What is a hog coulter?

Dave Kurns, inventor of the hog coulter

If you ever get any value from Agriculture Online, or farm Web sites like it, you owe a little something to Dave Kurns, who led the launch of the site nearly 15 years ago. Agriculture.com was our parent company’s first Web site, and it was the first site created by an ag media company.

From the outset, Dave, who worked for Meredith New Media, saw that this emerging medium was all about interactivity and community. He steered us in the direction of creating tools like discussion groups, online classified ads, and a feature called Homestead, where you could build your own home page on the Web before that was possible with other tools.

Despite having graduated from Iowa State University, the land grant college up the road, Dave was a city boy with a computer science degree. But he showed a great affinity for farmers, and enjoyed working in agriculture.

In the midst of all the excitement of building Agriculture Online, Dave also invented the hog coulter. One day, while explaining the Internet to a group of aggies he started to demonstrate keyword searches. Reaching for an example, he summoned up the term "hog coulter." I about fell on the floor laughing.

Every time that combination of words comes to mind, I chuckle to myself. And I have taken the occasion from time to time to kid Dave about his invention.

But, the joke’s on me, it turns out. There really is such a thing as a hog coulter.

However, as you can see in a new video that Dave presented me on my recent birthday, there are quite a number of definitions of "hog coulter." Editors, executives, meteorologists, marketing managers, Web designers, and farmers all have a different design in mind for the tool.

I invite you to check out Dave’s video, What is a hog coulter? and see if they've got it about right. Or maybe you've seen your own hog coulter?