I like old stuff.

Antique furniture, tractors with histories, old stoneware crocks. I like thinking about where the immigrants’ chest I inherited from my grandma has been. I like studying the rusty old two-row planter in my landscaping. And I like opening the corner cabinet, from Grandma, too, and smelling her house in it.

Last week, I sat in the pews at our church and had a singular thought: Those pews have had a lot of life sorted out in them. I’ve spent all of my adult life in them, sifting through faith and salvation, grief and pain, loss and life. Those pews came to our church from another, hauled in the back of a farmer’s truck, and we recently re-covered them, polished them up, and put them back in place. They look better. They feel better. But they’re still the same pews that have held people for dozens and dozens of years.

It’s the same thing around here. We’ve re-covered the pews, so to speak, here at Prairie Farmer.

You’ll see a new masthead on the cover, and thorough readers of our 175th anniversary issue last month will remember the story showing Prairie Farmer mastheads over all those years. It’s fascinating to compare and to watch the design styles change over time.

Our new masthead is clean and simple, says our art director, Lisa Lynd. Lisa masterminded the redesign, and we all pressed toward our goal of presenting the best information and the best photography in the best way possible, while preserving our rich history and tradition.

You’ll see the design carried all through the magazine, along with an entirely new color scheme. Rest assured, the stories still pack as much on a page as they did before, and the photos shine.

You’ll see fewer logos, as we attempt to keep things streamlined and simple, and new headline fonts let us fit more information into the same space. 

And it’s not just the paper copy getting a face-lift; we have an entirely new website platform, too. We hope you’ll find it easier to get the information you need, in a cleaner and more straightforward format.

Of course, it’s not like switching websites is a simple thing. Our digital team engineered the migration of more than a decade of daily content over to the new platform — a feat that, in terms of sheer volume, really can’t be overstated. Think of it like soil sampling every acre of a 10,000-acre farm within a month’s time, and you can’t lose a sample or make a mistake. Ever. No worries, right?

So take a look around. Sit a spell. Like a newly cushioned old pew, we hope you’ll find it looks better and feels better around here. Let me know what you think, too. Remember: We’re still the same Prairie Farmer you’ve known for decades. The padding may change, but the philosophy never will: We exist for you, the farmer.