Iowa Life Highlights Rural Iowans

I met David in college at the University of Iowa, and when we finished school we moved to Waterloo and he practiced law and I taugh After that, we were ready to come back to th And so I taught in Waterloo and he farmed the family farm.

When David died, it was hard for me to see a way with managing acres and acres of and soybeans.

I had good dinners, but it was still a new task for So I started thinking, What else could it be like and what could And Prairie came to mind.

John Madsen's book, Where the Sky Began, came out, a and I both read it.

We loved the idea of Iowa's hist My husband was a big fan of hist so the thought of Iowa's landsca as it was 200 years ago intrigue This beautiful landscape of nati grasses, forms kept our interest, and that was always in the backg 2016.

My husband died in May and it came to me then.

And then the next summer I contacted Laura Jackson.

We had planted some strips of pr just a couple miles south of her I didn't know her then, but something must have made an impression because a year lat after her husband had passed awa she called us up and had this id It's amazing what happens when y any small bit of prairie.

You know, the if you build it, they will come.

You know, the bees show up.

Butterflies show up.

Somehow the birds find it.

And and we'll raise a family the and try to make a go of it.

It's not easy to plant a prairie, but it can be done in one year.

But the management is forever.

They need fire.

And woody invasion is going to h And then you kind of get somethi that goes out of control.

And then a lot of times they the taking them out because they're just too much tr So we started talking in early 2 and then, you know, worked through the various hoops and logistics of working w UNI foundation so that we could get a permanent easement on the land We had to really convince the un that this was a good idea, that this is something that we could take care of prope and not just end up with an alba around our necks, you know?

So we worked out a map that said all right, we're going to do thi chunk in 2018 and then this chun and then 2021, 22.

But this field was very clean.

It didn't have a lot of issues w because it had been farmed for s So it was a ideal spot.

Now, right here is like one litt that's just encapsulates all the things that are blooming right n Pale purple cornflower is just starting to b The white is wild quinine.

The orange butterfly weed is just stunning.

It's just like neon orange.

This other white I think is wild And it is so weird.

It's got that bizarre shape and they aren't very prevalent, but when they are, they just glo I don't have children, so it's wonderful for me.

I can walk on the prairie every but I want to share it and have young people in schools come and about the history and appreciate being outside in all this beauty To work out looking a different to look for insects.

We're looking at sign of insects meaning some of the leaves that woven together or a plant is ben and we go down the stem and we find the little hole of t in the stem.

So this is a planted prairie.

How do you get the insects that need these plants?

Here They come on their own.

How do they find it?

Where's the next prairie?

Around And yet they find this.

I think it's.

Exciting.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

So it changes every day, particularly this time of the ye after the prairie was burned, that everything is starting to f It's like spring every day.

It's an unending, joyful surpris to come to the prairie every day Well, it was about 85%.

Prairie and the rest, wetlands and woodl The landscape we see today is almost entirely and soybeans, with only very tiny fractions of of that agricultural grassland that used to be there.

You know, I think we're we're doing what w in the face of some pretty stagg facts.

You know, climate change and the know, agriculture continues to i So we try to save as much as we So something makes it so.

Is the glass 99% empty or 1% ful But, you know, there are lots of who appreciate Prairie and want to have some, you know.

So I don't think anyone should be intimidated into thinking, well, I have to have to give them 300 No, You know, but it's just it's an astonishin At the dedication, I quoted Will We come and go, but the land is always here.

The people who love and understa it are the people who own it for a little while.

And then I said, my little while I'm here with you people who love the prairie and dedicating it to you and your stewardship.

But I want you to remember that the original people who loved and understood it cared for it for thousands of years and maintained it as prairie.

When you watch cowboy mounted shooting, you can't help but think you're being transported back in time to the Wild West.

The sport works like this.

Competitors ride their horses through a course containing ten balloons.

The rider has two single action revolvers loaded with blank ammunition that they use to shoot the balloons.

They're scored on time and accuracy, facing penalties for missed balloons or not running the pattern correctly.

There are cowboy mounted shooting organizations in more than 40 states across the country, and here in Iowa.

One family is taking the reins on growing the sport.

We live in southwest Iowa.

