(Atlantic, Iowa) – The City of Atlantic’s Parks and Recreation Department Board of Directors, Monday evening, received a check from the Atlantic Rotary Club, for improvements to the Ross Camblin Addition at Sunnyside Park, such as sandblasting the shelter and repainting it. Ross Camblin is the great uncle of Atlantic businessman Bob Camblin. He served on the Parks Board 55-years, from 1918 to 1973.

Bob Camblin said his uncle was “A visionary and he liked to take action and get things done.” Ross was also a founding member of the Atlantic Rotary Club. The Rotary Board wanted to make a connection between what Ross Camblin did back then, and the impact he had on Sunnyside Park.

Atlantic Parks & Rec Board Mtg., 10-17-22

Rotary President Ruth Sears presented a check for $2,500 to City Clerk Barb Barrick.

The check is just the first of many annual installment payments to come. By-the-way, Ruth noted that Bob Camblin has been a member of the Rotary for 55 years, as well as past President. In other business, the Parks and Rec Board approved an agreement with Snyder and Associates Engineers, for the engineering aspect of the future splash pad, which includes surveying, site layout and other aspects of the design phase. The agreement is in the amount of $35,800, $11,500 of which will from the pool planning section of the budget. The rest comes from the Local Option Sales Tax and Hotel/Motel Tax Park Reserve fund.

Byrant Rasmussen receives a $2,500 from Atlantic Rotary President Ruth Sears.

They also agreed to install flag pole landscaping at the Schildberg Rec Area, near the shelter on the west side of the lake by the parking lot. In his report to the Board, Parks Director Bryant Rasmussen said the Tour De Parks last Saturday was a big hit, with people coming from all over southwest Iowa to partake in the free event.

Another free event is the Zombie Run on Oct. 29, from 5-until 9-p.m., at the Schildberg Recreation Area. Assistant to Bryant Rasmussen, Jeff Christensen, explained how the event will unfold.

Bryant Rasmussen thanked the Atlantic Kiwanis for putting in a new flag pole at Sunnyside Park near the historic school house.

This was the last Parks and Rec Board meeting for Byrant Rasmussen, who has accepted a position in Mills County with the USDA’s Soil and Water Conservation District. Board President Jolene Smith thanked him for his hard work and dedication, and programs he’s established for people of all ages. Rasmussen’s last day in Atlantic is Friday.

(Lewis, Iowa) – The Atlantic FFA chapter competed in the Southwest Iowa District Soils Judging Contest at the Armstrong Research Farm in Lewis on Wednesday, September 21st. There were 188 FFA members that made up 46 teams from 23 schools at the Soils Career Development Event.

Atlantic FFA had 11 individuals compete in 3 teams. Team 1 which consisted of Brent Masker, Brett Dreager, Daniel Freund and DJ Shepperd got 10th place overall and earned a gold rating. “It was a fun experience and you get a chance to see different dirt each year,” said team member Daniel Freund.

Team 2 placed 12th with team members Callee, Pellett, Charli Goff, Clarie Pellett and Mary McCurdy placed 12th. Callee Pellett said, “I had fun. It was a good experience and I would like to do it again next year.“ Team 3 consisted of Colton Rudy, Charles Klemmensen and joaquin Wailes placed 27th.

Team members back row from left to right are:
SW District Treasurer Dylan Comes, Joaquin Wailes, Charles Klemmensen, Daniel Freund, DJ Shepperd, Brent Masker, COlton Rudy, SW District VP Colin Bauer, SW State President George Martin,
Front row Callee Pellett, Claire Pellett, Brett Dreager, Mary McCurdy, Charli Goff

The Soils Judging Career Development Event is designed towards motivating students to gain knowledge on surface features, the soil profile, land capability and productivity, evaluation of land use and management practices, and suitability of soils for nonagricultural uses. Students also develop the ability to observe selected soil properties, and use these observations to interpret and evaluate these properties for recommendations for land use.

Mary McCurdy said, “It was a lot of fun! 10 out of 10 and I would do it again.” After the contest took place, Mr. Miller, the Atlantic FFA advisor, felt good about the day’s competition. “I was impressed with the way our students performed. They made a lot of improvement in a very short amount of time.”

