Atlantic, Iowa – Produce in the Park Manager Brigham Hoege reports food trucks Zipp’s Pizzeria and Zemog’s Cocina will be at Produce in the Park this Thursday, August 4th. Zemog’s jalapeno ranch sauce is quickly becoming a customer favorite at the park. Those who like jalapenos will find fresh jalapenos at the park this week.

Hoege says August is a great time of year for fresh, local produce in Iowa, and vendors will be selling jalapenos, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, sweet corn, onions, garlic, eggplant, peppers, and more. This week, free taste tests of cherry tomatoes will be handed out by Produce in the Park Board Member Vicki Nordskog. Cherry tomatoes are a simple, delicious, healthy snack that come in a variety of colors. Tasting different colors is a great way to introduce kids to produce. 

Sue Irvin of Sue’s Country Garden does an excellent job of introducing people to produce. For example, she’s been known to sneak zucchini and eggplant into brownies. A few years ago, after repeatedly offering her young grandson tomatoes, Sue brought him to Produce in the Park. Up to that point, the boy had insisted to his grandma that he didn’t like tomatoes, but to her surprise he changed his mind that day at the park when he tried orange and yellow tomatoes. Stories like this one demonstrate the special magic of farmers markets. Stop by the market this week to discover produce you never knew you loved.

Produce in the Park is held every Thursday through Oct. 13th.

Details on the August 4th event are as follows:

Produce in the Park August 4
Time: 4:30-6:30 PM
Location: Atlantic City Park (10 W. 7th Street, Atlantic, IA 50022)
Food Trucks: Zipp’s Pizza and Zemog’s Cocina Taco Truck
Fresh Produce: Tomatoes, sweet corn, zucchini, cucumbers, onions, and more
Local Meat: beef, pork, lamb, and chicken
Farm favorites: fresh-cut flowers, farm-fresh eggs, honey
Treats and Sweets: fresh-squeezed lemonade, popcorn, kringle, pastries, and fruit crisps
Crafts and more: jewelry, art prints, greeting cards, soaps, candles, lotions, plants, and lawn decorations
Fun: Live music, games, and more!
Free Taste Tests: Cherry tomatoes
Visiting organizations: Atlantic Public Library and Atlantic Parks and Recreation
Free drawing for a dozen eggs sponsored by the Cass County Local Food Policy Council.
(Anyone age 18+ can enter for free. Winner will be drawn after the market and receive eggs the
following week.
Payment methods accepted: All vendors accept cash. Many accept credit cards, Venmo, and Farmers
Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) Senior and WIC checks. All qualifying food vendors accept SNAP/EBT
(also known as food stamps). All fresh produce vendors both accept and distribute Double Up Food
Bucks (coupons given for SNAP/EBT purchases of fresh produce).

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Cass County Extension office will host their annual Farmland Leasing information meeting on Thursday, August 11, beginning at 1:00 PM. The meeting will be held at the Cass County Community Center on the fairgrounds; 805 West 10th Street in Atlantic. Tim Christensen, farm and agriculture business management specialist with ISU Extension and Outreach, will lead the meeting, which will last about 2 ½ hours.

The discussion will focus on various methods to determine a fair 2023 cash rental rate and the importance of good tenant/landlord communications. Emphasis will be placed on recent returns to Iowa Cash Rented Land and the 2022 Iowa Cash Rental Rate Survey.

Pre-registration is required prior to the meeting and a $20 fee per individual is payable at the door. Participants will receive a 100-page booklet and meeting handouts designed to assist landowners, tenants and other agri-business professionals with issues related to farmland ownership, management, and leasing arrangements.

Contact the Cass County Extension office at (712) 243-1132 with your questions or to pre-register on or before Wednesday, August 10.

For a list of meetings statewide, check the ISU Extension calendar for a meeting near you.

www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/info/meetings.html

(Radio Iowa) – Three state agencies are developing guidelines and real-time resources for city and county officials who may have to restrict water usage during a drought emergency. Tim Hall of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources says the first-ever state “drought plan” would leave decisions about limiting water usage to local officials.  “We’re trying to set up a framework that will help local communities, local water utilities, emergency management folks be prepared to deal with a drought when it comes by answering those questions: ‘What should be do and when should be do it?’ and we can provide the data and the information that helps them make those decisions,” Hall says.

