Iowa Valley Resource Conservation & Development is growing and we are excited to introduce our new team members!

Emmaly joined the Iowa Valley RC&D team in December as the new Senior Program Director of Farmer Development bringing a wealth of experience in food systems, land access, and beginning farmer programming, along with a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities growers encounter in Iowa. She is actively engaged in strengthening community food systems and serves on the Linn County Food Systems Council, Linn County Extension Council, Iowa Urban Agriculture Leadership Committee, and the Women, Food, and Agriculture Network Board.

Emmaly resides in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with her partner, their four children, and rescue dog Angus. An outdoor enthusiast, she enjoys hiking, cycling, backpacking and travel.

Favorite Veggie: I love a good mellow heirloom tomato. My favorites are a gigantic juicy Yellow Brandywine or a Wapsipinicon Peach.

"I am thrilled to join the Iowa Valley RC&D team and contribute to designing programs that empower the next generation of farmers, foster small business growth, build sustainable farming systems, and strengthen food resiliency across Iowa."

Malik joined the Iowa Valley Rc&D team in January as the new Farm Operations and Training Manager, making a return to Grow: Johnson County where he originally served as a Farm Apprentice during the 2018 growing season. Malik has a strong background and passion for local food and increasing availability to local communities. He has previously worked as an AmeriCorps VISTA with Community Food Share in Louisville, Colorado, and with GoFarm Colorado as a Farm Intern, Extern, and Apprentice. Bringing experiences and insights from his farming experiences, Malik hopes to use his skills to build a more just, resilient, and sustainable food system.

Malik resides in Iowa City, Iowa with his partner and their Golden Retriever. He enjoys taking time to bake, cook, read, and write, as well as getting outdoors with biking, hiking, and foraging.

Favorite Veggie: That’s so tough! Eating: I can’t get enough of a good cherry tomato, once you grow them yourself it changes everything! Isis Candy and Chocolate Cherry tomatoes are so colorful and delicious. Growing: I love seeing Okra in the field, some of the most beautiful flowers you can grow!

“I’m beyond excited to be a part of the IVRCD team and re-engage our communities by providing good food and education for our new and beginning farmers. I look forward to sharing my knowledge with community members, farmers, and getting back in touch with the Iowa soil!”

We’re Hiring!

Iowa Valley Resource Conservation & Development is seeking a Farm Coordinator for the Grow Johnson County Farm. Join our crew! To learn more visit: https://www.iowavalleyrcd.org/job-opportunities

Field Updates From Sarah:

2025 Planning

Winter is for resting...or lots and lots of planning. Many people ask us, “What do you do on a farm in the winter?” Well, every successful farm season starts with hours upon hours of planning. Each year we visit our partner agencies and set up surveys to help us decide what we need to grow more of, what needs to be cut out, and what could be new possibilities. This year we decided to downsize the farm from 6 acres to 4.5 acres. This will allow some of our weediest fields to be put into dense cover crops and help reinvigorate the soil. Also, we hope to give our new staff time to get to know our lovely farm and all its quirks.

One Cold Compost Delivery

Farm season has started! Iowa Valley RC&D bulk orders Vermont Compost for several local farms. Sarah, Emmaly, and Jason pried over 16 tons of frozen compost from a semi-bed as the windchill hovered around -8. This will be used for our plant starts.

Prepping the Tunnels for Spring

Sarah and Malik spent time rabbit-proofing the small hoop house and preparing the germination chamber for spring seed starting. We’ll be starting the small hoop soon for early-season production of greens, including mustard!

Farm Volunteers

The saddest part of our winter season is how little we get to see of our beloved volunteers. Other than the occasional holiday email or smiling face at a farming conference (which we love), we don’t get to see our regular volunteers much over the winter season. One of the first questions our staff asks after the new year is when can we get our volunteers back out to the farm. Thus, I am happy to announce a tentative start date of March 17, 2025, to welcome volunteers back to our greenhouse! We will begin with seeding our spring brassicas, such as broccoli and collards!

Introducing the New Century Farm Fellowship Program!

We're excited to announce the New Century Farm Fellowship (NCFF) – our brand-new farmer development program at Iowa Valley RC&D’s Grow: Johnson County farm! This two-year fellowship is designed to equip aspiring farmers with the hands-on field training, professional experience, and community connections needed to support their farm business goals. In October 2025, the first cohort of five selected fellows will join Iowa Valley RC&D as full-time staff, receiving an hourly wage and employee benefits throughout their first full year.

The fellowship will provide training across several areas:

• Hands-On Farm Training: Fellows will work directly with our Farm Manager and staff at the Grow: Johnson County farm, learning about everything from irrigation systems to crop planning and food safety.

• Personal Production: Each fellow will manage their own 1/8 acre plot throughout the two-year program, and receive a stipend for essential farming supplies in year one – such as seeds, soil, and irrigation equipment – and a dedicated space in our greenhouse.

• Business and Market Education: Through workshops, field days, trips, and farm tours, fellows will get extensive training on topics such as business planning, land access, marketing, and farm finance. They’ll also network with potential customers, vendors, partners, and funders to help jumpstart their farm businesses.