We're about 11 miles northeast of Creston, and we're kind of in the middle of nowhere.

We always say we're a family that's stuck together and, we enjoy farming and we love horses.

The Travis extended family is made up of nearly four dozen people, and they are especially tight knit.

Most of them live within ten miles of each other, and many of them work together, raising quarter horses.

Bruce Travis is one of the patriarchs, and he was the first person in the family to compete in Cowboy Mountain shooting.

You know, I'd heard about it probably in the 90s.

Todd Jackson, one of my best friends, he came to our saddle club one night and showed a film of, Calvary Mount a shooting in the.

When it was just starting.

You got to realize this was the 80s and 90s on the farm, and we didn't hardly had two nickels to rub together, you know, and it looked like fun.

It looked like something that we could compete in really well.

But I remember a couple guns were $500 each year, like, whoa, whoa, you know who could do that?

You know, in 2012.

Another friend, Carl Watson, had been after me and after me to come to a mounted shooting.

He was very involved and it rained one weekend I couldn't do anything else.

I loaded up a horse and went to one of their clinics and I was hooked.

Immediately.

We all thought it was stupid.

We couldn't figure out why he wanted to do that.

What?

You don't have time for that?

We don't have time for hobbies.

And he was going all over doing this.

And then finally I remember it was in 2014 and April, he was shooting at the Iowa Horse Fair at the fairgrounds, and I went and watched him, and I never really watched him before.

I watched him, and I mean, Jamie did as well.

I looked at Jamie, I said, why are we not doing this?

Not long after, the rest of the Travis family got hooked, too.

Now 30 of them compete from eight year old kids to Bruce, who's in his late 60s.

It's a full family sport.

I think that that's why I love it so much is because it's a family event that we all love and we all can do really well at too.

So we are at the Travis Quarter Horses Shoot.

this happens once a year at my parents place.

Look at them.

I like to say it's.

Not controlled chaos.

It's just chaos.

My dad says this, and it's the truth.

If you have to win to have fun, you shouldn't be doing it.

And it's the truth, I mean, in anything, you know, I want to be competitive, and I want to.

I want to do the best of my ability.

And, you know, God's given me these horses.

I want to showcase them the best that I possibly can.

Go, go.

But this weekend, I missed a balloon.

I was so frustrated, but I walked out of the arena and smiled and thought I got the whole rest of the weekend to just have fun and try to get better.

Jamie stopped the clock and 16.414 will add 10s and penalties.

Make that a 26.414 for Jamie Travis.

You don't hear much cussing.

You don't hear much swearing.

You know, there's guys that have bad runs and you don't see guys that were pouting in the corner screaming or having a fit.

Dave, you did the same thing I didn't look like.

But you get all the blues.

They're there to enjoy the sport and enjoy the company.

Half of the fun there is seeing all your friends when you pull into a shoot.

Think about it.

There's as much pressure on you as you want there to be.

But at the end of the day, everybody is cheering for you and everyone wants you to do well.

It's a sport unlike any other.

Nice.

Good job.

Nice job.

Maddie.

Maddie is still an 18.407 And filling in for Maddie.

I'll tell you what.

This is a guy that I look up to.

I have for the last 49 years.

Come on, dad, let's see you get it done.

I don't know how many times I've shot.

Hundreds of times.

I'm still really nervous.

And adrenaline.

Still really fighting.

Gentle Bob is running good.

The minute you go, it's just a rush.

You can run down barrels youre going to bring Bob on home.

Here.

Eight, nine and ten.

Nice round 18.256 and Wayne, I've played with motorcycles most of my life.

I don't think there's anything that can match that rush.

I'm an insurance agent in Creston, and you know, we've not had great weather here in Iowa.

And so there's a lot going through my mind at work.

you know, a lot going through my mind when I get home.

But when I am out there, all I'm thinking about is what I'm doing on my horse.

And it's freeing.

It's a release.

There's no feeling like it.

[Nebbe] Before the United States was founded, it is estimated that 60 million bison roamed the North American Plains.

They were brought to the brink of extinction during the westward expansion of European settlers in the 19th century.

How they were saved is a long story for another time.

