CORTLAND – Richard Houk of Newton Township and Peter Kepner of Hartford Township were both re-elected recently as supervisors of the Trumbull Soil and Water Conservation District.

They were both sworn in by Trumbull County Commissioner Frank Fuda at the SWCD’s annual reorganizational meeting.

Houk is completing his 15th year on the SWCD board and is the vice chairman. He was raised in Orrville and worked on his family dairy farm and at his family machine shop. He spent 22 years managing plastic mold facilities.

In 1975, he opened his own business, Designers of Molds for the plastics industry. In 1981, he and his wife, Trudy, purchased an 87-acre farm in Newton Township, where they raise soybeans, corn and wheat.

Houck is active in the Trumbull County Farm Bureau and the Western Reserve Resource and Conservation District, where he served as president. He is also a fair board member of the Trumbull County Agriculture Society. He received the outstanding member award of Crossroads Resource Conservation and Development in 2005.

Kepner is completing his 12th year on the SWCD board. The Hartford native along with his wife Mary currently operates a 250-acre crop farm in Hartford and until 1995 had a herd of Holsteins.

He is a graduate of The Ohio State University, College of Agriculture with a major in dairy science and a minor in agronomy. He served an internship with the Ashtabula SWCD during his college summers.

Kepner is a member of the Trumbull County Farm Bureau, Trumbull County Agriculture Society, Hartford United Methodist Church and the National Lyme Disease Association. He has also been a director of the local and state Holstein Association.

Kepner currently serves as the SWCD board secretary and chairs the policy committee.

The other three Trumbull SWCD supervisors are Davis Denman of Johnston, Bruce Lev of Liberty and Jan Solomon of Lordstown.