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ATLANTIC, IA – If a free concert by Jason Reed, a free bounce house for kids, and a free drawing for over 20 weeks’ worth of produce isn’t enough to convince folks to visit Produce in the Park in Atlantic on Thursday, June 2nd, a lineup of over 20 vendors might be. Market Manager Brigham Hoegh said products expected at the June 2nd farmers market include fresh produce, meats, honey, eggs, popcorn, lemonade, pastries, desserts, pizza, jewelry, soaps, candles, plants for home gardens, and more. Hoegh says while vendor numbers are expected to remain higher than recent years throughout the season, almost all vendors are expected to visit the park on opening night.
Dale Raasch (right) of Bridgewater Farm with his son, Tyler (left). Bridgewater Farm is one of over 20 vendors participating in Produce in the Park this summer
Expected June 2 Vendors and Products
Atlantic Atlas Cinema – Popcorn, lemonade, and more
Brun Ko Farm – Spinach, microgreens, kale, granola, beef, pork, and lamb
Bridgewater Farm – Certified organic produce including asparagus, lettuces, green onions, potatoes,
swiss chard and more, eggs, beef, pork, and chicken
DezaRae Farm Soaps – Goat milk soaps, lotions, and creams
Donna’s Jewelry – Jewelry, magnets, and more
Dragonfly Creations – Coasters, magnets, candles and tarts, soaps, beard oil, car freshies
Duane’s Creations – Jams and clocks
Frosting, Inc. – Cupcakes and cookies
Harrisdale Farmstead – Asparagus and rhubarb
Johnna Joy Designs – Jewelry and art
Hungry Spartan Pizza Food Truck
Kringleman Pastries – Danish Kringle, pastries, cinnamon rolls, and desserts
Midwest Candles by Brit – Candles and wax melts
Matilda Dawn Creations – Greeting cards and wall-sized Scrabble tiles
Molly’s Crafts – Squirrel feeders
Noble Provisions – Beef and pork
Piper’s Brae Farm – Aronia berries and products, eggs, honey
Rolling Acres Farm – Plants for your home garden
Smudge – Soaps, candles, bath bombs, and more
Sue’s Country Garden – Plants for your home garden, jams, and more
Ter-Bear Honey – Honey
Tracie Lobstein – Sewn and embroidered aprons, totes, clothing, and more
Produce in the Park June 2:
Time: 4:30-6:30 PM
Location: Atlantic City Park (10 W. 7th Street, Atlantic, IA 50022)
Free Live Music: Jason Reed
Food Truck: Hungry Spartan Pizza
Can’t Miss: Free drawing for 20 weeks of produce boxes from Bridgewater Farm (a $350 value!). All visitors to the park on June 2 age 18 and older are eligible to enter. (Sponsored by the Cass County Local Food Policy Council.)
Fun for Kids: Bounce house and more activities by Nishna Valley Family YMCA.
Self-Care Summer visiting organization: Atlantic Public Library
Visiting organizations: Master Gardeners and Cass County Grow Another Row
Payment methods accepted: All vendors accept cash. Many accept credit card and Venmo. All qualifying food vendors accept SNAP/EBT (also known as food stamps). All fresh produce vendors both accept and distribute Double Up Food Bucks (coupons given for SNAP/EBT purchases of fresh produce).
Produce in the Park June 2022 farmers markets are sponsored by the Atlantic Community Promotion Commission, the Nishna Valley Family YMCA, Cass County Tourism, Cass Health, First Whitney Bank and Trust, the Atlantic Area Chamber of Commerce, and Deter Motor Co. For updates on Produce in the Park, follow Produce in the Park on Facebook
(www.facebook.com/ProduceInThePark) or Instagram (www.instagram.com/produceintheparkatlanticia/), or visit the Produce in the Park website to sign up for the e-newsletter at www.produceintheparkatlanticiowa.com.
