Editorial

Tee Helsel was a three-sport standout for Branson High School, leading the football, basketball and baseball teams to successful seasons this year. The shortstop will play baseball at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin.Bryan Johnson, 14, right, whizzes down a 36-inch culvert pipe that has been transformed into a slide as his friend, Jason Smith, 14, left, rushes to the top of the hill with a potato sack to await his turn near the Corn Maze in Logan, Ohio, Saturday, October 1, 2005. Bryan and Jason constructed the slide, with the help of Bryan's father, a few weeks ago by digging a small trench in the side of a hill and securing the pipe inside. "To have fun in these parts [rural Ohio], a kid needs to be an inventor," Johnson said with a smile.Farm hand, Ben Bellar, adjusts his baseball cap while working on the engine of John Ervin's truck at Ervin's Dairy Farm in Athens County, Ohio, February 12, 2008. Family dairy farming has been an important part of Athens County's history, but unstable milk prices coupled with the rising cost of production have made it difficult for family farms to survive. Many farmers in the Athens County area feel that family farming will soon be a thing of the past. According to Scott Ervin, the way to survive in today's difficult economy is to become a bigger farm that milks more than 300 cows. Unfortunately, for most family farms in the Athens County area, an investment of that size and magnitude is completely out of the question. As a result, they continue to farm as best they can in a challenging system in which it is difficult to compete.