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Chris Parks and Cass/Adair County Conservation Officer Grant Gelly talk about all things outdoors. This week they discuss water quality, new regulation books, learn to hunt programs and more.
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(Radio Iowa) – The Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa — RAGBRAI — starts Sunday. However, riders and support crews started converging on Sergeant Bluff Wednesday, as the town is the starting point for this year’s route. Sergeant Bluff City Councilwoman Andrea Johnson says 28-thousand people are expected in the community for the opening festivities this weekend — so the city is asking motorists to avoid the entertainment zone.
“We are asking that people do not drive through our town just because we have lots of bikes and we’re just trying to keep everyone safe,” she says. Saturday’s series of concerts and other activities will begin around noon in Sergeant Bluff. The city has established designated parking areas and three shuttle routes. “We encourage everyone to come and eat our food and enjoy our bands,” Johnson says. Emergency officials are preparing for excessive heat and the possibility of severe weather.
Riders on a past RAGBRAI. (file photo)
Sergeant Bluff Fire Chief Anthony Gaul says his fire station will be the command post to deal with whatever Mother Nature has in store. “We did a final test of our outdoor warning system which is meant to alert people that are outdoors in case of severe weather or any other disasters,” Gaul says. “We have a voice function on that as well as the tone siren alert.” If a tornado or winds of more than 70 mile an hour are forecast, the outdoor warning system in Sergeant Bluff is triggered, but they plan to announce any severe weather that does not meet that threshold.
Fourteen campgrounds have been established around Sergeant Bluff for the RAGBRAI crowd. “We have established tornado and storm shelters for every campground. We have access to all of those public safety wise so we can open them up whenever need be and we have sent that all throughout the campground so they know where they are to go.” Gaul and other Sergeant Bluff officials are walking through the campgrounds, too, welcoming RAGBRAI riders and pointing out the emergency shelters. Gaul says the city has a valuable tool that likely will alter the crowds find shelter before dangerous lightning arrives.
“We have a lightning prediction system called THOR GUARD,” he says. “It is set to alert when we have about a 12-15 minute time frame before lightning impacts the community and over the last years it has been very accurate.” Officials have been handing out yard signs to Sergeant Bluff residents that indicate the home is open as an emergency shelter to bicyclists in case of severe weather. The latest forecast indicates there’s a chance for severe storms in the area on Saturday.
Early Sunday, RAGBRAI riders will leave Sergeant Bluff and pedal through Bronson, Anthon and Battle Creek before reaching the overnight stop in Ida Grove. The week-long ride covers 454 miles and ends in Lansing on July 30th.
This year is bittersweet for riders – it’s the first year without one of its founders. Ninety-one-year-old John Karras died due to complications from a stroke. He co-founded Ragbrai with Donald Kaul in 1973.
Officials with the Iowa Environmental Council (IEC), today (Friday), released their Beach Advisory for the week of July 22nd. There are eight 8 beach advisories this week, seven of which advisories are related to unhealthy E.coli levels:
There is also one beach with a Microcystin-related Advisory: Geode Beach (Danville, Des Moines County, IA)*
*Data from the Iowa DNR State Park Beach Monitoring Program
**Data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rock Island District
Lake of Three Fires is temporarily closed for swimming.
A Missouri resident who swam in Lake of Three Fires had a confirmed infection and passed away from Naegleria fowleri, commonly known as the “brain-eating amoeba.” There is no new information to share at this time other than the beach has been sampled and the samples have been sent to the CDC laboratory. The beach will remain closed pending test results. Additionally, the test results for E. coli exceed the advisory threshold this week.
(Atlantic, Iowa) – Cass County businesses and organizations are coming together to address hunger and improve nutrition by growing food. This spring, through a Growing Together grant from Iowa State Extension, Cass County Master Gardeners and Grow Another Row provided free food plants to people visiting food pantries and Grow Another Row stands. When the Atlantic Hy-Vee Lawn and Garden Center closed for the season in July, the store donated additional food plants and herbs to the project. The Atlantic Lions Club also received a grant this spring from the Cass County Community Foundation to expand and enhance the community garden at Mollett Park in Atlantic, adding garden space and installing edible landscape plants.
Cass County Wellness Coordinator Brigham Hoegh says, “Combined, these efforts are creating more access to fresh, local produce in yards, gardens and produce stands across the county.”
Cass County was one of 36 communities awarded Growing Together grant funding. Grow Another Row and the Cass County Master Gardeners applied for this grant last winter. The funding is being used to maintain a community donation garden, coordinate produce donations through Grow Another Row, and provide nutrition education to food pantry clients and others in the county. This spring, seeing additional need for space and resources to grow food, the Atlantic Lions Club applied for and received a Cass County Community Foundation grant to expand and enhance the community garden at Mollett Park in Atlantic. Fruit trees we installed, with plans to install berry bushes and educational signage soon, laying the groundwork for a community edible landscape space. Additional raised garden beds were also added, along with rainwater collection units and educational signage which will enhance the garden space that is used for both private and donation gardening. 
Where did these ideas come from? Food pantries across the county have seen increased patronage over the past three years. For example, the number of households served by the Atlantic Food Pantry has grown four times over the past four years. Each week the pantry currently provides supplemental food to an average of 68 households (150 people) or about 10 percent
of the people living in poverty in Cass County. Food insecurity is a reality. Additionally, fruits and vegetables are important sources of nutrition, and many people prefer to eat fresh produce and enjoy growing their own food. Last year, the Cass County COVID-19 Mobile Food For All program surveyed participants and found a majority were either interested in growing their own food or already doing so. Common barriers to food growing for some individuals and families includes a lack of lawn space for gardening or physical limitations. Using that information, Grow Another Row partnered with area food pantries to distribute free food plants last summer, including many “patio” tomatoes and other plants that grow well in containers. The plants were well-received.
