- Playing
- Paying to Burn the Prairie
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- KCUR
INTRO:
The rising price of corn and other grains has put the squeeze on cattle ranchers in the midwest, who use grain to feed their livestock. So some are looking for other ways to earn their living off the land. Sylvia Maria Gross [of station KCUR] recently visited a ranch near Emporia, Kansas where one man has come up with a pretty good scheme.
PLEASE TAG: [can read over music at the end]
You're listening to the bluegrass band the Millbrook Boys, who finished out the evening playing in Jan Jantzen's barn. Sylvia Maria Gross od Station KCUR brought us this story.
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
INTRO:
The rising price of corn and other grains has put the squeeze on cattle ranchers in the midwest, who use grain to feed their livestock. So some are looking for other ways to earn their living off the land. Sylvia Maria Gross [of station KCUR] recently visited a ranch near Emporia, Kansas where one man has come up with a pretty good scheme.
PLEASE TAG: [can read over music at the end]
You're listening to the bluegrass band the Millbrook Boys, who finished out the evening playing in Jan Jantzen's barn. Sylvia Maria Gross od Station KCUR brought us this story.
2 Comments
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The Parable of FireI’ve never been fond of fires. Ever since I took my eye off a fidgety barbecue and nearly burned down a summer vacation house, I’ve preferred water to flame. Many people don’t share my preference. Arsonists, gothic novelists, and backwoods types cuddling up to Franklin stoves would light firecrackers and cherry bombs 24/7 if they could. It turns out that Jan Jantzen, a retired college administrator, charges visitors a hundred and twenty bucks a person to participate in torching his ranchland in western Kansas. Seasonal prairie-grass burn-offs are legendary. If native Americans and their North American conquistadors weren’t replenishing the soil by charring it, lightning has been causing wildfires for eons. Without such conflagrations and without grazing, in Rancher Jan’s words, the prairie “would become primarily a scrub forest, mainly with eastern red cedars that wouldn’t have much value for anything.” Although this piece glows too tepidly and could have used a reverse bellows to make it at least a minute shorter toward the middle, it’s mainly fun. While Jan jokes his visitors about being careful not to singe their eyebrows, his 50 paying guests are netting him a serious six thousand bucks. As well as indulging in pyrotechnics, they’ll get to chow down local cheese curd plus peach-glazed buffalo and barley meatballs out of a chuck wagon—yum! They’ll also get to hear The Millbrook Boys light a bluegrass fire in Rancher Jan’s barn. During the last couple of minutes here, the band ends up sounding a bit sour to my ears. But far be it from me to rain on this blaze! |
Broadcast History
Weekend America
KC Currents, KCUR
Transcript
LEDE:
The rising price of corn and other grains has put the squeeze on cattle ranchers in the midwest, who use grain to feed their livestock. So some are looking for other ways to earn their living off the land. Sylvia Maria Gross [of station KCUR] recently visited a ranch near Emporia, Kansas where one man has come up with a pretty good scheme.
STORY:
TRACK: For most of his career, Jan Jantzen was a college administrator.
ACT: JAN: But don’t hold that against me. I’ve always been an outdoors kid at heart and gave things name – trees and weeds and bushes, even when I didn’t know what they were.
TRACK: Jan grew up in a small town in Western Kansas. And when he retired from academia, he bought a cattle ranch in the nearby Flint Hills. It’s a region with the largest swath of original tallgrass prairie in the country. For thousands of years, animals have grazed on its natural gras...
Read the full transcript
Timing and Cues
Story ends at 6:28, but there's bluegrass music and applause until 7:46. The music was recorded on site and is part of the story, but can be edited out for time.
Intro and Outro
INTRO:The rising price of corn and other grains has put the squeeze on cattle ranchers in the midwest, who use grain to feed their livestock. So some are looking for other ways to earn their living off the land. Sylvia Maria Gross [of station KCUR] recently visited a ranch near Emporia, Kansas where one man has come up with a pretty good scheme.
OUTRO:[can read over music at the end] You're listening to the bluegrass band the Millbrook Boys, who finished out the evening playing in Jan Jantzen's barn. Sylvia Maria Gross od Station KCUR brought us this story.
Additional Credits
This story was produced for Weekend America, and edited by Jim Gates.
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Peter Solomon
Posted on July 16, 2009 at 09:05 AM | Permalink
Enjoyed this piece
Nice use of sound, compelling voices, I agree with the other commenter that it could have been about a minute or so shorter but overall I found it really interesting and a perfect fit for summer.