What's in a name?

One of my childhood memories  is standing  in the yard with my grandmother (aka "mamaw"), just a few miles from where she grew up in the Red River Basin of southeastern Oklahoma, as she named the birds that were singing and flying by. 

"...and that's a scissor tailed flycatcher!" she said.

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"You see how his long tail feathers open and close like a pair of scissors as he's flying? That's why they're called 'scissor tailed'," she explained. 

The scissor tailed flycatcher (tyrannus forficatus) is a bird native to the south-central United States, with a spring and summer range covering Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas, a part of the country my family has been in for over 150 years. 

After that day, I began to see the the scissor tailed flycatchers everywhere: sitting on barbed wire fences, power lines, trees, and flying across the blue Oklahoma sky. 

Now when ever I see one of these birds I know I'm home (or close enough to it), and it reminds me of the values I bring to my business from the generations who worked the land where the prairie meets the highlands: integrity, respect, and kindness. 

-Jacob Alexander, Founder and Sole Member