A Good and Faithful Servant

Say it ain’t so, Joe: Columnist Sam Moore has announced his plans to retire. In that he began his tenure at Farm Collector in 1998, when the magazine was all of four months old, it’s hard to remember when Sam’s column wasn’t part of the monthly lineup. Twenty-one years later, Sam is hanging up his hat. (Read more about that in Sam’s column beginning on Page 8.)

Sam’s carefully researched and written columns have appeared in 252 issues of Farm Collector. He is, in fact, the senior member of this team, having stayed on the job continuously, while I gave up day-to-day management of the magazine for a few years to tend to other duties.

Remember Cal Ripken Jr.? The famed ballplayer must have been Sam’s hero. Through more than two decades, Sam never called in sick; he never took an issue off. He has been as steady and true a contributor as any editor could ever hope for, consistently producing solid, informative, and accurate content that has enjoyed high readership since day one.

Years ago, when Farm Collector entered the brave new world of the internet, I asked Sam if he would contribute the occasional blog to our website. With more than a little uncertainty in his voice, he asked what, exactly, a blog was. I tried to sound confident in my answer, and it must have worked, as he soon added “blogger” to his job description. That typified Sam’s role here. Anything we asked, he provided.

Many of you tell us that you like the varied content in Farm Collector. You found variety in Sam’s columns as well. From histories of early manufacturers to ice harvesting, “tin lizzies” to check-row planters, pneumatic tires to bonanza farms, Sam cut a wide swath through the past. Moving forward, we’ll showcase some of his most popular columns – his greatest hits, as it were – bringing his painstaking work back to life.