(Reporting by Atlantic FFA Advisor Eric Miller)

(By FFA Reporter Charli Goff) – Each year, the Southwest District and Iowa FFA officers plan and facilitate Greenhand Fire Up Conferences for FFA members in the Southwest District. The workshops were leadership focused with an emphasis on the experiences that occur in the lives of beginning high school students These workshops are geared toward engaging members into FFA as the year kicks up. Atlantic welcomed 29 FFA chapters and 362 from all over the Southwest District on Wednesday, October 12th.

Atlantic FFA member Dylan Comes, the Southwest State Treasurer for the Iowa FFA Association, helped with other officers prepare and facilitated workshops of: authenticity, balancing priorities, communication, and FFA opportunities – in order to provide the first-year FFA members with skills they would use both within and outside of FFA. Comes said “It was great to see all of the younger members interacting with each other from a facilitators point of view.” “It was fun to meet new people and I made a lot of new friends. I also learned about FFA.” Miraylie Stuart.

Photo submitted

The goal was to engage FFA members in learning about the tools that would allow them to be successful in anything they are part of through high school and beyond. The goal was to engage FFA members in learning about the tools that would allow them to be successful in anything they are part of through high school and beyond. “It’s an easy way to learn the basics of FFA. I also had a lot of fun meeting new people” said Atlantic FFA freshman Mckenna Schroeder. Olivia Olson said, “It was fun meeting new people and talking to other FFA members to see what they do in their chapter.”

(Radio Iowa) – D-N-R Conservation and Recreation Division Administrator, Pete Hildreth, gave the Natural Resources Commission an update on recent mountain lion sightings during their meeting Thursday. He told the N-R-C members the advent of trail and other cameras has led to more videos showing the animals. “The department continues to receive reports of large canines, such as mountain lions, and therefore you may have heard about, heard in the news, about a recent video and report down by Warren Madison County border,” Hildreth says. He says the number of mountain lions in the state is still very small.

“Based on reports, we estimate that there are five to seven mountain lions in Iowa at this time. Between 1995 and 2021, there have been 34 mountain lion sightings in Iowa,” he says. Hildreth says the animals are capable of moving long distances across the state. “No documented self-sustaining populations of mountain lions live in Iowa. Most mountain lions who wander into Iowa can be traced back to South Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska,” according to Hildreth. He says the D-N-R’s goals are to notify the public in a timely manner of sightings, and provide technical assistance to individuals and communities regarding the best available scientific information. Hildreth says are some key things they always point out.

“Mountain lions generally avoid humans, and sightings of them are rare. There have been no fatal mountain lion attacks in Iowa in the last 110 years,” Hildreth says. He says one thing he hears is that people are more apt to be killed by a dog or struck by lightning than being attacked by a mountain lion. Hildreth said he wanted to update the commission after all the news and social media reports of the recent camera footage of the mountain lions in Madison County.

(Western Iowa) – Crews in western and southwest Iowa kept busy Thursday afternoon, battling the wind and flames that spurred two separate large field fires. The fires occurred within a couple of hours of one another. One of the incidents involved a soybean field in northwestern Audubon County. Firefighters from Manning, Manilla, Irwin, Defiance, Kirkman, and Audubon responded to the scene. Shelby County Emergency Management noted on their social media page, that “It was fast moving,” and that crews “did a GREAT job stopping it from getting to the next field of standing corn!!!!”

Click on the images to enlarge

Photos via Shelby County EMA Facebook page

Henderson, Emerson, Hastings, Stanton firefighters were paged out Thursday, to the area of Highway 34 and A Avenue in Montgomery County, where a large corn field fire was occurring. Some equipment was burning in that incident as well. Crews battled the flames for at least three hours before they were brought under control. 

No injuries were reported from either incident.

(Radio Iowa) – New bird flu cases have been reported this fall in Minnesota, South Dakota and Nebraska. The virus hasn’t resurfaced in Iowa since May, but experts are cautioning it could come back as wild birds migrate.  “We can expect that as birds, you know, pass through Iowa and head south, that they may still be harboring the virus.” That’s State wildlife veterinarian Rachel Ruden. She says while bird flu hadn’t been making wild bird sick, a more severe form of the virus has been circulating and that strain has hung around. Iowa State University Extension wildlife specialist Adam Janke says another reason for heightened risk is that birds migrate a lot slower this time of year.

