Tough GRIT Hints From Hank Will

By Tough GRIT and Hank Will

Like Dorothy, I’m not entirely sure how I got here except that I have passion for publishing, small-scale agriculture and living in the country. I was born in Bismarck, North Dakota where my family operated a seed company and nursery, which my great grandfather and namesake founded in the early 1880s. Early childhood experiences at the nursery and among the Missouri River’s bluffs left me with an abiding love of plants (especially grasses) and a profound appreciation for the prairie.

Between then and now, I spent sixteen years in academia as a biologist, which thankfully left enough time to do some nursery work, farming and writing on the side. My commercial agricultural production experience includes alfalfa sprouts, hay, beef cattle, free-range poultry (meat and eggs), native perennial plants, trees, cut flowers and truck crops on farms in South Dakota and Ohio. During the six years immediately prior to landing in Kansas, I freelanced for several magazines, including Grit, Farm Collector, Mother Earth News and other Ogden Publications titles.

Family members and friends call me Hank to distinguish me from the other two Oscars in the lineage. I prefer Hank, but will answer to just about anything.