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Ag/Outdoor, Heartbeat Today, Podcasts
Jim Field visits with CAM Middle School teacher Sandy Booker about the CAM Greenhouse project. They have their annual sale this week. They will be open Thursday, May 5th from 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm, Friday, May 6th from 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm and Saturday, May 7th from 9:00 am – 12:00 pm. They have hanging baskets and planters, a variety of tomatoes and peppers, some herbs, cabbage and cucumber plants and some flowers along with our silent auction items. The greenhouse is located in Massena in the bus parking lot and all proceeds from the sales of plants goes into the greenhouse account for next year.
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Pella residents are preparing to host thousands of people for their annual Tulip Festival which begins Thursday. Pella Convention & Visitors Bureau director, Jill Vandevoort, says warm weather made the 200-thousand or so flowers bloom early, but there will still be plenty of them to see. “We do plant them over the course of four weeks here in Pella. So we have our early blooms as well as our later varieties,” Vandevoort explains. “Right now I would say we have still probably 60 percent of our tulips still in bloom.” The early blooms led to the unusual situation where Pella planners were happy to see things cool off a little bit.
“The dampness and rains last week, and the coolness were able to hold the tulips in place longer for us — and we are kind of grateful for that rain,” Vandevoort says. She says the rain is going out in time for people to attend all the festival events. “Each day our guests can enjoy a number of tours, including our city tour. They can climb aboard our open-air wagons and learn a bit about our community, as well as see a number of other tulip-blooming locations around the community,” Vandevoort says. “We also of course have our Pella Historical Village and Vermeer Windmill. The Vermeer Windmill is the largest working grain windmill in the United States. If you haven’t seen that, it’s a very interesting tour to enjoy.”
There are many other activities, including the street cleaning prior to the parades. This will be the 81st festival and Vandevoort says it’s a great celebration of the community’s heritage. She says many of the residents come out to celebrate in their Dutch costumes and she says it is alright to ask to take pictures. “I think it’s just a great way for us to come together as a community. All of us are volunteers, and obviously if we didn’t have all of that volunteer effort that we have in our community, we couldn’t continue to host this event.”
Vandevoort has a couple of things that are at the top of her list when it comes to the Tulip Festival. “Probably the first thing I like to do is eat all of those many things that are available at our curbside vendors,” she says. “There’s a number of Dutch specialties that we don’t get to enjoy year-round either. So, probably eating my way around town is the thing I enjoy most.” She also looks forward every year to greeting the visitors that come into town on tour buses.
“Some of them have been coming for over 30 years, every single year. So, we know that those guests who have come in the past actually very much look forward to coming back on a yearly basis. And a lot of those are from out-of-state,” Vandevoort says. There can be as many as 150-thousand people who visit the festival. For more information, go to www.visitpella.com.
(Radio Iowa)
Iowans may soon be paying less for eggs at the grocery store as egg production operations across the state and elsewhere are recovering from last year’s outbreak of bird flu. That outbreak sent egg prices skyward, but the number of laying hens nationally is now approaching pre-flu levels. As a result, U-S-D-A economist Annemarie Kuhns, says retail egg prices are dropping.
Kuhns says, “Really, what we’ve been seeing is just, we’re expecting a recovery more quickly than we initially anticipated, a recovery from the highly-pathogenic avian influenza last year.” She says the U-S-D-A expects retail egg prices to fall nine-to-ten-percent this year compared to the average 2015 price. Some 34-million birds on 77 Iowa farms had to be destroyed after contracting the virus last year.
(Radio Iowa)
Ag/Outdoor, Heartbeat Today, Podcasts
Jim Field visits with Park Ranger Jon Fenner and Jeff Gress of Hancock about the Gress family donation of a rare white buffalo to the Botna Bend Park at Hancock.
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In one of its last acts as the West Central Cooperative governing body, the Board of Directors has announced the recipients of the West Central Excellence in Agriculture scholarships. Last winter, West Central accepted applications for its Excellence in Agriculture scholarships from children of cooperative members who are area seniors pursuing agriculture-related post-secondary education. This year, six students have each been awarded $1,500.
The Excellence in Agriculture winners are:
* Noah Borkowski, son of Dave & Lisa Borkowski of Carroll; senior at Glidden-Ralston High School.
* Zoey Dinkla, daughter of Dallas & Romonia Dinkla of Casey; senior at Adair-Casey High School.
* Brianna Goecke, daughter of Jim & Kim Goecke of Audubon; senior at Audubon Community High School.
* Andrew Irlbeck, son of Glen & Anne Irlbeck of Templeton; senior at Kuemper Catholic High School.
* Shelby Soper, daughter of Clint & Mindy Douglas of Adair; senior at Adair-Casey High School.
* John Schultes, son of George Schultes & Connie Jessen of Exira; senior at Exira-Elk Horn Kimballton High School.
Brianna Goecke
Zoey Dinkla
Shelby Soper
Andrew Irlbeck
Noah Borkwoski
Nick Schultes
West Central’s Excellence in Agriculture program had been in place since 1994. The Landus Cooperative board of directors has not yet determined their plans for the scholarship program in the future. Landus Cooperative’s chief executive officer and West Central’s former CEO, Milan Kucerak said “These soon-to-be-graduates will play a critical role in shaping agriculture in coming decades. As a farmer-owned cooperative, we are privileged to be in a position to consult with producers who are feeding the world as well as support the educational pursuits of those who will positively influence the industry for years to come.”
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources recently held a public hearing on the rules covering the new apprentice hunting licenses and are moving ahead with implementation. D-N-R hunter education administrator, Megan Wisecup, says it allows people to bypass the hunter education requirement while they learn. She says the program is for people over the age of 16 to try and get them interested in hunting by giving them a chance to go out before they need to invest in any equipment. Providing supervision is a key part of the apprentice license.
“It requires that they have a mentor with them, which is another hunter who is 18 or over and properly licensed as well. And they must maintain direct supervision between that mentor and menteee,” Wisecup says. She says once someone learns more about hunting, they are more likely to continue going out. “There’s 36 states that currently an apprentice license of some sort in place and they’ve attributed over one million new hunters coming into the fold since those programs went out. So, definitely once they have the opportunity to try it, they get hooked and then they come back and meet the hunter education requirements and successfully hunt on their own,” Wisecup says.
She says they already have thousands of people signed up for the hunter safety courses and hope this program brings in more. “There’s around 10 to 12-thousand that kind of fit in that age group that we are trying to reach out to, so we are kind of hoping we might double or triple that number,” Wisecup says. A person may purchase the apprentice hunting licenses two times without having completed hunter education course.
The apprentice program was approved by the Iowa legislature and signed by Governor Terry Branstad during the 2015 legislative session.
(Radio Iowa)
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