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 When it comes to modern agricultural mechanics, Dr. Craig H. Morton, professor of agriculture at Stephen F. Austin State University, either wrote the book or contributed heavily to its content and development. The curriculum vitae of the 2018 Nacogdoches County Agriculture Educator of the Year is packed with the titles of agriculture technology textbooks of which he is either the author or a major contributor. He authored “Welding for Modern Agriculture,” the definitive text on that subject, and contributed numerous chapters to “Agricultural Technical Systems and Mechanics,” the primary text for high school agricultural mechanics programs nationwide.
That same résumé is filled with dozens of examples of commitment and service to his students in SFA’s agricultural engineering technology program and to FFA members across the state and nation who compete in career development contests. Morton also served his country for three decades as an officer in the United States Army and the National Guard and Reserve. During his deployments in the Army Reserve, he served the people of Afghanistan through consulting projects aimed at developing the nation’s agricultural economy.
Morton grew up in Nacogdoches and came by his lifelong love of agricultural engineering and tinkering honestly. His father, Paul Morton, was a master electrician at NIBCO, and his mother, Erline, worked as a florist at The Flower Shop. Both were natives of Melrose. As an agriculture student at Nacogdoches High School in the late 1960s, Morton raised Yorkshire hogs, laying hens, cattle and hay on his family’s farm in Melrose. He credits his high school agriculture instructors, Nolan Alders and Clois Walker, for helping make the NHS agriculture department one of the nation’s top-tier vocational agriculture programs and for inspiring him to embark on a career in agricultural education.
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 An ongoing project through Stephen F. Austin State University's Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture provides Texans with the opportunity to contribute valuable scientific data by simply documenting a common, albeit less than appealing, presence along our highways - roadkill.
"This is an ongoing citizen scientist project," said Dr. Christopher Schalk, assistant professor of forest wildlife management at SFA. "We want to enhance our understanding of the impacts of roads on the animals of Texas and understand the patterns and vulnerabilities among different groups of animals."
Schalk said landscape features surrounding a road help predict where key crossing areas will be for certain species. For example, a road with ponds on either side may result in increased mortality rates for amphibians such as frogs.
Once these mortalities are documented, steps can then be taken to mitigate the number of wildlife species killed at these crossings.
One of the most common examples of this is the placement of signs along certain roadways warning drivers of wildlife. Additionally, man-made wildlife corridors have been constructed around the world in an attempt to reduce the number of wildlife fatalities. These crossings can be as simple as small culverts or as elaborate as elevated bridges covered in vegetation spanning multi-lane highways.
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 Stephen F. Austin State University’s spatial science program is using the latest technology in unmanned aerial systems, commonly known as drones, to provide an entirely new vantage of Appleby’s historic Bethel Cemetery, enabling caretakers to precisely document and map the more than 1,500 plots dating back to 1887 when it was founded alongside Bethel Baptist Church.
Bill Shumate, president of the Bethel Cemetery Association, said he reached out to Dr. Daniel Unger, professor of remote sensing and geographic information systems at SFA’s Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture, following the East Texas GIS, GPS User Group meeting held at the college in February.
“I was intrigued by what the professors were able to do with drone technology, and realized I have an application for it,” Shumate said.
Shumate explained that currently only the boundaries of the cemetery are surveyed, enabling him to remotely determine the section and row in which a person is interred, but not the precise plot.
His ultimate goal is to develop a plat, a map showing the precise divisions of a piece of land, that will visually display the relative location of every gravestone in the cemetery. Past attempts to do so using Google Maps have been unsuccessful due to a lack of high-resolution imagery.
Last month, Unger traveled to the cemetery with a drone in tow to collect 4 gigabytes of high-resolution imagery obtained by simply flying a predetermined flight path over the area.
“It’s interesting to see the pattern that they laid out the plots in,” Unger said. “It’s definitely not linear.”
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Eight undergraduate and graduate students from Stephen F. Austin State University’s Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture and the College of Sciences and Mathematics presented their research to a diverse crowd of students and faculty members at Texas A&M’s Ecological Integration Symposium held last weekend.
SFA forestry graduate students Jamie Hooker and Mason Danheim were awarded second and third place respectively in the Graduate Student Poster Presentation category. Hooker’s research is focused on quantifying the survival and growth of pine species across East Texas soil types, while Danheim’s research seeks to document the regeneration dynamics following prescribed fires in oak-hickory forests located in Arkansas.
The Ecological Integration Symposium (EIS) is an annual interdisciplinary event that brings together a diverse group of leading scientists and students from the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation. The symposium provides an excellent opportunity for both local and visiting students to showcase their work and engage in meaningful dialogue with invited speakers.
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 Despite being past peak season, the green columns of hop plants at Polk-Sharp Farm filled the balmy fall air with a mild citrus scent that quickly amplified as John Elkins ’11 & ’14 gingerly plucked a flower from a plant twining well above his head and pulled it apart with his fingers.
“Do you see these little yellow spots at the base?” Elkins asked, while pointing to pinpricks of color at the base of the flower’s bracts. “Those are lupulin glands that contain the aroma-producing oil.”
For beer brewers and enthusiasts alike, the sharp, slightly bitter smell is unmistakable. Varied combinations of hops, grain, yeast and water have been used for millennia to create the alcoholic beverage that remains ubiquitous to this day.
Elkins said he initially didn’t plan to grow hops on the roughly 200-acre family farm in San Augustine County that he manages today, but an article he read in “The Old Farmers Almanac” piqued his interest.
“I actually asked Dr. Leon Young his opinion about growing the crop,” Elkins said, referring to Dr. Leon Young, former Stephen F. Austin State University professor of agriculture. “We were going to conduct some trials out here, but he passed away before we could get started.”
Despite the loss of his mentor and friend in December 2016, Elkins moved forward with his first attempt, which he admits was a shaky start.
“I made a bunch of small mistakes along the way that added up to one big failure,” Elkins said. “I started with 100 hop plants and had five still alive at the end of the year.”
While some may have interpreted this as a sign to pursue another crop, Elkins was unfazed.
“You just have to be able to change,” he said. “That’s the thing about being a farmer — every day is different. If you can’t adapt, you fail.”
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The East Texas Forest Entomology Seminar is scheduled for Thursday and Friday, April 19 and 20. Thursday's session will be held at Kurth Lake Lodge, between Nacogdoches and Lufkin, with the traditional crawfish boil. Friday's session will be held in the Arthur Temple College of Forestry Conference Room #117 at Stephen F. Austin State University.
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