Red Dirt And Round Bales
by Dave Deken
Red Dirt and Round Bales is a podcast about the people, places, history, and everyday grit that shape rural Oklahoma. Built for listeners who love agriculture, small towns, country roads, and the stories tucked between wheat fields and cattle pastures, the show connects Oklahoma’s past with the lives of the farmers, ranchers, families, and communities carrying it forward today. Each episode blends rural storytelling, ag insight, and a deep sense of place — celebrating the red dirt, hard work, humor, resilience, and heart that make Oklahoma feel like home.
Episodes
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Washington Irving's Oklahoma Before Roads and Fences
What would familiar Oklahoma country have looked like before the highways and fences? In October 1832, Washington Irving traveled through it on horseback and kept notes that became A Tour on the Prairies. On this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, host Dave Deken follows the journey of the…
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Old Cotton Gins Tell Oklahoma's Story
For generations of Oklahoma farmers, harvest wasn't finished until the cotton reached town. The local gin connected a year's work in the field with the stores, banks, and neighbors that helped a community keep going. On this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, host Dave Deken traces the place of...
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Bill Doolin and the Battle of Ingalls
What happens when wanted outlaws make themselves at home in a small Oklahoma town? At Ingalls in 1893, the answer was a gunfight that left lawmen and civilians paying the price. Host Dave Deken revisits the Battle of Ingalls on this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales. He follows Bill Doolin's…
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How Chicken Wire Became a Cowboy Tradition
How did chicken wire, tissue paper, and a harvest carnival become a tradition that brings generations of Cowboys back to Stillwater? In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken traces the roots of Oklahoma State University’s Homecoming and the student work behind its familiar…
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From a Perkins Porch to Cowboy Legend
Before Pistol Pete became a familiar face at Oklahoma State, he was a Perkins neighbor with horses to shoe, grain to stack, and stories to tell on his front porch. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken explores the life of Frank Eaton, the real man behind OSU’s mascot. His...
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Six Miles From Olympic Gold
An Oklahoma wrestler was ready to compete for Olympic gold—but the arena was six miles away, his schedule had changed, and he had no ride. Dave Deken tells the story of Jack Van Bebber of Perry, Oklahoma, whose journey began long before the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. After a serious childhood…
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A Buggy Ride Toward a Better Future
Before Northern Oklahoma College welcomed its first students, its president traveled the countryside by buggy to recruit them. Fifteen years after classes began, a funding veto closed the school—and its future was anything but certain. Dave Deken, a proud Northern Oklahoma College graduate, tells...
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The Town That Helped Build Oklahoma
What happens when a town builds its future around being the capital—and then the government leaves? Guthrie lived that story, and its old brick buildings still help tell it. Dave Deken traces Guthrie’s journey from a railroad stop transformed by the Land Run of 1889 to Oklahoma’s territorial...
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Oklahoma Pronghorn: Small Fawns, Big Stakes
Oklahoma’s pronghorn can run more than 50 miles an hour, but speed won’t solve every challenge they face. Even an ordinary ranch fence can become an obstacle for an animal built to run across open prairie. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, host Dave Deken tells the story of the…
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Tulsa State Fair: Crops, Oil, Community
Why does Oklahoma have the Oklahoma State Fair in Oklahoma City and another State Fair in Tulsa? The answer begins with agriculture, not Ferris wheels. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken traces Tulsa’s fair tradition from an early community fair through the International Dry...
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Indian Territory: Roads Before Oklahoma Statehood
Long before Oklahoma had interstate highways, a nearly 200-mile transportation corridor through the Choctaw Nation formed part of one of America’s fastest transcontinental mail routes. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken follows the Butterfield Overland Mail from Fort Smith...
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Oklahoma Gospel: A Farm Boy’s Escape
One of America’s best-known gospel songs began in the mind of an Oklahoma farm boy working long rows in southeastern Oklahoma. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken tells the story of Albert E. Brumley, who grew up near Spiro surrounded by hard farm work, church music and the...
