w/ Kate Olsen

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Vendors from all around the area will be in Harlan this weekend, for the 26^th annual “Home, Garden and Living Show.” In fact, over 40 vendors are expected to bring their wares for your garden, home, and lifestyle. The theme for this year’s event, is “Red, White and Blue.” The show at the Veteran’s Auditorium in Harlan is sponsored by The Harlan Newspapers. The papers’ Al Hazelton says one thing that’s changed over the years is how much technology is coming to the show.

 He says there’ll be communications and energy saving exhibits, computers and related peripherals, and more. Other vendors will have appliances, health, beauty and landscaping products on display. Anyone attending the event will register for great prizes including a TV, outdoor grill and a giant tool cabinet. Hazelton says if you are thinking the Home, Garden and Living show is for adults only, think again. He says the show appeals to all ages. The newspaper is giving away prizes for kids, and most of the exhibitors have drawings for their own giveaways. 

The Home, Garden and Living show begins Saturday evening. Hazelton says admission to the show is free. The hours are from 5-to 8:30-p.m. Saturday, and from Noon- to 4-pm Sunday.

(Joel McCall/KNOD – Harlan)

w/ Denny Heflin.

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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) says he and a bipartisan group of senators will seek to cap federal farm payments to large farming operations. Nelson said Wednesday that the group plans to introduce a measure to limit payments to so-called mega-farms. Nelson says that with farm income booming and the national deficit soaring, “the time has come to rein in these payments.” Nelson, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, is sponsoring the proposal with Democratic Sens. Tom Harkin, of Iowa; Tim Johnson, of South Dakota; Sherrod Brown, of Ohio; and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York; and Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, and Mike Enzi, of Wyoming, Nelson says he hopes the measure will be included in the federal farm bill being crafted by Congress.

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach is thanking partners across the state and promoting its educational programs during a statewide celebration this month. ISU Extension and Outreach Week, March 25-31, will include activities on the Iowa State campus, across the state and in Guthrie County. Terry Torneten, Regional Extension Education Director says “The weeklong celebration is just one way we can say ‘thank you’ to the many volunteers, community leaders, organizations, agencies and other partners who support Extension and Outreach work in Guthrie County.” 

Governor Terry Branstad will officially sign a proclamation on March 27^th, declaring the dates as Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Week. Guthrie County ISU Extension and Outreach Office will celebrate Extension week on Friday, March 30th, with an open house from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm at the Guthrie County Extension and Outreach Office, located at 212 State Street, Guthrie Center.  Everyone is welcome to come and meet the new staff and see what services they have to offer.  Refreshments and door prizes will also be offered. 

Iowa State University Extension provides researched-based information and education for communities, families, business and industry, agriculture and natural resources, and 4-H youth development as well as continuing education through off-campus courses, degree programs, service learning programs, noncredit conferences and seminars and educational materials.

w/ Kate Olsen

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U-S-D-A officials are warning farmers in Iowa and several other states about fraudulent faxes being sent to individual farmers and businesses in the region. Mike Sanders, chief administrative officer for the Farm Service Agency in Nebraska, says farmers everywhere should be on guard and certainly should not to respond to the letters. In what he calls a “filching” attempt, Sanders says, “A person or entity (was) representing himself as USDA and they were sending out fax messages to various producers in a four-state area, trying to obtain financial information from the producers.” Sanders encourages farmers anywhere who got similar suspicious faxes to report them to their nearest F-S-A office. He’s seen one, in person.

“A producer did receive a fax message and they brought it in to our office,” he says. “From a cursory view, it appeared to be a fictitious memo and a request for information. We are forwarding those requests that we receive to our office of general counsel and the office of inspector general for follow-up.” The letters bear the USDA logo and seal and are signed by an individual identified as “Frank Rutenberg” using a title of Senior Procurement Officer. Sanders says the letter is an effort to rip off farmers.

“There’s a cover memo titled, Authorization to Release Financial Information,” Sanders says. “Basically, it’s a blank form where the producer is to record their business name and what they’re doing business as. They’re asking for bank names, branches, account numbers and tax IDs.” The faxes were received so far in: Nebraska, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. As yet, none were reported in Iowa but producers nationwide are being put on alert.