• Mentorship and Networking: Fellows will connect with other farmers, farmer mentors, service providers, land access navigators, and local food businesses to develop relationships that will help them thrive as independent farmers when they graduate the program.

In their second year, fellows will transition to part-time employment at Iowa Valley RC&D while honing in on their individual farm business goals. Fellows will continue to participate in our educational curriculum and manage their own plots at Grow, with the added opportunity for part-time employment on another local farm of their choosing.

NCFF is more than just a training program – it’s a long-term investment in Iowa’s local food system. By offering paid employment and professional support for two years, NCFF aims to reduce some of the pressures new farmers often face, allowing them to fully focus on establishing their farms.

If you're an aspiring farmer with at least two years of experience in farming or home production and want to take the leap toward a farming career, this fellowship could be your perfect next step. Eligible applicants should either live near or be willing to relocate within commuting distance of the GROW farm, and have a passion for learning, growing, and building a farm business alongside other new farmers.

Applications for the first cohort will open in March 2025, and we’ll announce selected fellows in May. We’ll reopen applications annually through 2027, offering spots for three, two-year cohorts (up to fifteen fellows) in total.

Ready to take the next step? You can visit our NCFF website to learn more about the program and to apply (applications will open in March 2025), or reach out to kenna@ivrcd.org for more details. We’re so excited to welcome our first group of fellows this fall!

Can You Dig It? 6th Grade Field Trips Round 2 Winter Edition!

Another group of nearly 400 6th-grade students will be joining us at the Grow Johnson County farm for a day immersed in Agriculture education. The field trip series starts Feb. 11 and runs for 4 consecutive weeks. Students will be participating in activities related to seasonal patterns in the life of a farmer. So what the heck are we going to do in the winter you ask? Our main goal is to stay warm while delivering an engaging learning experience. Students will rotate through four indoor and outdoor activities at the Johnson County Historic Poor Farm.

First up is the greenhouse station where students will get to help seed onions for our 2025 onion crop. Students will help fill pots with our seed-starting potting soil mix and pop little onion seeds on top. We’ll show them how to create a good consistency of water to potting soil ratio to make a mixture much like brownie batter. They will learn about the benefits of having a greenhouse with an automated system to help us control temperature and airflow. Students will see firsthand some of the clever DIY approaches that farmers use like our repurposed commercial refrigerator which we use as a germination chamber.

The Johnson County Historical Society will be leading students through a guided tour of the Dairy barn and the Asylum. This will be an opportunity to introduce students to the history of the Johnson County Historic Poor farm and how it was used in the past compared to how it’s used today. Thus giving students a better sense of place and how policies and practices have shifted and changed over time.

The Classroom and Packshed station will consist of a taste-testing station paired with art. Students will get to try three different types of potatoes, a Oneida Gold, a Purple variety, and a Russet. Each potato will be visually different and have a unique flavor, texture profile, and nutrients. A food scientist will introduce students to how the genetic makeup of different types of potatoes creates the pigments that give the potato its color and how these flavonoid pigments are related to the antioxidants and nutritional content in each type of tatter. In the packshed station they will be walking through a soil tunnel provided by the Natural Resource Conservation Service which will provide a basic look at soil types, the importance of soil, and how to keep soil healthy. Then Iowa Flood Center education staff will do a watercolor soil painting activity where youth will get to paint with soil and unleash their creative inspiration from the day.

Johnson County Conservation naturalists will keep kids moving with a hike through some of the habitat areas on the farm including the prairie, woodland, and wetland. Highlighting the importance and benefits of how these habitat areas support the ecological health of our farm. We’re hoping for snow to do some wildlife tracking to determine what critters are moving around the farm in the winter.

Needless to say, we’re excited to host students for this unique wintertime field trip.

We’re gearing up and looking forward to a fantastic season! We’ll see you when the soil thaws!

Summer’s already over? When did that happen?!

We’re writing to you today just as we’re putting the farm to sleep for the season, with the tractors running in the background. So much has happened in the last three months, but to really sum it up: this season has been awesome. We haven’t done final calculations just yet, but we’re on track to significantly surpass last year’s total poundage of veggies.

What were the best harvest highlights, you ask? That’s easy (there were just so many)! The melon field this summer was a huge success. Every time we thought we were finished with it, there were suddenly more to harvest. Every variety gave us a bumper crop -- watermelon, cantaloupe, and a handful of interesting heirlooms -- and boy, did they taste good. One of the four-year-old recipients was excited because, “you can only get the good yellow watermelon at daycare.” 

We have to give a shout out to our okra crop this year, too. Three days a week for more than two months, without fail, our dedicated volunteers ran through our (very large) field of okra, harvesting hundreds of pounds each time. Okra is quite popular with our partners, and though it was itchy, we never missed a day! That said, we didn’t cry when it was finally time to mow it down.