The latest information from the U.S. Drought Mitigation Center shows there are “extreme” drought conditions in four northwest Iowa counties, but water shortages haven’t dropped to the level of what’s called an “exceptional” drought. “We have seen droughts on a fairly regular schedule. We saw, of course, a significant drought in 2012,” Hall says. “We saw some very dry years in 2020 and 2021. This year is looking pretty dry as well.”

In July, state officials hosted meetings in Sioux City, Cedar Rapids and Creston to hear from water utilities, local communities, county emergency managers and industries that use water. A final virtual meeting is being held this (Wednesday) morning with about 70 representatives of those groups. “We’re almost to the end of the stakeholder piece,” Hall says. “We have a science and data team that’s looking at information that’s available and how we might establish some trigger mechanisms for the state, so we are right in the middle of developing of the heavy duty stuff of the plan right now.”

Hall is the hydrology resources coordinator for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. On Thursday, Hall will be issuing a statewide summary of water resources. He says water levels in some areas of northwest Iowa are alarmingly low. “As the temperatures start to climb and we don’t see any precipitation, it could get a little bit rough in some places,” he says.

The situation, though, isn’t currently as dire as the last major drought of 2012, according to Hall.  “But on a local basis, there are some areas of northwest Iowa that are struggling to see what their water situation is going to be in three weeks, four weeks, six weeks if we don’t get much rain,” Hall says.

According to the state climatologist, unseasonably dry conditions persisted across Iowa last week and the drought intensified in the state’s northwest corner.

w/Kate Olson.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.7MB)

Subscribe: RSS

(Radio Iowa) – Sweet corn….those two words mean the true taste of summer for Iowans. This year has been an interesting and challenging one for growers like Todd Kjormoe (CHORE-mo) in rural Hardin County. “The prices of everything have obviously skyrocketed and takes a lot of nitrogen to grow our corn. And it’s been challenging,”. The weather over here hasn’t been too bad. We’ve had good rains. And we’re about halfway through our patch. So it shouldn’t be out there for another couple of weeks I suppose,” Kjormoe says. He says getting enough people to help tend and bring in the sweet corn to sell has been another issue.

“Labor is getting harder and harder to find like always — and you’ve got to just keep trying to go through it,” he says. He has been growing east of Iowa Falls for ten years and says the taste of the sweet corn they are picking is a bit different compared to previous years… “This year for some reason we don’t feel like we quite have the sugar content. I don’t know if it’s because of the extreme drought we had last year, the soils gotten messed up, and then this spring it was so cold and wet that I don’t know if it got off to a great start,” he says. “We are about halfway through and the sugar content just still isn’t quite there. It’s still really good corn — but it’s not as good as it has been.”

Kjormoe believes one issue is causing the variance in the sweet corn taste this year. “I think weather is 99 percent of it to be honest with you — because like I said we’ve been at it for a long time now, ten seasons — and we’ve never changed the land at all. We get adequate soil sampling on it that land is in tip-top condition,” according to Kjormoe.

Kjormoe has nine locations in north central and northeast Iowa for his homegrown sweet corn this summer.

(Radio Iowa) – The 127 employees of a grain processing plant in Cedar Rapids are now on strike. Ingredion Incorporated has been in negotiations since June with its union on a four-year contract. The existing contract ended Monday morning and union members voted to strike. The local union president was on the picket line and says they’re prepared to go as long as it takes to get a contract his members can agree to. “We’re far apart right now. I’m hoping soon that they’ll come back to the table. I don’t look for it this week but I hoping next week that they contact (me), and my committee and I can come back to the table and start negotiating again,” he says.

The workers are part of The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. Mitch Kacena has been at the plant for three and a half years. He said the company’s current offer would cut his pay from twenty-eight dollars an hour to twenty-six. That’s a drop of several thousand dollars each year. It’s his first strike. “I’ve never really been around before either. It’s kind of a whole new thing for me,” he says.

