Burwell

It's all to keep you connected with the heartbeat of the heartland, the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network, connecting rural Iowa with the news that matters to you.

This is the Midday Market Report for Wednesday on the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network, brought to you by Burwell Livestock Market.

I'm Riley Smith.

On the phone with Conner Bridgman of AgMarket to take a look at the midday markets.

[bell rings] Our final inductee was my grandfather, Al James, one of the original owners of Erickson Livestock in Nebraska, still going strong today.

Grandpa Al was 6'5" and 280, grew up on the family homestead 30 miles north of Burwell, Nebraska, but moved to Phoenix, Arizona to become a prize fighter and swing a sledgehammer on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse during the Great Depression.

He saved enough money to move back to the Sandhills homestead, become a Marlboro Man in Look and Life Magazine in the late '60s, and built a state-of-the-art sale barn in the tiny town of Erickson in 1967, which quickly became one of the top sale barns in the state and then the nation.

He's been gone 50 years, but I can still see him on his buck skid in the sale ring.