If  your household — and your heart—have room for a four-legged addition, experts and advocates in North Carolina think a dog or cat might be the best way to enhance your life in 2012.
“I would really encourage people to bring a pet into their life. They’re tremendously enriching,” says Barbara Sherman, director of the Behavioral [...]

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Medical experts say hearing loss is a growing health problem. Estimates from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services show that the numbers of residents with hearing loss will more than double in the next 20 years.
“Because hearing loss is so prevalent and can impact one’s health and independence, it raises public health [...]

Photo Caption: The free screening in Camden County was among the 24 Healthy Living for a Lifetime events conducted last year.
One year after launching an aggressive initiative, North Carolina Farm Bureau is seeing great germination of Healthy Living for a Lifetime. The program brings an innovative approach to addressing immediate health care needs of rural [...]

Imagine being declined for a mortgage or vehicle loan because your credit is suddenly riddled with late payments, collection accounts, delinquent loans, and dozens of maxed-out credit cards—none of which are yours. But it doesn’t stop there. Your personal and health insurance information has been used by someone to obtain medical treatment, surgeryand prescription drugs [...]

Rutherford County Farm Bureau member Joe McDaniel understands how important it is for farmers to keep their tools and equipment in good working order. For example, McDaniel has some fertilizer sprayers he has used for more than 30 years.
“We just keep repairing them when they need it. We do a pretty good job of that. [...]

Photo Caption: Halifax County
Aerial images might indicate just how much North Carolina agriculture has evolved, and Vintage Aerial has literally thousands of images. The company, based out of Maumee, Ohio, secured a film archive of images taken of  North Carolina farms, as well as farms from dozens of other states. Most of the pictures were [...]

The Bond family knows all about collard greens. The Bertie County Farm Bureau members have been raising them for close to 30 years.
“You need good plants and good weather,” says Carl Bond, who grows the green, leafy vegetable with his parents, Rhodes and Queenie Bond. “You have to put a lot of work into them.”
People [...]

North Carolina’s busiest cities are full of people in offices using the Internet to do their jobs or connecting with friends and family through the Web on smartphones.
In some parts of the state, however, these scenes sometimes are few and far between. That’s because access to high-speed Internet is not as prevalent in rural North [...]

Dinnertime is usually pretty quiet at Jeff and Keiley Banfield’s home. It’s not because the Moore County Farm Bureau members, who have been married for 12 years, are upset with each other.
“There are a lot of meals where we won’t say a word to each other because we’ve got nothing to talk about. We’ve already [...]