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Farmer’s Dinner Theatre

Cooperative Extension Service

“Kentucky Landscape” 1832 James Pierce Barton

This project was created a few years ago in Kentucky to bring awareness to farm safety  through a dinner theatre is continuing to gain momentum in rural communities. The focus now is more on farm mental health and wellness. 

https://youtu.be/ztDxdsWW4q0?si=qaQ6OTpKSSP2mMY3

Standards Kentucky


Morrill Land Grant Act

This program has been adopted or implemented by extension services and related organizations in several other states. This initiative uses short plays performed during a community dinner to educate farmers and their families on health, safety, mental health, and farm-related issues in an engaging, non-traditional way:

  • Nebraska — Cooperative Extension services have hosted events as part of the program’s expansion.
  • North Carolina — The program is active through local extension efforts.
  • Tennessee — Events have been held, often in collaboration with extension agents.
  • Virginia — Particularly notable in the Shenandoah Valley, where Virginia Cooperative Extension offices (e.g., in Rockingham County) partnered with local groups like Valley Urgent Care and Future Farmers of America (FFA) chapters to organize Farm Safety Dinner Theaters, adapting the UK model for community-based participatory approaches.

The program is designed to be replicable nationwide. The University of Kentucky provides an online Farmers Dinner Theater Toolkit for any cooperative extension service, community group, or organization to stage their own events, customizing scripts to local needs. This has enabled wider adoption beyond the original sites. These efforts focus on helping farmers by addressing critical topics like injury prevention, hearing loss, skin cancer, stress, and suicide awareness in a social, farmer-friendly setting that encourages discussion and behavior change.

Split Pea Soup & Ham

Oklahoma Commercial Kitchen Requirements

Ingredients:

1 pound dried split peas, rinsed and picked over
1 ham hock, ham bone, or 1 pound diced ham
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
8 cups chicken or vegetable broth
2 bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
Optional: thyme, parsley, or other herbs for flavor

Instructions:

Prepare the ingredients: Rinse the split peas under cold water and pick out any debris. Chop the onion, carrots, and celery. Mince the garlic.

Sauté aromatic vegetables: In a large pot or Dutch oven, heat some olive oil over medium heat. Add the chopped onion, carrots, celery, and garlic. Sauté until softened, about 5-7 minutes.

Add split peas and broth: Add the rinsed split peas to the pot, along with the ham hock, ham bone, or diced ham. Pour in the chicken or vegetable broth. Add bay leaves and any other herbs you’re using.

Simmer the soup: Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce the heat to low. Let it simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the split peas are tender and the soup has thickened, about 1 to 1.5 hours. If using a ham hock or bone, remove it from the soup once the meat is falling off the bone; shred the meat and return it to the pot.

Season to taste: Taste the soup and season with salt and pepper as needed. Adjust any other seasonings to your liking.

Serve: Remove the bay leaves before serving. Ladle the soup into bowls and enjoy hot. Optionally, you can garnish with chopped fresh parsley or a drizzle of olive oil.


Tips:

You can customize the soup by adding other vegetables like potatoes or leeks.
For a vegetarian version, omit the ham and use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.
Split pea soup tends to thicken as it sits, so you may need to add more broth or water when reheating leftovers.

Standards Oklahoma

Old-Fashioned Beef Stew

Standards Wyoming

 

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  • 1 pound beef stewing meat trimmed and cut into inch cubes
  • 5 teaspoons vegetable oil
  • 2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 1 cup red wine
  • 3 1/2 cups beef broth homemade or low-sodium canned
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 medium onion peeled and chopped
  • 5 medium carrots peeled and cut into 1/4 inch rounds
  • 2 large baking potatoes peeled and cut into 3/4 inch cubes
  • 2 teaspoons salt

Instructions

  • Wash hands with soap and water for 20 seconds.

  • Combine the flour and pepper in a bowl, add the beef and toss to coat well. Heat 3 teaspoons of the oil in a large pot. Add the beef a few pieces at a time; do not overcrowd. Cook, turning the pieces until beef is browned on all sides, about 5 minutes per batch; add more oil as needed between batches.

  • Wash the counter and utensils that touched the raw meat. Wash hands with soap and water after handling raw meat.