But over time, conservationists have come to recognize the important role that bison play in maintaining healthy ecosystems.

Today, several hundred thousand bison live on privately owned land across the United States, including here in Story County.

♪♪ ♪♪ [Jathan Chicoine] You can imagine what it must have looked like hundreds of years ago, vast prairies as far as the eye can see against the backdrop of oak savannahs and bison roaming through.

It would have been something to see for sure.

♪♪ [Jathan Chicoine] I think maybe if I could go back in time that is what I would want to see is the bison and to better understand how they shaped this ecosystem here in Iowa, which we all benefit from, the richness, when you think about the quality of soil, all that, that they were such an important part of it.

It's pretty cool, isn't it?

(nature sounds) [Nebbe] Jathan was raised in Story County and followed in the footsteps of his father and brother by serving in the U.S. Navy.

After leaving the military, he traveled the world and pursued his education before ultimately returning to Iowa where he purchased a herd of bison in 2012.

In addition to his day job in the field of veteran's affairs, Jathan hopes to improve the landscape he grew up on by restoring it back to what it used to be hundreds of years ago.

(truck engine starts) [Jathan Chicoine] One of the most meaningful aspects of military service was being part of something larger than myself.

And so, as I've grown in my life and as I've given over 20 years in veteran's affairs, I also think what is more meaningful?

What is bigger than ourselves than to find ways to improve the land that we're on, that we can leave something in better condition for future generations.

This was all canopy, but this is where the derecho came through and just-- [Jathan Chicoine] Iowa is the heart of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world.

In today's context we're losing that same biodiversity at a rate never experienced before.

And so, we're just really trying to create as rich and biodiverse of an ecosystem as possible with the management of a bison family herd.

This one is just smelling us.

She's coming -- the wind is blowing this way so she's getting our smell.

[Jathan Chicoine] When I say that we're working alongside bison, we really are just giving them freedom to see how they rub against the cedar trees and to understand that they were essential to open up and to keep open the tallgrass prairie ecosystems.

The way that they wallow to create disturbances that allow other species, native species to move in, or better yet creates a little hole for that water to accumulate so that the birds can get drinks.

[Jathan Chicoine] This is an example, this time of year the bison are losing a lot of the fur and so it just catches on these little snags.

And then the birds will come and they'll use that fur and they'll make nests.

[Jathan Chicoine] Reintroducing bison to this landscape, we have learned so much by observing them and just working alongside bison.

They teach us so much about land management and this is just one of those kinds of privileges that we get to see.

[Nebbe] As part of Jathan's mission to reestablish the native ecosystems on his 180-acre property, he partnered with the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service and Practical Farmers of Iowa to restore an ox bow wetland, to help boost native habitat and create cleaner water downstream.

[Jathan Chicoine] What is really cool about this property, it's at the base of the head waters of the Skunk River Watershed.

And so, with this ox bow and wetland restoration project, we're really in a great location to help reduce the sediment, help improve water quality, and this can be awesome for wildlife habitat, this project.

(truck traveling across a water covered road) Whoa, that's muddy.

[Jathan Chicoine] So, this is actually where the start of the ox bow is going to be.

It will be backfilled in here.

[Jathan Chicoine] Basically what we're doing is this is the old river bed and we're just removing a lot of the alluvial sediment.

This is going to be an awesome ecosystem here that is going to really help capture flood water.

This project here just the ox bows will hold about one million gallons of water during flooding.

But we'll be planting wetland species here, of course exposing a lot of that seed bank.

It's going to be really exciting to see what emerges over the next couple of years here.

And then to see the bison how they're going to utilize this ox bow is going to be a real treat.

♪♪ [Jathan Chicoine] I have an immense sense, this really deep sense of gratitude.

What an honor and a privilege for me to be able to work the land in this way.

Those calves are so cute.

[Jathan Chicoine] There's not a day that I don't come out to the prairie and not learn something.

And what a cool, what an incredible gift to be able to learn.

♪♪

We're doing a farm to table today with everything a hundred percent local as much as we can.

A huge amount of the stuff we actually grew on our farm and then everything down to the flour, the spices.

♪♪ Whenever I do like an event like this, I want the first bite to kind of set the pace for the rest of the night.

