Welcome to the Dispatch Archives!

Welcome to the Dispatch From Mormon Trail Farm Archives!

It has been several years now that I have been visiting with my Dad, Clark, about needing a webpage for Mormon Trail Farm. We have discussed it at length, but as it often happens with big projects, it never got much further than those discussions. Trying to get together to work on it as a team…honestly, there were always other things going on and it kept getting put on the back burner.

So when his birthday was on the horizon this year, my sister Carrie and I decided to tackle the job and surprise him with his webpage…functional and ready to go. And a big part of what we wanted to do for him was take the huge (and I do mean HUGE) stack of magazines that have been collecting dust in the hall closet and convert all of the articles he has written to a format that not only could he enjoy re-reading them himself, but continue to share them with others who have been his fans over the years.

So, I set to work in secret, going through the first box of magazines my mother so sneakily smuggled out of the house. And so I began the tedious process of scanning the articles and converting them to text so they could be easily posted on his website. As I worked I found myself absorbed in the past. I read each article as I scanned it, trying to make sure the text all came through successfully. And as I read, I laughed. I cried. And I marveled at the massive body of work that has spanned decades. Writing that pulls the reader in and gives them a small taste of the life of a shepherd in southern Iowa…a small micro-story of our Dad’s life every month.

And so, here we are. The articles may not appear in exact chronological order, but I have tried hard to make sure that the original publication information is included at the start of each one. I am going to try to publish a couple of articles each week for the foreseeable future. Who knows how long it will take me to get them all on here….there are many more boxes we have to dig out of that hall closet.

So be sure to bookmark this website, come back frequently, and follow along at this look into the past. I hope you enjoy the journey! Jennifer