Local agricultural professionals recently gave area students a look into the ins-and-outs of the industry.
In celebration of American Education Week last month, Franklin County Farm Bureau and North Central Iowa Ag in the Classroom sponsored a series of Farm-Chats, which brought area farmers into the classroom via livestream.

Local 4-H chapters are teaming together to collect food for those in need and are asking for the public’s help.
Throughout the state, chapters in all 99 counties are working to raise 10,000 non-perishable food items to donate to food banks in communities across Iowa.

The Franklin County Fair Board on Tuesday announced that country music legend Trace Adkins will perform at the 2021 Franklin County Fair in Hampton.
Adkins, who has been in the music scene for 25 years and has amassed 20 chart topping singles, will headline the grandstand on Friday, July 16.

The Iowa Office of the State Medical Examiner has officially identified human remains found in rural Hampton as Ethan Kazmerzak.

Sietsema Family Monument Sales now has a new home in Hampton.
Patrick Sietsema, owner, recently moved the business into the newly opened Sietsema-Atkinson Funeral Home on Highway 65 between Wood Vision Clinic and Pralle City Wash.

The last day of school before Halloween was the perfect time to incorporate pig lungs with a lesson that may already be a little spooky for young children and their guardians.
Community and Family Resources, Prairie Ridge Integrated Behavioral Healthcare and Franklin County Family Focus last week teamed up for a Red Ribbon Week presentation at CAL Elementary School for fifth and sixth graders.

On an otherwise quiet Mon-day afternoon, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office received a call with information they had been seeking for seven years.
Oregon-based diver and YouTube personality Jared Leisek, a founder of Adventures with Purpose, was on the other side of the phone to deliver news regarding the disappearance of Hampton resident Ethan Kazmerzak.

After nearly three years of planning and fundraising, improvements and renovations to the Franklin County Convention Center are underway.
The Franklin County Fair Board last week announced last week that exterior work on the building started earlier in October.

Riley Kock’s childhood walks past a law office in his native Greene have led him to life as an attorney.
Kock in September began working as an associate attorney at Miller and Miller, PC in Hampton, where he had summer internships in 2018, 2019 and 2020 while he worked his way through law school at Drake University.

Each feature of the new – and recently completed – Sietsema-Atkinson Funeral Home in Hampton has already proven to be valuable assets to guests and the directors alike.
Last Saturday, October 17, the new Sietsema-Atkinson Funeral Home, located on Highway 65, between Pralle City Wash and Wood Vision Clinic, opened its doors for its first visitation hosted at the new location.

Rick and Julie Salvesen see the founding and growth of MID:COM and Midwest Meter, Inc. as their “love story,” and the page of that story has been turned to the next chapter.

Leah Poland, Mid-America Publishing’s newest printing press assistant, can’t help but smile when she sees one of the company’s finished products on newsstands and in stores.
“It’s kind of cool seeing a paper and being like, ‘I probably touched that and I’m one of the reasons that’s there,’” she said, with a laugh.

A frigid and grey October sky may not seem like a day to get in the water, but for Jared Leisek and Sam Ginn, there’s no time to waste.
Leisek and Ginn, who run the Adventures with Purpose YouTube channel, have dedicated their free time to search and recovery missions typically involving submerged vehicle.

In a new era of learning across the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a handful of staff members at Hampton-Dumont and CAL schools have been given the task to make sure students learning from home are connected with the resources they need.

The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed that human remains have been found in the vehicle that earlier today was retrieved from a rural Franklin County pond.
On Tuesday morning, the Sheriff’s Office in a release stated that a vehicle, believed to be Ethan Kazmerzak’s, was found by dive team Adventures with Purpose in a body of water northwest of Hampton on Monday afternoon.