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Yukon Heritage: From Wheat to Polkas
Oklahoma’s Czech heritage was not preserved by simply putting old objects in a museum. Around Yukon, it survived in wheat fields, family recipes, music, language, traditional clothing and Saturday-night dances. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken traces Czech and Moravian...
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Prairie-Chickens: Connecting Oklahoma Grasslands
Before sunrise on the western Oklahoma prairie, male lesser prairie-chickens gather on traditional breeding grounds called leks and perform a spring courtship dance that has occurred for generations. But the open country surrounding those leks has become increasingly fragmented by cropland...
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Ticks: The Hidden Cost of Cedars
Eastern redcedar can reduce forage, alter wildlife habitat and change wildfire behavior, but Oklahoma State University researchers are studying another consequence happening beneath the trees: more ticks. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken talks with Oklahoma State…
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Oklahoma Stopovers: Monarchs Need Supper
Every fall, Oklahoma becomes a refueling stop for one of North America’s most remarkable migrations. Monarch butterflies moving south toward central Mexico may have thousands of miles to travel, and the goldenrod, asters, blazing star, sunflowers and other late-blooming plants along Oklahoma...
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Oklahoma Salt Flats: A Hidden Living Landscape
In the middle of an Oklahoma summer, the Great Salt Plains can look as though winter never left. The white surface is not snow or sand but salt, and beneath that crust grows something found in a distinctive form nowhere else: hourglass selenite crystals. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round…
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1893 Land Run: Chasing Another Chance
At noon on September 16, 1893, more than 100,000 people surged into the Cherokee Outlet chasing roughly 40,000 homesteads and town lots. But the famous race is only part of the story. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken looks at the economic hardship that brought families to…
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101 Ranch: Oklahoma’s Wild West Empire
The Miller Brothers 101 Ranch was never just a cattle operation. At its height, the sprawling northern Oklahoma enterprise combined livestock, wheat, corn, orchards, dairies, food processing, saddle making, agricultural experimentation, entertainment and eventually oil. Then the Millers turned…
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TG&Y: How Oklahoma Built a Retail Giant
For generations of Oklahomans, TG&Y was the kind of store where one trip might cover thread, household supplies, hardware and toys. But before those three letters became familiar across hundreds of communities, TG&Y began with three Oklahoma variety-store operators trying to solve a basic...
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Oklahoma Pheasants: Agriculture Shapes Survival
Ring-necked pheasants came to Oklahoma from half a world away, but the agricultural landscape of northwestern Oklahoma gave them the combination they needed to stay. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken looks at how wheat, sorghum, grass, fence rows, ditches and weedy corners…
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Friday Nights: Where Oklahoma Comes Together
On an Oklahoma Friday night, high school football can make a small town feel much larger. The lights come on, pickups arrive, the band starts playing and people who spent the week in entirely different worlds wind up sitting only a few feet apart in the same bleachers. In this episode of Red Dirt...
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County Fair Ribbons: Lessons Beyond Winning
County fair season puts a year’s worth of ordinary work on display. A calf had to be fed in winter and summer heat. Tomatoes had to be planted and canned. Bread required practice, a photograph required an eye for the right moment and a quilt may represent months of patient work. In this episode…
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Altus-Lugert: The Town Beneath the Lake
Lake Altus-Lugert holds more than irrigation water. Beneath it lies part of the story of a Southwest Oklahoma town, a devastating tornado and decades of effort to make agriculture more dependable in country where water has never been guaranteed. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave...
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Johnny Bench: From Binger to Cooperstown
Johnny Bench grew up in Binger, Oklahoma, learning a position that was often valued more for defense and toughness than glamour. His father taught him to catch, giving him an understanding of the entire game from behind the plate. By high school, Bench was an all-state athlete in baseball and...
