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Harvest Public Media is a reporting collaboration focused on issues of food, fuel and field. Based at KCUR in Kansas City, Harvest covers these agriculture-related topics through an expanding network of reporters and partner stations throughout the Midwest.Most Harvest Public Media stories begin with radio- regular reports are aired on member stations in the Midwest. But Harvest also explores issues through online analyses, television documentaries and features, podcasts, photography, video, blogs and social networking. They are committed to the highest journalistic standards. Click here to read their ethics standards.Harvest Public Media was launched in 2010 with the support of a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Today, the collaboration is supported by CPB, the partner stations, and contributions from underwriters and individuals.Tri States Public Radio is an associate partner of Harvest Public Media. You can play an important role in helping Harvest Public Media and Tri States Public Radio improve our coverage of food, field and fuel issues by joining the Harvest Network.

Tough Guys in the Saddle

Frank Morris/Harvest Public Media

This is the tenth installment of the 2013 edition of My Farm Roots, Harvest Public Media’s series chronicling Americans’ connection to the land.

Clickhere to explore more My Farm Roots stories and to share your own.

I met Nate Pike working on a story back in 2012. When I dropped back by his ranch 30 miles south of Dodge City, Kan., this summer, he took me on a bumpy pickup ride to see a spring called St. Jacob’s Well and we got to talking about the former owner of some of his ranch land.

Pike has been out on his ranch for a while and he told me the former owner started ranching in western Kansas before 1900.

“He was a fine old gentleman and one of the toughest old men I ever knew,” Pike told me, his gravelly voice carrying over the pickup truck’s rambles.

Now, Nate Pike is tough. He’s 80-years-old, broke his back as a younger man and had several heart attacks since, but he still helps out on the ranch. So what made this Mr. Bill Knoll, the former landowner, so tough?

He could ride all day long, Pike said, and never in a lope or a walk – always at a trot. He wore soft-soled lace-up shoes, not sturdy cowboy boots.

“He told everybody his old foot looked like an eagle’s claw, hanging over them stirrups and he’d ride that way all day,” Pike said. And “he could go longer without a drink of water than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Sounds like a tough guy. But Pike wasn’t done. When Pike’s dad eventually bought the older man’s calves, little Nate Pike went out riding with the tough old Knoll. Knoll’s horse stepped in a hole and fell on him.

“I jumped off and was going to help him off and that made him kind of mad,” Pike said. “And he said ‘I can get up myself.’”

Several hours later, after Pike and Knoll had spent hours working with calves, Knoll said he finally had the feeling back in his foot.

“Now I call that tough,” Pike said, chuckling.

Share your Farm Roots story here.

Frank Morris has supervised the reporters in KCUR's newsroom since 1999. In addition to his managerial duties, Morris files regularly with National Public Radio. He’s covered everything from tornadoes to tax law for the network, in stories spanning eight states. His work has won dozens of awards, including four national Public Radio News Directors awards (PRNDIs) and several regional Edward R. Murrow awards. In 2012 he was honored to be named "Journalist of the Year" by the Heart of America Press Club.