(Matt Kelley/Radio Iowa)

Iowa’s only hunting preserve with wild boars would be shut down under a bill passed by the Iowa House, Tuesday. Critics say wild boar present hazards to the state’s pork industry. The bill, however, would allow domestic hogs to be hunted on the preserve. Representative Lance Horbach, of Tama says the Tama County farmer who operates the only wild boar hunting preserve in Iowa would have 90 days to get rid of his wild boar if the bill becomes law. “This allows this Iowa hunting preserve to have hog hunting,” Horbach says. “But it would be domestic swine.”

Some legislators like Representative Mary Wolfe of Clinton questioned the whole concept of hunting hogs.  “We’re going to pass a bill that lets us people hunt these big fat, lazy pigs that apparently don’t provide a whole lot of sport for hunters,” Wolfe said. Representative Dan Muhlbauer, of Manilla, wasn’t sold on the sport of hog hunting either. “We’re going to go out and turn ’em loose in a 360 acre pasture and shoot ’em,” Muhlbauer said. “…Where’s the logic in this?” Wild boar or “feral swine” have attacked domestic swine herds in other states and wild boar hunting was banned in Iowa in 2007. A third-generation Tama County farm has kept up its wild boar hunting preserve since then, through extensions which are about to expire.

The bill to let that farm offer hunters a chance to shoot at hogs raised in the U.S. now goes to the Senate.

(O. Kay Henderson/Radio Iowa)

Officials with the Monsanto Corporation say an Adams County farmer was selected as a Iowa winner in the company’s 2012 “America’s Farmers Grow Communities” contest. Todd James, of Prescott, won $2,500, and designated Adams County 4-H as the recipient of the funds. Other area winners, and their designated non-profits receiving $2,500 include: Cass County: Mike Noll – Griswold Fire Department; Adair County: Diana Kordick – Washington Stars 4-H Club; Audubon County: Blaine Kerkhoff – Audubon High School Wrestling Fund; Guthrie County: Randy Hughes – Dodge Dodgers 4-H Club; Montgomery County: Jon Young – Montgomery County Family YMCA; Pottawattamie County: Patrick Ellsworth – Underwood School District High School Auditorium Project; and Shelby County: Karen Muell – Panama Fire Department.

Nearly 60,000 farmers participated in the second annual Grow Communities program, which is designed to benefit nonprofit groups such as ag youth, schools and other civic organizations. Farmers in 1,245 counties in 39 states were eligible to win $2,500 for their favorite community nonprofit groups or organizations.  The Monsanto Fund expects to invest more than $3.1 million in local communities. For more information and to see a full list of winners, visit www.growcommunities.com.

Trees Forever is wrapping up an industrious, two-year tree-planting project that will help make more than a dozen Iowa cities greener and more energy efficient, while helping other towns replace trees lost to natural disasters. Meredith Borchardt of Marion, the group’s program manager and field coordinator, says it was a massive undertaking. “We ended up planting 2,456 trees and those were spread out over about 20 communities,” Borchardt says. “That included 72 different projects.” Ten Iowa communities were originally chosen to take part in the project after they were impacted by floods or severe storms and tornadoes. Additional disaster-impacted communities, like Mapleton, also benefitted from the Trees Forever program during its second year. Other cities that saw plantings include: Greenfield and Jefferson.

“The projects basically fell into two categories,” Borchardt says. “They were either windbreak projects that can help save energy in the winter or they were large shade tree plantings near buildings to help with energy savings in the summer.” It’s estimated the trees will generate an average of 108-thousand dollars in energy savings each year for the next 40 years. In addition to energy savings, she says trees provide other benefits to the community, including enhanced property values, reduced stormwater runoff and removal of pollutants and carbon dioxide from the air. 

Borchardt says, “We tried to work with each local community to identify if, for example, a school didn’t have many trees or if the need was really in residential areas or if there was a new fire station or a new public building that really needed trees, then we tried to make our program match with what those local needs were.” Projects included tree plantings at more than a dozen schools, numerous public facilities, several low-income and senior housing projects and in residential neighborhoods. She says the trees will remove about 957 tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year, on average, for the next 40 years, the same as taking 170 passenger vehicles off the road every year. The trees will also intercept an average of 5.3-million gallons of rainfall in these communities each year, significantly reducing the amount of runoff into our streams and rivers, helping reduce the potential of future flooding. Learn more at: www.treesforever.org

(Matt Kelley/Radio Iowa)