“They’re just trying to survive through the fall and winter,” he says, “and then come spring, they start to focus narrowly on reproduction and that means they need to get north really fast.”Janke says November is the peak time for water fowl, like ducks and geese, to migrate through Iowa. State and federal officials have been surveying healthy birds being harvested by hunters. In September, the bird flu virus was detected in three small ducks that were shot in western Iowa.

The hunting season for blue-wing, green-wing and cinnamon-wing teal ducks was in the first half of September.

(Reporting by Iowa Public Radio’s Katie Peikes)

(Des Moines, Iowa) – The latest U-S Drought Monitor report shows conditions worsening across Iowa. The report, issued Thursday, said 100% of Iowa is experiencing abnormally dry conditions, marking the first time since August 2013 that all of the state has had some sort of drought designation. 57% of Iowa is experiencing moderate drought, an increase from 52% just a week ago, while 27% of Iowa is dealing with severe drought. 7% of Iowa has extreme drought. Plymouth, Cherokee, Buena Vista and Pocahontas Counties, along with parts of seven other counties in northwest Iowa, are included in the Extreme Drought conditions.

Cass and Adair Counties are in a moderate drought, as is much of Madison County and most of Pottawattamie County. Half of the counties to our south are Moderately or Abnormally Dry. Most of the counties adjacent to Cass and to the north of I-80 are also Abnormally Dry.  There were two separate, large field fires Thursday afternoon in southwest/western Iowa.

(Radio Iowa) A parcel of farmland in Plymouth County has set the record for the most paid per acre in Iowa. Auctioneer Bruck Brock of Brock Auction Company sold the ground Monday. “We auctioned off 55 acres of farmland — not development land and it didn’t have any wind turbines aren’t under any undue influence — tt was just farmland,” Bock says. “It was between Remsen and Marcus for John Fiscus, and it brought 26-thousand-250 dollars an acre, which to this point is the highest selling piece of farmland at auction in the history of the state of Iowa.” Brock says the new owner of the land farms neighboring ground.

“He and his son are going to farm it and they have a farming operation in that area and are really good to high quality farmers and it’s just a great was a great piece of farmland. It laid just perfectly, and of course right between Remson and Marcus is we call it the gold standard in farming around here. It’s as good as farmland gets,” according to Bock. The veteran auctioneer says there was spirited bidding for the land. “There were three people that bid up to 25-thousand per acre — and then the final two took it up to 26-thousand-250 per acre,” he says. Brock has a good historical perspective on the land in the area.

“We have sold one up here, not too far from that one for 25-thousand an acre. So it’s in an area where the prices are very strong. But you know, the difference that we’ve seen, my grandfather sold the first piece of farm ground in Ida County for our firm in 1919 for 60 dollars an acre, and we’ve seen every price increase all the way up to this one,” Brock says. Brock says the competitive bidding gives everyone a sense of fairness and the farm brought what the market was willing to pay.

(Radio Iowa) – The C-E-O and manager of the Iowa State Fair is retiring. Gary Slater is a Missouri native who served as manager of the Missouri State Fair and the World Pork Expo before taking the top job at the Iowa State Fair 21 years ago. During his tenure, the Fair topped the one million attendance mark, saw multiple upgrades and changes to the buildings on the grounds, and led it through the pandemic cancellation in 2021.

Slater released a statement saying it has been “an honor of a lifetime to lead the Iowa State Fair.” Slater says his retirement comes with the Fair in a good place, having returned to pre-pandemic revenue levels, and he looks forward to spending more time with his family.

Gary Slater near the end of the 2022 Iowa State Fair. (RI photo)

(Radio Iowa) – The corn and bean harvest moved ahead quickly last week. The U-S-D-A report shows the beans in the bin went from 26 percent two weeks to 55 percent last week. The bean harvest had been one day behind the five-year average, but is now nine days ahead of that mark. The amount of corn pulled from the fields more than doubled from 11 percent two weeks ago, to 23 percent this past week.

The corn harvest is three days behind average. The corn condition rose slightly to 63 percent good to excellent.