By Bill Anderson

Sargent County is now as beautiful as it has ever been in living memory. Orvis Pearson, who was born here in 1925, and has farmed here for most of his life, states that he has never seen a crop look so good at this time of the year as does this one, and Orvis has a good memory, too. Early in the morning of Thursday, July 19, another rain event occurred. When the rain paused at 8:30 in the morning, Paul Anderson’s rain gauge registered .65 of an inch, and when it finally stopped that evening the total was 1.3, at least in Paul’s gauge and in Norbert Kulzer’s rain gauge. At Roger Pearson’s however, it amounted to 1.25 of an inch. Harvey Bergstrom reported that the day’s total added up to 3.2 inches at his farm 3 miles south of Cayuga, and the same amount at the old Kleingarn farm north of Cayuga. It was a good rain here, but a torrent of 7.5 inches hit Ellendale, 60 miles to the west, doing considerable damage to crops and roads. Another thunderstorm rolled through the Rutland area at about 2:30 in the morning on Wednesday, July 25, leaving .67 of an inch of rain and cooler, drier air in its wake. Many wheat fields in the Rutland area are now within a few days to a few weeks of being ready for harvest. Harvey Bergstrom is of the opinion that his wheat will be harvested between the 5^th and the 10^th of August. He and Judy had picked some heads from one field and counted from 30 to 50 kernels in each head. “Looks good,” says Harvey. The “Golden Harvest” begins.

Cameron & Jenny Gulleson; Pam Gulleson; Kevin & Samantha Gillespie; Paul Anderson; and, Bill Anderson; of this community were among the large crowd attending a 2018 campaign event on the evening of Thursday, July 19, at Joel Heitkamp’s home on Lake Elsie, near Hankinson. Mac Schneider, candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, and Jim Dotzenrod, candidate for North Dakota Commissioner of Agriculture, were present and addressed the gathering. Mac Schneider is a lawyer in private practice and a former State Senator from Grand Forks, and Jim Dotzenrod, a farmer from Wyndmere, served as a State Senator from this area from 1974 to 1994 and from 2008 to the present. Sen. Dotzenrod addressed 3 main issues: trade, which should be free, fair and open; tariffs, which should be low or non-existent; and, ethanol, which should be promoted to help put a floor under the price of corn and to clean up the environment. To those 3 issues, candidate Schneider added: Healthcare, which should be affordable and available to all; strengthening & preserving Social Security & Medicare, now under attack from the White House and the Congress; strengthening crop insurance, production guarantees and price protection in the Farm Bill; and, controlling the budget deficit, which has exploded under the current GOP controlled Congress and White House. Also attending the event were 25^th District Democratic-NPL endorsed candidates for the North Dakota Legislature: Perry Miller, candidate for the State Senate; Bill Berlin, candidate for the State House of Representatives; and, incumbent State Representative Elise Mitskog. Former State legislators in attendance included: former Senator Joel Heitkamp of Hankinson; former Representative Pam Gulleson of Rutland; and, former Representative Don Lloyd of Lisbon. Also attending the event were Rutland natives Sonja (Anderson) Christensen and Corrine (Narum) Romereim, now of Wahpeton. Vote By Mail and early voting will commence on Thursday, September 27, in Sargent County and many other North Dakota counties, according to information obtained from Sargent County Auditor Pam Maloney.