  • Remove the beef from the pot and add the vinegar and wine. Cook over medium-high heat, scraping the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen any browned bits. Add the beef, beef broth, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a slow simmer.

  • Cover the pot and cook, skimming broth from time to time, until the beef is tender, about 1 1/2 hours.

  • While the beef is cooking, scrub the onion, carrots, and potatoes with a clean vegetable brush under cold running water. Prepare vegetables as directed in the ingredients.

  • Add the onions and carrots to the pot and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Add the potatoes and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes more. Add broth or water if the stew is dry. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  • Serve immediately.

Old-Fashioned Beef Stew

Wyoming

Wild Swimming

 

INTERVIEW: Student Ellie Ford on founding the University’s first cold water swimming group

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Port Meadow is absolutely beautiful and a wonderful place to swim. We often swim in a different spot from other open water swimming groups in order to create a more relaxed environment – especially for our beginners. We do special beginners swims on Saturdays, to ease new members into the practise slowly and very carefully.

Safety is paramount, so I’ll walk them in to the water and they can immerse themselves as much as they want. We never allow anyone to jump or dive into cold water – the shock can cause a swimmer to gulp for air and subsequently ingest water; it’s always a gentle process.” — Ellie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sex Difference in Female and Male Ice Swimmers

Ice Swimming

Venison Stew

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English Fry Up

The Full English Breakfast, or “fry-up,” originated in the Victorian era (1830s–1900s) as a hearty meal for the rural gentry and emerging industrial working class in Britain. It combined affordable, energy-dense ingredients—butter-fried eggs, back bacon, sausages, fried bread, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, and black pudding—designed to fuel long days of manual labor or fox-hunting. By the Edwardian period it had become a symbol of British identity and was served in hotels and boarding houses to travelers.
§
In the United States, the fry-up arrived on college campuses primarily after World War II via two routes: British faculty and students at elite universities (Oxford-Cambridge exchanges, Rhodes Scholars) and the 1960s–70s “British Invasion” cultural wave. Dining halls at places like Yale, Harvard, and certain Ivy League-adjacent schools began offering weekend “English breakfasts” as novelty brunches. The tradition stuck hardest at boarding schools and liberal-arts colleges with strong Anglophile traditions (e.g., Choate, St. Paul’s, Middlebury, Kenyon).
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By the 1980s–90s, beans on toast and proper rashers of back bacon became hangover cures at off-campus houses, cementing the fry-up as a once-a-semester ritual rather than daily fare.

 

English Breakfast for Each Day of the Week

Standards Massachusetts | Planning, Real Estate, and Facilities


Incredible snow removal

Electric Power Availability: Cold Weather Preparedness

PUBLIC LAW 109–58—AUG. 8, 2005 | ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2005

Reaction: December 18 Open Meeting


Reliability v. Availability

January 25th Joint Meeting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and FERC: Docket No. AD06-6-000.  Given the close coupling of electric and natural gas supply with respect to power reliability, the mind boggles at the hostility of the Biden Administration to natural gas anywhere on earth.  Natural gas is critical to generation plant black start capabilities and hospitals, among others.

A selection of the presentations:

“Long Term Reliability Assessment” – Presented by Mark Lauby, Senior Vice President and Chief Engineer, NERC

“Grid Reliability Overview & Updates” – Presented by David Ortiz, Director of the Office of Electric Reliability

“Status of Standards and Implementation for Cold Weather Preparedness and Applicability to Nuclear Plants” – Presented by David Huff, Electrical Engineer, Office of Electric Reliability

“Gas-Electric Coordination Since Winter Storm Uri” – Presented by Heather Polzin, Reliability Enforcement Counsel, Office of Enforcement

“Overview of Power Reactor Activities” – Presented by Andrea Kock, Deputy Office Director for Engineering, NRR

“Grid Reliability Updates” – Presented by Jason Paige, Chief, Long-Term Operations and Modernization Branch, Division of Engineering and External Hazards, NRR

Electrical Resource Adequacy

Related:

Utah State University: History of Probability

Sample Probability and Statistics Problem from Professional Electrical Engineer’s Examination

Loss-of-load-based reliability indices

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