The sweet potatoes were quite lovely, as well. While a little smaller on average than last year’s, we had far less rodent damage and higher quality yields. Harvesting those babies is a big job. First, we have to remove the vines by hand so we don’t damage the potatoes sticking out of the ground. Then, we pull out all the landscaping fabric we use to keep weeds down between the rows. Finally, we use the tractor to take an undercutting tool down each row to loosen the clumps of sweet potatoes before picking them up by hand. Thankfully, we had enthusiastic help from our volunteers with IDT (Integrated DNA Technologies), and everyone had a blast with harvesting.

Equally enthusiastic volunteers from CIVCO Medical Solutions helped us finish up our garlic processing and field clean-up earlier in October. We’ll be replanting some of that garlic this week into one of our no-till fields for next season. We’ve made record time with the field clean ups this year, all thanks to the many remarkable volunteers we’ve had. Grow: Johnson County wouldn’t be what it is without all of you, and we thank you all for your dedication and hard work!

No-Till? No Problem!

Grow hosted its second annual No-Till Field Day on September 10th. As you probably know, Grow has several fields in a three-year no-till trial. We host field days to open up our trial fields to the public and share our experiences. There have been some successes (and some definite failures), but we hope that by making the mistakes here at Grow, it’ll be easier for future farmers to implement no-till practices into their own systems. Iowa State University (ISU) and the Rodale Institute attended to talk about findings with some of their own vegetable and grain no-till trials. 

The NRCS brought a rainfall simulation to show how different farming practices impact soil quality. They tested four samples total in their demonstration: two no-till locations from the Grow farm, and two mostly bare conventional samples. We were able to see just how much extra water is fully absorbed into no-till soil, and how much cleaner infiltrated water is. 

No-till practices reduce erosion, soil loss, and keep more moisture in the soil, among other benefits. That said, they also present challenges. In our case, all of our no-till fields have nitrogen and other nutrient deficits. Despite adding organic fertilizers, our fall brassicas, although bigger than last year, were still only about a quarter of the size they should have been. We have one year left for our three year experiment, and we are excited to continue learning what to do and what not to do when it comes to no-till farming. 

Can You Dig It? 6th Grade Field Trips

Kids are like plants: give them sunshine, open air, water, and they will grow. Sprinkle in some pepper picking and potato washing and they just might grow into the next generation of farmers.  

This fall, we’ve welcomed over four hundred sixth grade students from across the Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD) to the Johnson County Historic Poor Farm (JCHPF) for Grow’s biggest education initiative yet. 

With the help of many wonderful partners including Global Food Project, the Iowa Flood Center, Iowa City Natural Resource Conservation Service, Garden Bridge, Grow: Johnson County volunteers, and ICCSD staff the students moved through six different stations in various locations on the farm. The students learned about vegetable production, community gardening, and conservation projects taking place at the farm. Here is a quick snapshot of some of the engagement with students. 

At the garlic station, students helped process this season’s cured garlic crop. While cutting the stalks and roots, they cleaned up and packaged the bulbs in five-pound mesh bags for distribution to our partner agencies. The sixth graders discussed growing methods for this hardy bulb that is planted in the fall, survives winter’s freezing temps, and is the first thing to shoot up out of the ground come spring. The brave ones even tasted the raw garlic cloves for health (or to ward off vampires).  

The ag & environment station featured topics where students learned about two environmental factors in farming: hydrologic conditions and soil health. Students learned about the Iowa Flood Center’s hydrologic monitoring station at the JCHPF. They were introduced to each of the hydrostation’s components, analyzed data collected at the site over time, and considered how this type of technology might assist farmers in making decisions about how to manage their farm. 

Students learned about warm season crop production, like peppers and tomatoes, and how the heck you know when they are ripe to pick at the pepper station. Students learned about the efficiency of drip irrigation systems, what we mean by “local food system,” and how spending money buying local products has benefits for the local economy.

The packshed station was a crowd favorite where students helped wash and pack potatoes for distribution. We’ve never seen such enthusiasm for potatoes! The students enjoyed putting the dirty potatoes on the conveyor belt of the produce washer and watching them come out clean on the other end. They also helped us pack forty-pound potato bags that we sent out to partner agencies that week.

The Global Food Project (GFP) station offered a window into another community farming program at the JCHPF. Staff at GFP gave students a tour through the diverse community garden plots grown.

At the prairie station, students had the opportunity to sip mountain mint tea, learn some basic botany, and connect the dots around the myriad of ecosystem services provided by the prairie habitat at the farm. Students saw a switch grass plant display showing the difference between the sizes of the plants above ground and below. These deep-rooted plant communities anchor into the soil and act like a sponge, soaking up excess water and nutrients which minimizes soil runoff and pollution in waterways. 

We will host another batch of future farmers – ahem, sixth graders – for winter and spring sessions in 2025. In May, every sixth grade student in the district will participate in a Can You Dig It? field trip at the farm,  hopefully inspiring future stewards of the land. 

