of Taylor and Trey, naps on the shelf atop the front of the four-wheeler. Uncle Kenny had been out hunting earlier that morning, so his gun was still affixed to the front and made a wall for Jensen so he didn’t slip off while he napped.

Growing Up Ozarks

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