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Oklahoma Bears: A Comeback from Two Directions
Black bears once lived across Oklahoma, but by the early 1900s habitat loss, fragmentation and unregulated hunting had reduced them to little more than a memory in much of the state. Their return happened in an unusual way. Oklahoma did not launch a large bear-restoration program of its own....
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Black Mesa: Prairie Meets the Rockies
At the far western edge of Oklahoma, the landscape begins to feel like another state entirely. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken travels toward Black Mesa and the country around Kenton, where shortgrass prairie meets higher, drier country and Oklahoma reaches its highest...
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Tulsa Gave Bob Wills His Sound
Bob Wills arrived in Oklahoma looking for another opportunity. Tulsa gave him one — and helped give American music western swing. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken follows Wills from Texas into Oklahoma City and eventually Tulsa, where a midnight trial broadcast on KVOO in...
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Oklahoma Ogallala: Water Beneath the Plains
Beneath the dry plains of northwest Oklahoma lies one of the resources that helped transform agriculture in the Panhandle: the Ogallala Aquifer. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken traces the shift from agriculture dependent almost entirely on uncertain rainfall to farms...
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Electrifying Oklahoma: Farms Join the Grid
Electric lights reached most Oklahoma towns well before they reached the farms surrounding them. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken looks back at a time when rural families still depended on kerosene lamps, hand-pumped water and muscle for jobs that electricity would…
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Cushing Pipelines: Oklahoma’s Global Oil Crossroads
Cushing, Oklahoma, may be a relatively small town, but what happens beneath and around it connects directly to the global oil market. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken traces Cushing’s petroleum story from Tom Slick’s 1912 discovery well through the explosive growth of the...
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Cross Timbers: The Forest Between Plains
Long before GPS, highways or state lines could tell travelers where they were, Oklahoma’s Cross Timbers served as a landmark that was difficult to miss. Stretching in bands from Kansas through Oklahoma and into Texas, the region blended post oak and blackjack oak woodland with open prairie. In…
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Oklahoma Rain: Help Soil Hold It
Oklahoma farmers spend plenty of time waiting for rain, but OSU Extension soil and water conservation specialist Daniel Adamson Ph.D. says rainfall is only useful to a crop if the soil can capture it. Speaking from a soil pit at OSU’s Summer Crop Demo Day in Chickasha, Adamson explains how...
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Oklahoma Movies: What Hollywood Gets Right
Hollywood has been telling stories about Oklahoma for more than a century, but the Oklahoma seen on screen is usually a mixture of history, stereotype and movie-making. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken looks at five familiar examples: Oklahoma!, True Grit, Far and Away, The...
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A Circus Name, an Oklahoma Railroad Town
Ringling, Oklahoma, carries one of the most recognizable names in American entertainment, but the town’s real story is less about a circus than railroads, oil, agriculture and adaptation. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken traces Ringling’s beginnings to nearby Cornish and…
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Oklahoma Rangeland: Stop Invasive Plant Spread
Some of Oklahoma’s toughest invasive plant problems began with good intentions. Plants were brought in for forage, erosion control, shelterbelts and landscaping, but a few eventually escaped and began changing native grasslands and pastures. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken...
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Oklahoma’s Oil Governor: Building After Ruin
A grand mansion in Ponca City preserves a harder story about oil wealth, corporate power, personal loss and the decision to keep serving after a fortune disappears. Dave Deken follows E.W. Marland from his first financial collapse in Pennsylvania to the Oklahoma oil strike that helped transform...
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What Sorghum Teaches About Farm Resilience
RedDirtAndRoundBales.com When summer heat settles over western Oklahoma and the rain fails to arrive, sorghum often keeps working. Dave Deken explores the history of one of Oklahoma agriculture’s most adaptable crops, from sweet sorghum syrup and broomcorn to modern grain sorghum, livestock feed...