Working together, Grow Another Row, Cass County Master Gardeners, the Atlantic Lions Club, and Cass County Extension are also partnering to provide educational programming on produce gardening, including garden tours, planting demonstrations, and opportunities to assist with garden maintenance and harvesting, to food pantry clients and others in the county. Grow Another Row is a program of the Healthy Cass County coalition that provides free, fresh local produce across the county through a network of produce sharing sites managed by volunteers. Produce donated to the program is also shared through all four Cass County food pantries. Grow Another Row is always looking for volunteers to grow, harvest, bag, and transport produce across the county. Individuals and groups—such as service organizations, churches, or workplaces—are welcome to join the effort! All residents of Cass County are invited to participate in the Grow Another Row program and “take what you need; share what you can”!
For more information on Grow Another Row, and to sign up for the program’s email newsletter or volunteer, visit https://www.extension.iastate.edu/cass/content/grow-another-row-cass-county or contact Cass County Extension Director Kate Olson or Cass County Wellness Coordinator Brigham Hoegh at 712-243-1132. For information on food available at Grow Another Row stands, as well as information on Cass County food pantries, farmers markets, and other local food initiatives, follow the Cass County Local Food Policy Council on Facebook
@CassCountyLocalFood.
(Ottumwa, Iowa) – Officials with John Deere say they are moving more of their manufacturing operations out of Iowa. The company says over the next 18 months, it will shift its current production at its Ottumwa facility to Monterrey, Mexico, and revitalize the location for the future. The company announced a similar move at its Waterloo plant last month. Company officials could not specify how many employees at the Ottumwa plant will be affected by the move.
(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig says the last quarantine associated with a bird flu outbreak at a commercial flock has been lifted. “This is good news,” Naig says. “It’s a milestone day.” Quarantines were issued to bar poultry and eggs from being shipped from 15 commercial sites where avian influenza had been confirmed. The last restriction — on a turkey operation in Bremer County — has been lifted after it met all cleaning, disinfection and testing testing requirements. Naig says it doesn’t mean the risk is gone.
“But what is does do is allow all of those affected sites to get back into normal production,” Naig says, “and it also allows us, with the response, to start to now look back and say: ‘What went well and what are some lessons we need to apply to a future response?'” Iowa’s first case of bird flu was confirmed in February in a backyard flock of chickens and ducks in Council Bluffs. That site and three others where Iowans were raising birds in their backyards that were sickened with bird flu are to remain empty for the rest of the summer.
“You really can’t clean those kind of sites,” Naig says, “but you can go in and disinfection and test commercial sites and that’s why this is an important day and we make a distinction between a commercial site and a backyard flock.” Two commercial facilities each had five million birds that were killed to prevent the virus from spreading. A total of 13-point-three million birds were euthanized in Iowa due to this year’s outbreak.
“And that represented 40% or so of the total number of birds that were impacted nationwide,” Naig says. The 2015 bird flu outbreak impacted 77 commercial poultry and egg laying sites in Iowa — compared to 15 this year. Naig says it does not appear there was farm-to-farm movement of the virus due to better biosecurity measures. “Our producers have learned a lot about how to keep the virus out their buildings and off of their farms and really track the movement of people and equipment,” Naig says. “…I think the second component of that was just a more effective, faster response on the part of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and the USDA. Those two things together made this a different outbreak.”
The executive director of the North Central Poultry Association says the lifting of the final quarantine is cause to celebrate the collective efforts from all involved. Avian influenza is highly contagious and while wild birds carry the virus without appearing to be ill, it is nearly always fatal to domesticated birds.
Here are some of the results from shows at the 2022 Adams County Fair!
The 2022 Adams County Tall Corn Contest was sponsored by POET, Corning and judged by Tim Christensen, ISU Extension and Outreach Farm Management Specialist. The results were:
(Radio Iowa) – The latest Iowa crop and weather report from the U-S-D-A suggests drought conditions will expand in northwest Iowa this week. The U.S. Drought Monitor’s measurements last Tuesday indicated parts of Plymouth, Cherokee and Woodbury Counties were in extreme drought and much of northwest Iowa were classified as in severe or moderate drought. The state climatologist says while there were heavy rains in northeast Iowa last week, the remainder of the state was drier than normal and the rainfall deficit is approaching an inch in many areas.
Weekly rainfall was just a hundredth of an inch at several reporting stations in northwest and southwest Iowa. The U-S-D-A rates 81 percent of Iowa’s corn crop in good or excellent condition, while just over three quarters of Iowa soybeans have a condition rating of good or excellent.
(Harlan, Iowa) – The Shelby County Fair concludes its week-long run this evening, with the 4-H/FFA Livestock auction. The auction begins at 5:30-p.m. And, while that Fair wraps-up, three more county fairs are set to get-underway this week. Preparation for the Montgomery County Fair in Red Oak began in earnest last Saturday. And, while there are some judging events scheduled for today, the Fair officially begins Tuesday, and runs through Sunday. Find a pdf link to the full schedule, HERE.
The Adair County Fair in Greenfield is set to begin its full slate of activities on Wednesday. For the complete schedule, click HERE. And, The Pottawattamie County Fair in Avoca begins its complete schedule, on Thursday. Here’s the schedule (Click to enlarge):
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