The acidity from the tomatoes, the sweet savory bacon and then this Thai basil, just think of it as way more flavorful than an Italian basil.

♪♪ All right, we're bringing out the next two courses here.

So, we're sharing this family style.

This is a farm to table dinner.

This is kind of like a communal event, so similar to Thanksgiving we're passing the bowl to each other.

So, pass it along and enjoy.

♪♪ [Andrew Hoffman] Restaurants are an amazing place to be.

There is an amazing tight knit group of people to work with.

But there's a lot of downside.

Not a lot of time spent with family and friends.

When I graduated culinary school, I went into the restaurant scene in Cedar Rapids and was introduced to a ton of local farmers and then decided that I would rather have my time be that.

♪♪ [Andrew Hoffman] So, growing up on a farm we were pretty self-sufficient with produce.

We did a lot of canning.

We raised our own chickens for meat, for eggs.

We raised our own cattle.

And not until I moved out and went to school did I realize the quality of food that we were eating.

That was really when I started to try to put my full focus on making food.

So, it has been built into me from a young age, pulling produce right out of the garden and taking it to the hose and rinsing it off and eating it.

♪♪ ♪♪ [Andrew Hoffman] Hoffman Farm and Forage, we are a chef-focused farm.

Being a chef before I started doing this full-time, we grow products that we're going to want to cook with, that I would want to see come through my restaurant door if I was working there.

The other aspect is foraging.

We do a ton of foraging.

That kind of started as a hobby of mine.

It's a huge income boost for us when we are able to forage mushrooms.

Mushrooms are essentially like a protein.

It's as if we were to bring beef to the market, but it's mushrooms.

[Andrew Hoffman] We like to sauté them in a little butter.

I like to say, however you like mushrooms is kind of how I'd suggest you cook them that way.

So, you'll probably be most successful that way.

[Andrew Hoffman] It's fun to be able to talk to people and see how excited they are about that.

Or I've never seen this mushroom, can you explain it to me?

How do you cook it?

Or oh, I don't like mushrooms and then you kind of try to broaden their horizon.

There's just so many other better mushrooms out there.

I get bored easy, so if I just farmed, I would hate it.

So, first it was photography and then I've started to ID the mushrooms and then cook with them and eat them.

So, my day is literally split in thirds cooking, foraging and farming.

(nature sounds) [Andrew Hoffman] So, a lot of times when I'm randomly walking around looking for mushrooms, I'm looking at tree canopies and trees for what kind of trees they are.

I'll be looking for downed dead logs depending on what I'm looking for.

Most likely if it's in season you'll find some.

We started with just my wife and I loving nature.

Our weekends were spent hiking.

We would go out in the woods.

We would hike, we would find nature and you want to learn about it.

So, you start to educate yourself, you start to learn more and then you start to comprehend the different aspects of edible food that is out in nature.

[Andrew Hoffman] Tucked back under this log are two little ghost pipes or corpse plant.

So, you can see it's completely white.

This one is a little older so it's turning a little black.

They don't get their nutrients from the sun at all.

They latch onto the mycorrhizal undergrowth, which is basically the root network of mushrooms.

And the root network of mushrooms lives off of the decomposing material of trees.

Mushrooms to plant trees through that, it's super cool.

♪♪ [Andrew Hoffman] There's like some interesting aspects to foraging that people have a little bit of I would say maybe apprehension.

It's such a foreign thing for the States especially.

♪♪ [Andrew Hoffman] This is a coral tooth, coral tooth mushroom.

It's in the same family as lion's mane and it has amazing medicinal benefits.

♪♪ [Andrew Hoffman] So, Iowa State Extension has a licensing class where you can go and you can get certified to be a licensed forager.

I remember my first class back in like 2015 or something it was, it was a small classroom, there was maybe ten people in it.

And then the class that I had this past spring it was a lecture classroom, it was full, there was a few hundred people in there.

And that's just one class of a dozen that they do a year.

And it's exciting.

It's fun to come across something like that.

♪♪ [Andrew Hoffman] So, these still have a little bit of time on them.

They call them watermelon radish.

That bright color right in the middle.

