KAMRAR — Armed with his trusty five-string, farmer David Losure stood atop his pasture with one mission in mind — to pick off a pack of coyotes. Losure had lost more than 30 piglets in a week to coyotes before he decided to take action against the beasts in the best way he knew how.

“I took my Studebaker truck, my dog, Lucius, my shotgun and my banjo to the top of the hill of my farm,” says Losure, laughing as he remembers the night. “If I could see it, I would shoot it. If I couldn’t, I would play my banjo.

“I was on that hill until 1 a.m. playing to establish my presence. I haven’t lost a pig since.”

Losure may not have lost any more pigs, but he did lose his farm after the floods of 1993.

“We had a record low for hogs and record high for corn that year because of the flood and short crops,” he says. “Either one of those I could have withstood, but not two in one year.”

Despite a two-year battle with the bank, Losure says he looks to the loss of his family farm of 46 years as a new beginning — a chance to show Iowa that he had much more than farming to offer. Making banjos and giving lessons became his full-time career.

“In the long term, [losing the farm] was one of the best things that happened to me — I wouldn’t have picked up teaching [the banjo],” he says. “If I wanted to eat, I had to figure something out to do.”

Losure creates his banjos in a small two-room workshop in his home off a narrow rural gravel road near Kamrar. Inside his workshop, tools line the back wall and a small desk is crammed amid an array of broken banjos. Perfectly formed wooden circles dangle above the table waiting to be added to the end of another Losure masterpiece. Sawdust particles float in the air, illuminated by the light streaming in from two large windows.

“I have made about 12 and I’m currently working on seven more,” Losure says, towering over his table with banjo pieces scattered about.

Losure uses wood from Oregon’s coastline, the Appalachian Mountains and Iowa to craft his instruments. He says he prefers woods with intricate textures, swirls and lines in the grain. Tiger-striped maple, flaming walnut and borrowing madrone are some of his favorites.

“I like wood that has stuff going on — plain wood is boring,” Losure says, holding a piece of flaming walnut, the beginning of a new banjo’s neck. “I have some people who want an instrument that has nothing in it but Iowa wood. I can do that too.”

Depending on Losure’s schedule, he says the construction of a new banjo can take from several weeks to several months.

“The weather conditions don’t affect my banjo-making,” Losure says. “As long as it’s warm enough that my fingers work and there are good tunes in the CD player, I’m set.”

Losure’s specialty is a traditional five-string, open-back banjo.

“They all have their own voice,” Losure says of his completed instruments. “When you strum it for the first time, it sounds like something coming alive in your hands.”

Losure’s banjo-making may make an impact on the buyers of his banjos, but the luthier, or a banjo maker, is only a small part of a long history of the instrument.

According to “America’s Instrument: The Banjo in the Nineteenth Century,” the origin of the banjo can be traced back as early as the 17th century, brought to America by African slaves.

Losure thinks popular interest in banjo playing is making a strong comeback.

“There are hotbeds of this music — it’s really thriving in urban areas now,” Losure says. “Right now the people who used to do the punk in Seattle are finding it again. You get some young kids with purple hair playing the same tunes I’m playing.”

Losure describes “house parties” with “a couple of dancers, a fiddler and a banjo player crammed into a small room.”

“It can go till dawn,” he says. “Raves are nothing new.”

Despite Losure’s busy schedule, the basement of Frank Rieman Music, 417 Douglas Ave., in Ames comes alive with the sounds of twangy banjo music once a week.

Mary Swander, distinguished professor of English, walks down those basement stairs once a week with her support dog’s harness in one hand and a Losure-crafted banjo in the other.

In 1996, Swander was involved in a car accident, leaving her without the use of all four limbs. She says she has made progress from being confined to a hospital gurney, to a cane and then to the use of a support dog in seven years.

Swander says she has played music all her life, beginning with childhood piano lessons. She says she began playing the banjo because a banjo’s narrow neck makes it easier for her to play than other instruments.

When she saw Losure’s flyer on campus advertising banjo lessons three years ago, she took the opportunity.

“The music helped get my coordination and mood back,” Swander says.

Losure says he has seen people recover from trauma more quickly by using music as a form of therapy.

“Mary was really a wreck for awhile there, and I have watched her blossom playing that banjo,” Losure says. “I have seen people work out of some pretty dark stuff with playing instruments.”

To Losure, teaching isn’t a challenge.

“I don’t consider it hard to teach — it’s an adventure and a journey,” he says. “I teach people to teach themselves.”