Some Big Changes Ahead

Finally, we’ve got a couple of big announcements. Both Claire Zabel and Dusty Sanor, two of our farm team members, will be leaving Iowa Valley this fall. Claire, who has been with Iowa Valley since 2020, helped build Grow: Johnson County into what it is today. She’ll be moving on to greener pastures (literally) to manage her family’s farm near Rochester, Minnesota. Dusty, the farm manager for Grow for the last year, will be taking some time to spend with her partner here in Iowa City and live life to its fullest. We’re sad to see them go, but excited for their new adventures. We’re looking forward to bringing on new staff members this winter. Watch out for updates soon!

Apprentice Spotlight

Each summer, Grow: Johnson County welcomes 2-3 apprentices to assist in daily farm work. These apprentices work the farm anywhere from eight to twenty or so weeks, learning the ins and outs of organic vegetable production on a small scale and familiarizing themselves with Grow’s place in the community as a non-profit farm. They also help us with organizing volunteer work as well as making sure we don’t get too far behind on daily farm tasks through the busy season. Over the years, there have been 24 apprentices who have worked at Grow and each come with new perspectives and future ambitions. This year we have Anna, Liz, and Jonah.

Anna is originally from Story City, Iowa and just graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Global Health Studies and a certificate in Sustainability. She has volunteered with Basic Needs at Iowa, the International Rescue Committee, and at the University of Iowa’s food pantry. She has a passion for working in food systems and food security. She wanted to work with Grow to better understand organic farming practices and all its challenges. With her experience at Grow, she is planning to work with Wy’East RCD through AmeriCorp as a Rural Resiliency Specialist in order to develop a resiliency plan for a rural innovation hub.

Liz has just graduated from the University of Iowa with a bachelor's degree in Sustainable Sciences. Liz was a volunteer at Grow before taking on the apprenticeship. She would like to spend some more time having adventures and learning all she can before settling down into a career path. She has been accepted by the North American Language and Culture Assistants Program, and she will be flying off to Spain in September. There, she hopes to become more fluent in Spanish.

Jonah will be graduating in December from the University of Iowa with his bachelor’s degree in Sustainability Sciences and is spending his last Iowa summer enjoying the outdoors with us at Grow. He has always had a passion for outdoor adventuring and dreams of a world with more sustainable farming practices in which people can easily live and work together to provide basic needs in their own communities. The next step for Jonah is to head out to Moab, Utah to work as a wildland firefighter next spring.

These three have been a joy to work with this season. Their hard work and wonderful attitudes has made this season one of the best seasons yet.

Meet our new Business Education Manager, Kenna! 

Kenna Bell joined Iowa Valley RC&D in June to help us expand our farmer education opportunities here at Grow Johnson County. Over the past few weeks, Kenna has been immersing herself in the Iowa Valley community, and she’s particularly enjoyed working alongside our volunteers and apprentices at the farm. She is at Grow most Fridays and is eager to connect with everyone, so be sure to stop by if you’re around!

Originally from Des Moines, Kenna moved to Iowa City last year to pursue a Master’s in Sustainable Development. While in school, her most recent work involved developing education and outreach programs for farmers and food-farm businesses across the state. In the years prior, she accumulated a range of experiences across the food system, from spending a summer on Dusty’s farm in Illinois (yes, that Dusty!) to managing a restaurant in Utah. Each opportunity has deepened her understanding and passion for food justice, and she’s excited to bring that to her new role here at Grow. 

Kenna is joining us at an exciting juncture as we launch into some brand-new projects. Currently, she is helping us design Fresh Connect, which is set to begin by the end of the year.

Fresh Connect is a free, six-month farm business coaching program that will provide training on effective marketing and business planning strategies. Participants will receive a $2,000 stipend, one-on-one consultations with a marketing specialist, and monthly classes designed to help farmers implement their individual marketing and business management systems. 

More information about Fresh Connect – including a full syllabus and application – will be released later this summer. Stay tuned for updates!

Cucumbers - Cousin of the Melon 

If you’ve been to the farm lately, it’s likely you’ve encountered the corridor of cucumbers growing in the greenhouse. Last fall, we received requests from community partners for pickling type cucumbers, especially from sites prepping food for kiddos. Since it was time to rotate tomato production out of the greenhouse, the cucumbers seemed like a no-brainer to fit into the crop rotation.

Once we pulled the early spring carrots out of the greenhouse in May, the apprentices experienced their first in-ground planting task, installing four 80 ft long rows of cucumber transplants. The greenhouse frame provides a simple and effective trellising environment for these incredibly long climbing vines; all they need is a string and some guidance. Currently, we’re harvesting nearly 60 pounds of little cucumbers a week - hopefully we can keep up with them! 

Now onto the juicy cucumber botany. Botanically speaking, Cucumis sativus belongs to the Cucurbitaceace family. Say that 3 times fast! Other plants in this family include watermelon, muskmelon, pumpkin, and squash. Centuries of selective breeding have created about 100 varieties available today. We’re growing a pickling variety called “Cool Customer,” a favorite of farm manager Dusty! Cucumbers are annual vines that are considered a “warm season” crop which should be planted out in May after the chance of frost has passed.

Cool Customer is a monoecious variety, meaning the plants produce both male and female flowers on the same plant. Monoecious plants are insect-pollinated; their male and female flowers require pollinators like bumble bees, honey bees, sweat bees, ants and flies to form fruits. Parthenocarpic cucumber varieties, on the other hand, do not require pollination to produce fruit. These are generally better to grow wherever pollinating insects are restricted.

Cucumber pollination is fun stuff! Did you know that the cucumber fruit shape is impacted by pollination? The fruits grow straight when they receive enough pollination and curved when flowers are pollination deficient. I guess you could say when it comes to pollinators, “summer” is better than others. Individual cucumber flowers are only open for a single day, so the more beneficial insects you have on site, the greater the chance at successful fruit set. It can take anywhere from 5-8 visits to a single flower before pollination is complete. So next time you bite through a cuke fruit remember you’re eating a mature ovary of that single-day yellow flower provided by a pollinator near you.

Upcoming Events

Historic Poor Farm Open House - Tuesday, August 6th 4-8pm

Johnson County Historic Poor Farm would like to welcome the public to this free, all-ages event to celebrate the upcoming launch of event space rentals and to familiarize the community with all that is happening at the farm. The open house will feature food trucks, informational booths from onsite partners, a prize drawing for a discounted rental space of your choice, and plenty of programming to keep everyone engaged. Grow is hosting an Evening Harvest during this event from 5-6:30pm!

Global Food Project Farmers Market

Some of the gardeners in Global Food Project are selling their unique produce at the Poor Farm every Thursday evening (5-7pm) under the eaves of the Dairy Barn. The market will run July 18 - September 26. Snap, cash, and checks accepted. Come check it out and support Grow’s neighbors!

Evening Harvests at Grow

Now that many summer crops are ramping up production, we will host a few evening harvest events to keep up with them! We’ll need help with green beans in August and peppers and watermelon in September. Keep an eye on Dusty’s substack for those dates as they approach.

No-Till Field Day - Tuesday, September 10th (2-5pm)

Grow is hosting its annual event to highlight our no-till organic vegetable field trials. No-till farming can increase the overall health and nutrient content of soil. Attendees can learn about the equipment and methods we’re using, and see what’s worked so far.

Serious Season Progress

We kicked off the year early this season, seeding carrots directly into the soil in our greenhouse and planting storage onion seeds in the first weeks of February. This is the earliest start to the season Grow: Johnson County has ever had, and we’re already harvesting some small carrots here and there (along with some surprise dill and cilantro). We’re planning to harvest the majority of them in the coming weeks, and our first delivery to partners.  

We were able to get in the ground outside in the first week of April, successfully planting out about half of our onion crop. With slightly less land to work with this season, we adjusted our approach to the onions. Rather than planting three spaced out rows to a bare bed, we put them in tightly-spaced beds of plastic mulch, allowing us to fit more of them in a smaller space. It’s a great plan in theory, but after some difficulties with the plastic mulch laying implement, we may have to reconsider our approach for the second half of the onion plantings coming up in the next few days, weather permitting. 

Otherwise, though, planting this spring has been smooth-sailing! Last week, Dusty and Sarah, along with many of our staff and volunteers, pushed hard to get the majority of our early plantings finished ahead of all the big storms. It was a highly successful endeavor, resulting in five fields fully planted, including two fields of potatoes, two of brassica transplants, and one with our bok choi, lettuce, beets, and early carrots. We’re ever so slightly ahead of schedule at this point, and that’s a great place to be!

The weather this spring has been more agreeable than recent years, too. It’s been generally cool, and we’ve had lots of rain events, rather than the drought conditions we’ve been seeing lately. After every big planting, we’ve had a big (but not too big) rain. It’s just enough to water in our crops and allow them to thrive without causing excessive erosion or standing water, so we’re in a good spot to jump start the year. 

We wouldn’t have been able to get all this planting done so early if it weren’t for our truly amazing volunteers! All of us here at Grow have been blown away by the number of folks coming out to help us during our planting events so far this spring, and we can’t thank you enough. We all can’t wait to work with everyone more as our regular volunteer hours kick in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8-12, beginning May 1st. 

Climatize me, Cap’n!

As the climate changes, so must we change our farming practices little by little. Winters are getting milder and spring and summer are heating up quicker, so we have to find ways to adapt so our crops don’t struggle. Spring crops, like broccoli and lettuce, do NOT like when temperatures rise above a nice 75 degrees. (Same, broccoli. Same.) So when springtime gets cut short we lose yield. One thing we can do is choose varieties that are bred to do well in the heat so they can withstand the shorter spring without wilting or crumbling to dust.

Water is another huge concern with climate change and farming. The frequency and timing of rain events, and the amount of rainfall can make or break any crop. Rain events are not as predictable as they once were and Iowa has been experiencing serious drought. Johnson County has been doing better this spring, but some parts of Northeast Iowa are still in severe drought. Assuming most summers will be excessively dry and hot, good irrigation systems are critical to a successful harvest of vegetables.

At Grow, we have a unique situation where several farms and gardeners are watering their crops from the same underground well system. During drought seasons, everyone on the farm can be drawing water at the same time which leads to no one having enough pressure to effectively irrigate. One solution would be to get bigger well pumps and bigger pipes that carry more water, but this is incredibly expensive and disruptive. Another solution would be to install a holding tank that pumps reserve water from the ground overnight so it’s easier to bring water across the farm during the day when everyone is there. This is also fairly expensive but we’re looking into it. 

For now, the best solutions we have are to stagger the time of day when different farms use water and to use drip irrigation. Drip line irrigation is a very efficient method developed by a Polish-Israeli engineer for use in the desert climes of the Middle East. (It’s cool. Look it up!) Plastic drip line hoses only put water right next to the plant roots. This uses much less water than sprinkler systems that spray water over the whole field.

Another tool we use to increase resilience at the farm is cover crops. Cover crops protect the soil from intense rainfall and hold moisture in the soil for longer. Compared to bare tilled fields, cover crops have the most benefit during drought because of the increased water holding capacity. Organic matter content in the soil acts like a big sponge holding onto water and releasing nutrients slowly over time - all good things for our plants!

Tater Tot Time Education

Can You Dig It? youth education is going virtual to reach some of our community partners’ younger learners. Lisa and Julia made a fun 4-minute video featuring the humble onion. Preschoolers will learn about how a small onion seed sprouts into a baby onion plant, then grows into a large edible bulb that people across the world eat and love. We’ll follow up with the progress of onion plant growth and a video about the harvesting process so the littles can learn more about where their food comes from. 

Lisa has also been meeting with 9th grade students at West High School. In the Earth, Space, and Science class, students are working on the STEM Innovator Project, where they come up with solutions to solve problems of environmental sustainability in their community and on the farm. Plastic waste from old drip tape, plastic mulching, high tunnels, growing trays, and more on organic farms like Grow is a widespread, ongoing issue. We’re hoping the students can come up with some creative solutions to help mitigate plastic use. 

The farm team also hosted 10 local teens from the Iowa City Community School district for an Agriculture and the Environment Day in collaboration with Johnson County Conservation. 

We toured the farm, talked about food miles, important ecosystem services we use on the farm, how purchasing locally ensures that farmers earn a higher percentage of every dollar spent on food, and enjoyed a locally sourced and prepared lunch from chef Chris Grebner from The Lively in West Branch.

AND they helped us seed in the greenhouse! We loved having youth out to the farm to learn how they can be good stewards of their environment and help make positive change in their own community. 

Partner Spotlight

North Liberty Food Pantry (NLCP) has been one of Grow’s partners since 2016. In addition to the pantry’s grocery services for North Liberty residents, NLCP has a robust community garden space, the Growing Together Garden, for folks to engage with food production. NLCP will be hosting garden events this spring to encourage the public to get involved with growing and healthy eating. Here are some upcoming events you can plug into if you’d like to get involved:

Container Garden Event May 13th

Container Garden Event with Grow Johnson County May 16th

Open Gardening Tuesdays 10-12 & Thursdays 4-6pm through the growing season  

✔️ Popcorn! ✔️A movie! ✔️ A good cause!

Join us at FilmScene for a screening of the documentary Common Ground on Wednesday, May 22nd to support Grow: Johnson County. Common Ground is the sequel to the documentary Kiss the Ground, which focused on the importance of soil health. Common Ground turns the light toward the money, power, and politics behind our food systems.

The film will be followed by a panel discussion with Iowa Valley RC&D Executive Director Jason Grimm, Kate Giannini from the University of Iowa Department of Hydroscience and Engineering, Natasha Wilson from West Fork Farmstead, and Tommy Hexter from Iowa Farmers Union.

The FilmScene Community Collaboration is a pay-what-you-can admission with a suggested price of $10 per person; the proceeds directly support Grow. The film begins at 7pm and is followed by a panel of speakers from our local food system.

Grow Has a Record Year

Grow: Johnson County hit a milestone in 2023 by producing 40,934 lbs of fresh produce on about 5 acres. This is the largest harvest of the program’s history, and it happened in a drought year! We attribute this incredible level of production to more staff time dedicated to the farm which helped us stay on top of weeds and timely harvests. This isn’t just a feel-good number though. Grow was able to send out more food than ever before at a time when the number of people using food pantries has skyrocketed. Despite sending almost 10,000 pounds more than usual, there is still more need for fresh produce in our community.

Grow’s partner agencies let us know the types of crops their clients would like to see. In response to this feedback, we added more culturally-specific crops to our fields that may otherwise be hard to find fresh. For those who came to our big pepper harvests, you know we added a lot of new peppers! Last season we added Thai hot, Shishito, and Cayenne peppers, White African eggplant, amaranth leaves, and sweet potato vines.  Most of these crops were well received, so we intend to grow them again in the upcoming season, along with a handful of new varieties. 

Partner Spotlight - Coralville Community Food Pantry

Coralville Community Food Pantry is one of Grow’s largest distribution partners. They serve a diverse population of families with a member choice food distribution model, meaning people get to freely choose which food and personal care items meet their unique needs, such as our newly added Thai Chili peppers. 

CCFP hosts a quarterly Free Community Meal to bring people together to share a delicious themed meal.  Friday, March 29th is the Global Community Meal. For this meal, partners and community members make a dish that serves around 250-300 bite sized portions to share with everyone. It’s an opportunity to bridge cultural gaps and bring more awareness to the different types of food we all enjoy! You can find more information about the event at their website. Hope to see you there. 

For the love of onions! <3 

While we celebrate the success of one season, we immediately begin the work for the next. Every year we receive feedback from our partner agencies that onions are one of the most beloved items we produce. We could never grow enough to satisfy the desire for these sweet and savory treats. We invite you to celebrate onions with us on Valentine’s Day. Come escape the frigid temperatures and help us seed onions in the greenhouse on February 14th from 9am-noon.

Summer Apprenticeship Opportunity

Applications to the Grow Summer Apprenticeship program will open February 5th! Apprentices are paid to learn organic vegetable production through hands-on activities and will gain a better understanding of Grow’s organic growing methods while maintaining a healthy farm environment. 

Last year, Howaida and Andon were some of the youngest apprentices to join the crew; both had just graduated from their senior year of high school. Howaida was a champ in the packshed and easily picked up the fast-paced system of distribution. There is no shortage of weeds in organic farming, but thankfully Andon had a knack for weeding! His attention to detail contributed to better productivity by decreasing competition from weeds. 

Each season we refine our approach with the apprenticeship program. We’ll be adding more formal education sessions, opportunities to engage in workshops and field days, as well as tours at other farms in the area. This is a great opportunity for folks to build new skills while engaging in the local food system in a deeper way. Farming is dynamic work; the task list changes throughout the seasons along with the apprentices’ skill sets. The apprenticeship is available to people of all ages and backgrounds. Please share this opportunity with anyone who wants to learn farming! Find the full position description and application here.

The Big Clean

With the addition of our new farm manager, Dusty, we’ve been able to tackle a big project at the farm: organization! The farm has undergone a number of changes in the last couple of years with the construction of new buildings and storage areas, and with this growth came a little chaos. 

This past fall, Dusty and Farm Coordinator Sarah sorted through everything on the farm, allowing us to donate some things we no longer need. The rest is now well-organized and clearly labeled, making it quick and easy for any staff members or volunteers to find tools, hardware, irrigation supplies, or anything else they’re looking for. We’re hoping this big cleanout will help streamline the work at the farm (it’s always faster to find the tools you need when they have a designated spot to live, and as we all know, time is food!).

 As an added perk of the organization project, Dusty and Sarah were able to repurpose a small hoop house, which was previously used for tool storage and post-harvest produce handling. When we moved into the brand-new packshed last fall, the hoop house became something of a catch-all for farm…stuff. After a few days of hard work getting it cleared out, the building will now be used as a small greenhouse to grow cherry tomatoes and lettuce this summer – much more fun and productive than just collecting junk! 

Recipe: Squash and Feta Pasta Sauce

Still hanging on to a few winter squashes? Change up your pasta game with this delicious, simple, hearty sauce! Use any small to medium sized sweet winter squash, such as butternut, kabocha, or acorn.

Ingredients: 

• 1 Winter Squash

• 8oz Feta cheese

• 3 Garlic cloves

• Oil

• Sage

• Thyme

Instructions:

1. Cut butternut or acorn squash in half. Cover open sides in oil. Cut the feta cheese block in half and place each half into the squash. Season with salt, pepper, garlic, sage, and thyme.

2. Bake at 400 degrees for an hour or until squash is tender. (If using kabocha squash or are unable to cut through the whole squash, place the entire squash in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes. This will allow squash to soften enough to cut into halves.)

3. Put the warmed feta into a blender and scoop the softened squash out of the skin and add to the blender.

4. Blend until smooth. 

5. Add to any pasta of your choice. 

Welcome to the Grow: Johnson County Newsletter on Substack! 

We are switching service platforms from Mailchimp to Substack. What does this mean for you? Not much! “Between the Rows” will still be an e-newsletter delivered right to your inbox and will still be quarterly, we’re just switching to a more user-friendly format.  The change reflects some big changes at Grow’s parent organization, Iowa Valley RC&D. Iowa Valley RC&D has been growing its team and taken on some big, exciting projects in the last year. To meet new project goals, we implemented a new organizational structure, hired two new staff members, and shifted job responsibilities around. All this has been done to make sure everyone has a fair workload and we are able to do quality work.

This new platform will allow more of our staff to write as contributors, which means you will hear from more voices, more often! Using Substack, we can focus entirely on quality content to keep you all up-to-date on farm happenings. In addition to our newsletter, we hope to keep you posted on a host of other topics, including educational programming, our weekly veggie distribution, and what we are up to, and why! It also allows our readers (that’s you!) space to be an active participant, to comment on our posts so we can have more of a dialogue with you all. We’d love your feedback on what we’re doing. 

So stay tuned, we’ll keep delivering fun and informative stories (including puns!) to your inbox. That’s how we broc-and-roll.

Meet Our New Farm Manager, Dusty!

The need for fresh fruits and vegetables is higher than ever as food pantries across the state of Iowa are breaking records. In 2023, Johnson county saw a 70-90% increase of people who turned to food pantries for support. 

Since the Grow: Johnson County program began, we have grown and distributed 190,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables. Grow needs to increase production to meet the demand at food pantries in the county. This means Grow must, well, grow.

Meet Dusty! Dusty Sanor was hired in September as the new Farm Manager for Grow to help us expand and improve farm operations. She will be managing day-to-day farm operations, volunteers, and annual crop planning. With this addition, we’ve increased our farm crew from 3 to 4 full time staff. We’re excited about the new energy she will bring to the role.

Before Grow, Dusty owned and operated a ten acre vegetable farm in Western Illinois for ten years. She relocated to Hills for this position, and lives with her two cats, Cricket and Wolfie.

She's excited to join the Grow team because she really loves agriculture and enjoys producing food for people.

“With this opportunity, I'll also have the chance for community development and farmer education, which I'm really looking forward to.”

With Dusty’s experience and a bigger team, the work will be more manageable and Grow will be better for it.

P[art]nerships

Can You Dig It? Is Grow’s educational program. The program connects youth and teen groups with farm and garden experiences at community and school gardens and at Grow: Johnson County.

At the end of September, we partnered with teens from the United Action for Youth program for a natural dye event at Anna Geyer’s Land Alliance Folk School near Iowa City. The kids got to take home Grow bandanas using two different dyeing methods. We used marigold flowers and Blush onion skins from the Grow farm to create natural dye baths and  fresh cut flowers from Anna’s garden for a bundle dye. We also toured the grazing paddock and fed Shetland sheep, which was a nice addition since Grow doesn’t have animals. She shears the sheep and uses the wool to make garments. The kids made some wonderful natural dye art and had a fun time creating together. 

The success of the event was in large part because of partnerships with community organizations. Our screen print was made by an area artist, Craig Volesky. Kalmia Strong at Public Space One in Iowa City opened up the print studio and taught us how to screen print bandanas. Anna Geyer and the Land Alliance Folk School made their space welcoming and available for the dyeing event.

Check out some photos from Public Space One and the natural dye event below. 

Greenhouse Work Exchange

This October, Grow finally got new plastic coverings installed on the greenhouse. The rolls of new plastic had been sitting in storage for a few months, awaiting good weather and a big enough group to get it done. The process of replacing plastic requires a large group of people because any small gust of wind, even as low as 5-6 mph can carry it away like a sail! Lots of hands make a safer and easier job of it.

Thankfully, we partnered with the staff at SILT, Sustainable Iowa Land Trust, to do a work exchange and replaced the plastic on two greenhouses in two days. In exchange for helping us with our greenhouse, we helped Santos Lopez at Morse Farm (a SILT farm) replace their greenhouse plastic. T.D. Holub at Garden Oasis Farm led the process effectively at Morse farm, and Santos was an excellent host. We are grateful for the extra help on these big jobs.

The plastic on greenhouses (or high tunnels) should be replaced every 5 years. The plastic gets weathered over time, developing holes and cloudiness. This makes it far less effective at retaining heat, requiring more energy to keep it warm in the cooler months. Both of these greenhouse builds used two layers of plastic with air pumped between them. This air layer provides better insulation and performance over the long-term.

Pep In Our Step

Our pepper field was bigger, longer, and more fiery than ever before. It turns out that several 475 foot long beds = a lot of peppers! It became apparent as we entered August that we were going to need some help with harvesting. 

Throughout the months of August and September, we held four evening pepper harvest events and let folks in the community know that we could use extra hands, and boy did they show up! 

A big THANK YOU to Johnson County Master Gardeners and all the volunteers who helped us keep up with our pepper field this year. We truly couldn’t have managed without you.  

If you are interested in joining us for future events, keep an eye on our events page on our website. We’ll start needing help soon after the new year - seeding starts in January.

It Takes a Community | Here’s How You Can Help our Partner Organization Table to Table

Table to Table, a food rescue organization, picks up our vegetable distribution on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays throughout the growing season and distributes our fresh produce to food pantries, school lunch programs, early care, and elder care sites throughout the county. 

Table to Table’s mission is to keep wholesome, edible food from going to waste by collecting it from donors and distributing to those in need through food banks in and around Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.  

Table to Table rescues food year–round. You can sign up to be a Rescue Route Volunteer or to help with gleaning, or ​​harvesting excess produce from farms and orchards in the area. Volunteer at Table to Table by visiting their website here.

Purchase Merch, Support Our Program

With the help of Raygun, you can now support our program in style, while also representing causes that are important to us, including soil health, supporting local vegetable producers, and a more just food system for all. Buy one (or all!) of our tees in our Raygun shop.