This piece of land is pretty dear to my heart.

It was my great-grandfather purchased this property in the 1940s.

Late fall 2020 we purchased a house in Roland.

And the fall of 2020 we tilled ground to put our first garlic crop in.

At that point, we just full-headed transitioned and moved the farm here.

We had to build all new clientele, we had to find new markets.

And really, I just want to work with the product that we grow.

I genuinely enjoy being able to present a meal and be like hey, this is one hundred percent locally sourced from Iowa, even down to like a 20, 30-mile radius within Iowa.

But to be able to take this family farm, create a community built around it, I mean, it's wonderful and hopefully able to show that experience to the next generation.

It's been outstanding.

I'm excited to continue to grow and continue to move forward with everything we're doing.

♪♪

♪♪ [George Naylor] My son graduated from college in 2013 and he and his friends came up to visit the farm and they were having all kinds of fun.

And there were apples on the trees and my son said, well we ought to make hard cider.

And he built a little press and a grinder and sure enough we made hard cider.

Then he said well we ought to plant some more trees.

I wasn't going to get in the way of him coming back to the farm.

So, we planted a bunch of trees with the idea of making hard cider from these special apple varieties.

♪♪ [George Naylor] It's been an adventure and that's why we've called our orchard Excellent Adventure Orchard.

♪♪ [Patti Naylor] That was the beginning of it.

Why not do something more?

We've got this land.

The orchard that is right over here right now that was planted in 2014, in 2013 that was soybeans.

Adding something more down to Earth, something perennial, an orchard, is really something that was like yeah, we need to do this.

♪♪ (tractor engine starts) [George Naylor] Having the cider orchard has been an adventure, partly because most businesses you start out with a business plan and you make a big investment.

Well, our business plan is that we have done this by the seat of our pants on a shoestring.

And so, we haven't mortgaged the farm in order to set this up.

♪♪ [George Naylor] People will be appalled when they see that.

♪♪ [George Naylor] One thing people need to realize is this was all prairie out here.

We're out in the middle of flat prairie in what is called the Des Moines Lobe of Iowa where the ground is flat.

And so not very many people would plant an orchard out on this kind of land.

The wind is incredible.

And our trees tend to lean to the north.

Planting an orchard out on the prairie wouldn't make sense to very many people.

So, we're bucking the tide there too.

♪♪ [Patti Naylor] We are certified organic, which means that we follow the National Organic program.

We have to show what we're doing, we really are doing it, what we say that we're doing we're doing.

And so, all of that has to be documented.

And it's something of a burden, but I think it's really good for us to do that.

And if you have your system set up well it goes very smoothly.

It's just that you have to remember to write a lot of things down.

[George Naylor] Here, do you want this one instead?

[Patti Naylor] No.

This is one set for me.

Oh, you're right, that is mine.

(laughter) ♪♪ [George Naylor] We have to pick the apples and because there's so many different varieties they mature at a different time of the season, starting at the end of August and then all the way through November.

And so, we have to be aware of what's getting ripe and pick the apples.

When I planted a lot of these trees nobody knew for sure if these kinds of apple trees would grow in Iowa because they come from England and France.

But we have a lot of varieties of cider apples and they are categorized as bitter sweet, bitter sharp, sharp and sweet.

And so, the bitterness is something in these special kinds of apples that add a dimension to the taste and mouth feel of the cider.

They generally have French names.

Some of those are called Amere de Berthcourt, Reine des Pommes, then there's Ellis Bitter that comes from England, Kerr Crab and Dolgo Crab.

These all add a special dimension to the cider.

So, that is part of the art of it is to figure out what's the good blend.

♪♪ [George Naylor] And I want to emphasize I have support from all of my neighbors.

♪♪ ♪♪ [George Naylor] And when we know we have enough apples of the kind we want, we will put them through a grinder and then put them through a press that squeezes out the juice.

(apples going through grinder) ♪♪ [George Naylor] So, then we have five-gallon buckets of juice that we experiment with.

We have done this incrementally to make cider in small batches and kind of experiment with the different kinds of apples and different kinds of yeast.

I made cider in five-gallon buckets and maybe I'll end up with 20 gallons or 25 gallons in a season.

