While the Winding Stairs Festival is an important festival all must attend, there is a slightly bigger event in Iowa which also brings people together. It is the Iowa State Fair. Whether it is attending concerts at the grandstand, looking at or showing the animals, or trying the newest and ...
What is over four miles long, is full of dirt and has a potential power output of 50 megawatts? This is not a trick question but a unique idea to reduce our carbon emissions that even those who don’t care about global warming can appreciate. It is an energy-storage-by-rail project that is ...
Another year, another successful Winding Stairs Festival in the books for the community of Traer. In an effort to do things differently this year, I made the trip for both Friday and Saturday. Double dipping on Friday at Lost Island Theme Park during the day while night-capping at the Winding ...
“You make me dizzy Miss Lizzy…the way you rock and roll!” They are unbelievably gorgeous and Lisianthus is by far the hardiest flower that I grow – let me explain… I found one of the Lisianthus blooms I’d cut the day before lying on the ground in the high tunnel, looking as fresh ...
Resiliency is what the United States needs. Recently, a company named CrowdStrike had an outage which affected many businesses around the world including numerous airlines. This outage left fliers stranded across the globe for longer than they wanted to be. This is not resiliency. When ...
Let’s talk Zinnias. Who loves them? Who hates them? Who has a love/hate relationship with them like I do? I love the range of colors and styles (the pin cushion scabiosa variety is one of my favorites). I also appreciate their cheerful blooms and the tiny inner flowers that form around the ...
A boy can dream. While I do not have a ton of experience in agriculture outside of farming – and I do not have a formal education in it – coming from a different background with different perspectives can lead to one seeing agriculture in a different light. With this being said, the dream ...
Over two decades ago, Gene Takle, director of Iowa State University’s Climate Science Program, used a NASA climate model to explore what would happen if the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere doubled. With additional carbon added to the atmosphere since then, his predictions that were ...
It would be an understatement to say this upcoming presidential election does not have the electorate fired up. Each candidate has their flaws, and neither feel like a once-in-a-lifetime, straight-from-central-casting presidential candidate. With it being a runback of 2020 no one was clamoring ...
Dare I say dried flowers are making a comeback? If social media is an indicator, with posts of dried wedding bouquets and dried flower installations, then it must be true, right? (As we all know, everything on the internet is true, haha!) Now, some of you might be thinking “I didn’t know ...