Healthy profits from healthy forests: “We can have both,” according to northeast Iowa landowners who have formed the Prairie’s Edge Sustainable Woods Cooperative. It’s an old concept with a new twist. Individuals pool their ideas and assets to pursue a group venture that might overwhelm one person. Several tree farmers launched the cooperative idea in […]

Dave Petty has made a career of taking marginal cropland and overgrazed pastures and turning them into profit on his Iowa River Ranch. Good business and good stewardship go hand-in-hand for this Hardin County beef producer. Along the eastern bank of the picturesque Iowa River, the Petty’s cow/calf, cattle-feeding, and crop operation stretches for seven […]

Shoreline paths and walking trails through the oak grove forest beckon to the visitor. Come in, they bid; embrace nature. The trails are part of an Iowa gem of natural heritage—Woodford-Ashland Lone Tree Point Nature Area—on Clear Lake’s southwest shore. Jan Lovell grew up taking walks there with her “Gramp,” Earl Ashland. She remembers helping […]

Tucked on a hillside in north central Marshall County lies the farm of Carl and Linda Kurtz. On a mid-October afternoon, harvest season is in full swing. On the Kurtz farm, however, the scene is unique. While neighbors whiz through hundred-acre fields of corn and soybeans with thirtyfoot-wide combines, Carl and Linda use a small […]