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Cimarron River: How Wild Water Shaped Oklahoma
The Cimarron River helped build communities across the Southern Plains, but its water has always come with risk and limits. Dave Deken traces the river from its sandy channels and salty springs through Indigenous history, Santa Fe Trail commerce, cattle drives and the restoration of damaged…
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Buster Keaton: The Prairie Raised a Star
A traveling child who became one of Hollywood’s greatest comedians found something steady in Perry, Oklahoma: grandparents, family land and a hometown willing to remember him. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken traces Buster Keaton’s connection to Perry from the town’s early...
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Pawnee’s WPA Bathhouse: Work, Water, and Wonder
A Depression-era project created jobs, secured Pawnee’s water supply and gave generations of Oklahoma families an affordable place to escape the summer heat. Dave Deken tells the story of the Pawnee Bathhouse and the sprawling public swimming area constructed below the Pawnee Lake dam. Built...
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Alva at 120: Surviving Oklahoma’s Hottest Day
Oklahoma’s first official 120-degree reading shows how quickly extreme heat can become a farm, livestock and community emergency. Dave Deken returns to July 18, 1936, when Alva entered the weather record books during one of the most punishing summers in state history. He explains how drought and...
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School Buses Redrew Rural Oklahoma
When a country school closed, rural Oklahoma lost more than a classroom—it often lost the center of its community. Dave Deken traces the rise and decline of Oklahoma’s one-room schools, from classrooms held in barns and dugouts to the consolidated brick schools reached by early “kid wagons.” He...
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Oklahoma Soil: What Red Dirt Hides
The ground beneath an Oklahoma farm can determine how it grows crops, holds water, supports cattle and survives the next hard rain. In this episode, Dave Deken looks beyond Oklahoma’s familiar red dirt and explores the state’s remarkable soil diversity. Learn how rainfall changes soil from the...
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River-Bottom Pecans: Oklahoma’s Enduring Crop
Oklahoma’s pecan trees can provide food, shade and two sources of farm income—but they can also leave growers facing an expensive harvest that is not worth gathering. In this episode, host Dave Deken traces Oklahoma pecans from the river systems that spread native trees across the state to the...
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County Fairs Still Raise Rural Kids
County fair season is here, and the Craig County Fair shows why these hometown traditions still matter in rural Oklahoma. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken reflects on the start of Oklahoma fair season in Craig County, where livestock projects, 4-H and FFA exhibits, home...
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Oklahoma Skies Built Space Pioneers
Oklahoma’s space story did not begin with rockets. It began with open skies, small towns, military airfields, good schools and young people who looked up and believed distance was something they could cross. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken traces Oklahoma’s connection to...
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The President Who Loved Oklahoma Early
Before Oklahoma became the 46th state, Theodore Roosevelt came west and found a place that matched the frontier spirit he loved. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken follows Roosevelt’s Oklahoma story from Rough Riders reunions and whistle-stop speeches to Frederick, Deep Red...
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Oklahoma Soybeans: Farming Rain’s Edge
Soybeans may be one of Oklahoma agriculture’s quieter crops, but they carry a lot of risk, timing, and opportunity for farmers willing to work with the season. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken looks at how soybeans fit into Oklahoma’s farm country, especially behind wheat…
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Oklahoma Cattle Trails: Hooves, Cash, Consequences
Long before highways crossed Oklahoma, cattle trails carried money, risk, and history across Indian Territory. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken follows the longhorn drives that moved north from Texas through present-day Oklahoma toward Kansas railheads. The episode explains...
About this show
Red Dirt and Round Bales is a podcast about the people, places, history, and everyday grit that shape rural Oklahoma. Built for listeners who love agriculture, small towns, country roads, and the stories tucked between wheat fields and cattle pastures, the show connects Oklahoma’s past with the lives of the farmers, ranchers, families, and communities carrying it forward today. Each episode blends rural storytelling, ag insight, and a deep sense of place — celebrating the red dirt, hard work, humor, resilience, and heart that make Oklahoma feel like home.
Hosted by
Dave Deken