Thank you, to all of our great members who have helped us to raise $84,171 during our Spring Membership Drive. You truly are the force that powers public radio across the High Plains.

Your support helps HPPR to provide the highest quality of public radio programming. Programs like Morning Edition, All Things Considered, High Plains Morning and Car Talk, are only available because of people like you, who have picked up the phone, went to our pledge page, or sent in their contribution through the mail.

I've been talking to Joe Wilson, the president of Squirrels Unlimited, about cooking squirrel.  Joe's favorite recipe is to brown the meat, (he likes it deboned).  While that meat is browning, start your rue, cooking it until it's the color of chocolate.  Add the meat.  Once it's nice and thick, add the vegetables- things like bell pepper, onion, and celery.  Then turns the heat down, and simmer for about two hours.  Add okra when you're almost ready to serve, because as Joe reminds me, you don't want it to get slimy.  Serve it with white rice and french bread.    

How many remember dancing in a circle while weaving long ribbons around a May Pole or making construction paper baskets covered with crayon drawings? Afterwards, flowers picked from the yard or a kind neighbor’s garden filled those paper baskets. Once you loaded your baskets with fragrant blooms, you sneaked from door to door to hang your homemade containers. At each house, you’d knock and then run like crazy to avoid detection. May Day was one of my favorite holidays from earliest childhood.

Parents mark children’s lives by firsts:  tooth, word, step, and day of school.  As youngsters mature, these memorable moments come further apart.   However, for a youngster who hunts, this list continues to grow.  If my husband and his friends’ experiences are any indication,  this record not only lengthens but  is infinite.  Hunters live for their stories, which always include a first. Perhaps this is a hunter’s way to cling to childhood’s elusive magic.

Skip Mancini, host of HPPR's program, Growing on the High Plains, will be hand delivering a giant basket of produce from her own garden, to one lucky winner.

By calling HPPR now at 800-678-7444 or going to our secure pledge page, you can enter to win Skip's garden basket and make a secure pledge of support.

Today, I'm thinking about how the plants, in my garden, are similar to public radio on the prairie.  Some of my plants come from seeds, some are off-shoots of parents plants, some started as cuttings or grafts relocated from other gardens and plants.  Some are divisions, where I have dug up the parent plant, divided it, and then planted the "kids" in a new spot.  

It was hard to be German during World War I. 

Nearly $17 billion has been paid out to farmers in crop insurance indemnities to cover the losses from the catastrophic drought of 2012, the government reported this week.