US farmer's persistence pays off

摘要

Eight years ago Jack Banker was ready to hang it up and get out of farming. Who could blame him? He had suffered a skidsteer accident a year earlier that nearly cost him a leg, and the day after Christmas in 1997 while he was still feeling the sting of his mother's recent death, his 100-cow milking herd perished in a barn fire. "That was a tough time," says Banker, who lives on the farm near Black Creek where he was raised. "We didn't know what we wanted to do."