Our upcoming program at our annual meeting on September 29, 2013 features some of the strangest history in Johnson County, to some people.  It has been written about since the happening in state reports and in our Bulletin.  But as yet, as far as we know, no one has tried to replicate the event. 
Paul Landkamer, entomophagist, will guide us through the program. We still need cooks who want to show off their wild edibles and participants. This feast is inspired by the 1875 grasshopper feast which actually happened here in Warrensburg. It's also the plague featured in Laura Ingalls-Wilder's "On the Banks of Plum Creek". Since we couldn't schedule another plague, we opened the feast up to any wild edibles --of course, concentrating on the insects.  Please contact us if you are interested. 

Great Memory

It has been five years since Carol Berkland, who was looking through old  newspapers online, showed me a pile of printed out references to Johnson County that she had found.  Many interesting tales, lots of railroad news, and this one.    From the Kansas City Star 1919, it just happened to be a drawing of W.A. Tompkins, my great grandfather which we printed in the Bulletin at the time..  I had hoped that there would be room in the newsletter for the rest of the story, but alas there wasn't. 

So, now, the end of the tale.   I took the newspaper clipping to my brother Mark who lives on the Tompkins place.  It was a cold January day, much like today, but he said, "Do you want to see where that is?" and we took off across the field.  I have had bad luck with cameras and memory cards over the past few years, but  found that I hadn't lost all this morning when I stumbled across the file. 
Please consider this a tribute to the generations of farmers of Johnson County, MO, you know who you are, the unsung heroes, the careful stewards of our  precious resource, the fertile earth.