A spokesperson at Ingredion’s corporate office in Westchester, Illinois said there may be temporary facility stoppages, but the company plans to continue operating the facility and fulfill orders.

(reporting By Zachary Oren Smith, Iowa Public Radio)

(Radio Iowa) Much of Iowa’s expected to roast in this week’s heat wave — which may end up lasting much longer — and it follows a very steamy July. State climatologist Justin Glisan says the just-ended month was one-degree warmer than normal statewide and we had one-inch less of rainfall than the average. Glisan says Iowa’s farmers are especially concerned about forecast models that show more of the same during August. “We’re getting into the teeth of the growing season but also the warmest part of the year for Iowa late July and August,” Glisan says, “and we’re definitely going to turn on the furnace this week.” The Climate Prediction Center is releasing its maps for expected temperatures and precipitation during August — and both show the hot, dry trend will continue for Iowa during the month ahead.

“It doesn’t bode well for the drought conditions that we’re seeing, especially in northwestern Iowa where we have D1 to D3 drought, the extreme drought category,” Glisan says. “We would like to see timely rainfall to hold the crop on, but right now, the probabilities, they’re not working in our direction.” If there’s a bright spot to the past month, Glisan notes there was no severe weather anywhere in Iowa during July.

“We don’t have severe weather, we don’t have thunderstorms, we don’t get rainfall and hence, drought conditions expand,” Glisan says. “We saw similar behavior last year at this time. Drought was more pervasive last year, D1 to D2 across much of the northern two thirds of the state.” While we’re in the third year of a La Nina pattern, Glisan says it’s still too early to say if the warmer, drier weather will last into the fall months.

(Radio Iowa) – Increasingly dry conditions in Iowa are impacting Iowa’s corn and soybeans. The Iowa Crop and Weather report for the final week of July shows half of Iowa topsoil is short or very short of moisture. That’s a 12 percent increase from the previous week. Drought conditions intensified in northwest Iowa last week and the condition of Iowa’s statewide corn crop fell slightly to 76 percent good or excellent, according to the U.S.D.A. That’s a four point drop from the previous week. The report indicates the conditions of soybean fields statewide declined slightly as well.

A lack of rain is putting more stress on livestock and the U-S-D-A indicates less than half of Iowa pasture land for grazing is in good to excellent shape.

Jim Field visits with Freese-Notis Meteorologist Dan Hicks about our recent run of hot, dry weather.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (11.7MB)

Subscribe: RSS

The 2022 Cass County Fair Beef Show was held on Monday and the Grand Champion selection capped off the final full day of the fair. The Supreme Overall Market Animal went to Morgan Will of the Benton Franklin 4-H Club. Morgan showed the 4-H Grand Champion Market Steer and Market Animal before winning the Supreme Overall title.

Reserve Overall Market Animal went to Claire Pellett of the Atlantic FFA. Claire showed the FFA Grand Champion Market Steer and Animal before taking the Supreme Reserve spot.

Other winner in the Beef Show were:

Champion FFA Market Heifer: Logan Eilts.
Reserve Champion FFA Market Heifer: Callee Pellett.
Champion FFA Market Steer: Claire Pellett.
Reserve Champion FFA Market Steer: CeCe Hensley.
Supreme Champion FFA Market: Claire Pellett.
Champion FFA Beef Carcass: Callee Pellett
Reserve Champion FFA Beef Carcass: Malena Woodward.
Champion 4-H Beef Carcass: Claire Pellett.
Reserve Champion 4-H Beef Carcass: Quincey Sorensen.
Grand Champion 4-H Market Heifer: Graham Hagen.
Reserve Grand Champion 4-H Market Heifer: Holden DeVore.
Grand Champion 4-H Market Steer: Morgan Will.
Reserve Grand Champion 4-H Market Steer: Raylea Amos.
Supreme Champion 4-H Market Beef: Morgan Will.
Reserve Supreme Champion 4-H Market Beef: Raylea Amos.
Overall Supreme Champion Beef: Morgan Will.
Reserve Overall Supreme Champion Beef: Claire Pellett.

Watch the full replay of the show here: