by Tom Parker By Dale Strickler’s reckoning, he should have hosted a farm tour weeks earlier. Days had been blazing hot under cloudless skies, but as soon as vehicles began rolling in, a cold, steady rain began falling. His farm was the first stop of “Thinking Outside the Box,” a tour spotlighting [...]
by Tom Parker Shortly after the first drivers turned onto a narrow two-track leading into what appeared to be an overgrown pasture a few miles south of Courtland, the low rounded hills to the east disappeared behind a translucent veil. Within minutes, a steady cold drizzle settled in. The rutted entrance to [...]
by Tom Parker First impressions are formed within seventeen seconds, psychologists claim, which was roughly the same amount of time it took for the sleek charter bus to inch down the narrow driveway of Rolling Acres Farm. Passengers, attuned to endless fields of corn and soybeans that marked their passage across Iowa, stared out on [...]
by Tom Parker When the charter bus pulled into the driveway of Ron and Maria Rosmann’s farm near Harlan, Iowa, a division surfaced between the passengers that was solidly gender-oriented. The men—farmers mostly—wanted to see the fields first, to inspect equipment, discuss techniques and complain about the weather, while the women wanted [...]
by Tom Parker In 2015, David Nees earned the Iowa Farm Environmental Leader Award for Sac County, Iowa. It was a big deal. Besides being recognized for his ability to creatively use modern equipment efficiently in an organic operation, for his decades-long focus on developing healthy soils, and for serving as a [...]
By Tom Parker As the big charter bus inched into the narrow entrance to Rolling Acres Farm, one passenger pointed to a blue-and-white “Proud Member of Practical Farmers of Iowa” sign and quipped, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”Indeed they weren’t, which was a rare thing in itself. For until recently, virtually all field excursions [...]
