Dave Nuss’s pickup rumbled down the dirt road, dark, rich soil turned up in fields on either side. The 69-year-old farmer gestured to one field then another, commenting on the fortunes of each crop this year. Then he stopped and looked across an irrigation ditch. A trio of sheds — one green, one tan, one gray — loomed in the distance.

DONATE TODAY Dear Daily Yonder reader, I’m Sarah Melotte, and I’ve been a part of the Daily Yonder team since 2021. I started as a Rural Reporting Fellow, became a full-time reporter, and now I serve as the Daily Yonder’s Data Editor, creating most of our maps, graphics, and quantitative analysis that help our readers better understand rural America. I first found the Daily Yonder through an Instagram ad while completing my masters degree in applied geography and geospatial science.

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. Ashlie Crosson was named the…

It's true in both literal and figurative ways. The metal, hand-operated relic divides a state highway near the feed store and post office, two of few remnants of the small southwest Missouri agricultural community of La Russell. Instead of water, a community spirit flows from it today – so much that every Thanksgiving, locals decorate it with Christmas lights and kick off the holiday season with pump lighting and parade.

In his second novel, author Ken Jaworowski returns to the fictional Rust Belt town of Locksburg for more page-turning action.

There was no privacy when I was told I might die. In November, I complained about a sore throat during my annual physical with my primary care physician. She saw nothing of concern. By early February, that sore throat had become unbearable, a sharp pain radiating up my neck and into my right temple. An urgent care doctor gave me a steroid shot and sent me on my way.

DONATE TODAY Dear friend, I was recently reading an article in the Daily Yonder by Madeline de Figueiredo about what the slashing of Medicaid will likely mean for rural Idahoans, and I paused to think, “Where else would I have learned this but in the Yonder?” Local media might have covered it; but as we’re all too painfully aware, sources of local news are closing at an alarming rate.

On a recent visit to Washington Island, I did what I've been doing for the past 30-plus years: I went to Nelsen's Hall for a shot of bitters. Despite its location on an island in Lake Michigan with a year-round population of about 783, Nelsen's is the largest purveyor of Angostura Bitters in the world. It's also the oldest continuously operating tavern in Wisconsin (founded in 1899).

On September 2, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a press release announcing a change that has the potential to transform law enforcement across the country, and especially in rural counties. A new promise to reimburse salaries, benefits, and overtime pay for county and municipal law enforcement officers who partner with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could prove a major incentive for cash-strapped rural counties.

All across Appalachia, communities have historically leaned on music to help get work done. Whether tending the garden or marching along the picket line, music has been a way to keep people motivated and rally them around a cause. In the small town of Lansing, North Carolina, members of the local folk arts community recently hosted the first annual…

As counties across Wisconsin sell off publicly-owned nursing homes to private companies, communities worry that privatization will bring understaffing, declining quality of care, and more regulatory violations, driving many residents to fight back. After Karlene Ferrante broke her femur, she underwent major surgery and was transferred to a skilled nursing facility to recover. She spent a little over two months at the county-owned Portage County Health Care Center in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

This story was originally published by KFF Health News. Standing atop Ferry Butte, Frances Goli scanned the more than half a million acres of Shoshone-Bannock tribal land below as she dug her hands into the pockets of a pink pullover. The April wind was chilly at one of the tribes’ highest vistas in remote southeastern Idaho. “Our goal is to bring fiber out here,” Goli said, sweeping one hand across the horizon.

Beckie Irvin crested the rocky hilltop in her truck. She threw it in park and joined Cobra Thomas and Beverly Garland, the property’s owners, at the edge of a ravine. Beneath them, the expanse of Texas Hill Country stretched out for miles. This view will one day belong not only to Garland and Thomas, but to countless travelers on the…

This story was originally published by KFF Health News. Medication-delivering drones and telehealth at local libraries are among the ideas state leaders revealed in November for spending their share of a $50 billion federal rural health program. The Trump administration, which has promised “radical transparency,” said in an FAQ that it plans to publish the “project summary” for states that win awards.

DONATE TODAY Dear Daily Yonder Reader, This year has brought big changes to the media landscape. Perhaps you’ve followed along as we’ve documented the threats to First Amendment freedoms as described by Federal Communications Commissioner Anna Gomez or explored the effect of $1.1 billion in federal funding cuts on local public media stations. As you know, it’s rural communities that often bear the brunt of the damage.

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is an author and educator based in northeast Iowa’s Driftless Area.

Starr Lodge Four of us sleep in borrowed beds at Starr Lodge; the fifth, our host — the one who left our Pennsylvania town decades ago for northern Maine — sleeps in his own with his wife. Before the alarm rings, the truck is already loaded: two canoes strapped down, chairs wedged in, decoys packed, guns cased, a cooler full of food.

Quiet and contemplative, the Netflix film "Train Dreams" offers a moving meditation on how a changing world affects us all.

While rural residents are facing a growing mental health crisis, an initiative to direct them to the help they need is seeing success across the country. The National Council for Mental Wellbeing’s Mental Health First Aid for Rural Communities works with people not necessarily in the health professions to give them the tools they need to recognize and respond to the signs of mental health or substance use challenges.

Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. We will be taking the next edition off as we head into Christmas. Subscribe to stay in touch with us during the New Year. Compared to their urban and suburban counterparts, a greater share of the rural population lives in states with the most restrictive abortion legislation, according to my analysis of data from the…

The Hill Country Arts Foundation, in Ingram, Texas, was prepared to put on a show. It was one week out from the opening of the outdoor production of the musical Jimmy Buffet’s Escape to Margaritaville. Sets were in place, costumes finished, and the cast had wrapped final rehearsals. Even the piano and sound equipment had been positioned on the stage.

DONATE TODAY Earlier this year, the Rural Assembly hosted a book discussion group around The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Wall Kimmerer asks, “Can we imagine a system which nurtures a different economic identity and reclaim ourselves as neighbors, with shared investment in mutual well-being?” We must imagine this way of being. For that reason, I am extremely proud of the work my colleagues at the Daily Yonder are doing in nurturing, reclaiming, and investing in rural through their reporting.

Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. Art Cullen is editor and co-owner of the…

What do queer Appalachians and a serpent-handling preacher have in common? More than you might think. “American culture really wants to deposit us at total opposite ends of the spectrum,” artist Aaron McIntosh says. “But actually, we both are in the same milieu in American culture, of existing at the fringes, whether wanted or not.” McIntosh’s installation, “Invasive Queer Kudzu,” is at the heart of a new exhibit exploring the intersection of place and identity at the Reece Museum on the campus of East Tennessee State University.

My colleague Smmo Ozawa and I spent the past year recording oral histories about immigration in the rural United States. One of my favorite interviews happened at the police station in Fort Morgan, a small, Eastern Colorado town where I spent the first decade of my childhood. Sheriff Dave Martin, who ran as a Republican, talked about a childhood spent working on his grandfather’s Morgan County ranch, struggling to keep up with the Mexican family who migrated there every year to help harvest sugar beets.