We have friends come over and try it out.

That's about as far as we go.

But that's an adventure to try to learn how to make a good cider.

♪♪ [George Naylor] I guess there's something special about drinking something that you've made yourself and it reflects the kind of artistry that went into making it, I guess.

[Patti Naylor] This is what a farm can be and should be.

It's really an example I think of some possibilities, real possibilities of what we can do on the Iowa landscape.

It doesn't all have to be corn and soybeans.

We can have a lot of stuff out here.

♪♪ [Patti Naylor] George and I work together on this.

It's something we can go out and work together, sometimes we work separately, but depending on the jobs that need to be done.

But it really is something that we can do together and that is really an important aspect of it, something we can do together in the years to come too.

♪♪ [George Naylor] I guess I can say yeah, this is good cider, if I do say myself.

♪♪ [Patti Naylor] Good job, George.

Should we try it?

♪♪

♪♪ I just always wanted to farm.

I love working outside, just being in the great outdoors.

♪♪ [Eric Boor] When I was younger, I tagged along with my dad and grandpa riding around on the tractor and pickup and I just always knew that was what I wanted to do and how I wanted to live.

♪♪ [Nebbe] When Eric and Mikala Boor took over Eric's great-grandfather's nine-acre farm in Southern Iowa, they decided to implement sustainable and humane hog raising methods.

Despite initial skepticism from family and friends, their efforts are beginning to show positive results.

♪♪ [Eric Boor] I'm proud to be farming the same land that generations before me have farmed and raising livestock on it.

(nature sounds) (nature sounds) [Eric Boor] I've always thought pigs are a unique animal.

(whistles) ♪♪ (whistles) ♪♪ [Chris Boor] Eric would be a fourth-generation farmer for our family.

He had been farming and working with me and he decided that he wanted to raise hogs.

So, I told him I knew a lot about hogs and I would help him out.

I was glad that he wanted to start and branch out doing something on his own like that.

[Eric Boor] There was a lot of the unknown.

I knew some about raising pigs from prior experience working in the confinement, but I'm doing it a different way.

♪♪ [Eric Boor] I didn't want to raise pigs in a confinement.

I wanted them to be outside in the environment that they're meant to be in.

♪♪ [Eric Boor] I raise the pigs outside on dirt lots and fresh air.

♪♪ [Nebbe] The Boor's farm is one of few in Clarke County that is compliant with California's new animal welfare reform law, Proposition 12, which bans the confinement of breeding pigs and restricts the sale of non-compliant pork.

In fact, their hog operation is one of few in the state of Iowa that meets the new California regulations.

(hogs snorting) [Eric Boor] We farrow to finish 22 head of sows and sell them to Niman Ranch.

Farrow is when they're born and finish is feeding them out clear to market weight.

They spend their whole life on the farm.

And about at three we don't use farrowing crates, they're spend a hundred percent vegetarian diet.

[Chris Boor] Farming seems to be getting tougher all the time.

It's a lot harder to work with the modern economy and the cost of everything.

A lot of the farming has changed.

Just like in the hog production, you used to be able to drive down the road and every half a mile there would be a hog farm or somebody raising livestock.

But any more you've got to drive miles down the road.

♪♪ [Chris Boor] If I was to start out now, I'd have to start out the way he's doing it.

People want antibiotic free meat and worry about the humane way of raising animals.

♪♪ [Chris Boor] Raising hogs this way being antibiotic free type animals isn't an easy thing to do.

He's wanting to try new things all the time and keep up with the times.

[Eric Boor] It has been a learning process all along.

[Mikala Boor] We've got a lot of support from local farmers.

We know a lot of the farmers that live around here.

And a lot of them have come up to us if they see us in town or we run into them and they tell you how proud they are of you, how you've done a lot of work with what we have.

♪♪ [Chris Boor] I'm glad that that was the profession that he chose because that's what I've done for my life.

[Eric Boor] I believe farming like this has paid off.

It's important to work hard and have passion in what you do.

It is all right to do something that is different than a lot of operations and it's not conventional.

♪♪ [Eric Boor] It brings joy to me raising animals like this and farming this way.

♪♪