(Greenfield, Iowa) – The southwest Region of the Iowa Cattlemen’s Assocation’s “BeefMeet” is set to take place Tuesday, June 7th, in Greenfield. The event will be held beginning at 5-p.m., at the Adair County 4-H & FFA Building. Officials say the event will include education on policy and production, industry updates, a tradeshow, and a meal. Not only will you learn about topics affecting your beef business, but it’s a great opportunity to voice your concerns and work towards solutions with ICA staff and leaders.
The event is free to ICA members and $25 for non members. (See below for registration information). Follow along for program details by selecting “Interested” or “Going” on the ICA’s SW Region BeefMeet Facebook event. 
Tentative Agenda:
John Hinners
Register today by filling out the Google Form, or calling into the Iowa Cattle Industry Headquarters at 515-296-2266. If you have questions for the keynote speaker, please them in the registration form.
(Lewis, Iowa) – The Cass County Conservation Board will hold a youth fishing derby at Cold Springs Park near Lewis, on June 11th 2022. The event is open to the first 50 youths age 15 and under to register for the event. Check-in will run from 8:15am to 8:45am with the derby starting at 9:00am and running till 10:30 am.
Prizes will be awarded for the most total weight, heaviest single fish, longest single fish and shortest single fish. There will also be a raffle following fishing. The Conservation board with have some live bait for use and a limited number of fishing poles for use as well. 
The Board and Conservation Dept. staff want too thank all those that donated items for the event: Weirich Welding for the trophies, and Cappel’s Ace Hardware for prizes. To register or for further details please contact Micah Lee with the Cass County Conservation Board at 712-769-2372.
(Iowa DNR News) – The calls have been coming in to Iowa DNR field offices and conservation officers for the past few weeks and will only increase as the first few weeks of June marks the peak of the deer fawning season. Callers report finding an “abandoned” fawn in an unusual place, like a flowerbed or small patch of cover. The DNR says “Rest assured this is normal deer behavior.”
“The doe searches out an isolated location where she feels safe and on occasion those places are not what we may think of as ideal. She chose that location because it made sense to her,” said Jim Coffey, forest wildlife research biologist with the Iowa DNR. “The worst thing someone can do is to ‘rescue’ the fawn. Mom is likely nearby and watching you. Leave it be or if you did handle the fawn, return it to where you found it and walk away.”
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) will not be rehabbing or co-mingling fawns with other deer to avoid the potential of spreading chronic wasting disease – or other disease – to new areas. The spindly legged newborn fawn is designed with a few survival tools built in –its spots are cryptic camouflage that emulates the sunlight spots on the leaf litter on the forest floor and its lack of movement the first two weeks helps to reduce scent patterns. This combination is its best chance at survival until it is able to follow the doe. After the fawns are born, the doe will return to fairly normal behavior – sleeping, feeding – but returning to nurse and care for the fawn.
The fawning season also coincides with an increase in deer vehicle collisions. “There is a lot of movement this time of year that is part of the social structure of deer. The doe is on the move looking for the safe isolated place to have the fawns. In addition last year’s fawns – teenagers now – are starting to venture out to find new space. These yearlings have to make their own decisions for the first time, encounter other adult deer and build new social structures,” Coffey said. “This movement behavior can occur during all times of the day. Once it settles out, the active time will return to dawn and dusk.”
Drivers are reminded to drive defensively, avoid distractions, and slow down and not to veer for deer. If they hit a deer, drivers can get a salvage tag by calling either the local conservation officer or local law enforcement. There is no fee for a salvage tag it does require that the entire deer is taken.
(USDA, Washington, D-C) – Doing things “halfway” can often cause problems later on, especially when it comes to having a holiday weekend cookout. Gary Crawford reports….
And, just like there is a certain brand-name hotline for turkey cooking tips before and during Thanksgiving, Meredith Carothers, food safety expert with the USDA’s Meat and Poultry Hotline, says there are several ways you can get food safety questions answered live by real experts.
(The hotline is 1-888-674-6854 [1-888-MPHOTLINE]; Live chat M-F 9-a.m. to 5-pm Central time, at ask.usda.gov ; or e-mail mphoptline@usda.gov, or search usda.)
(Iowa DNR News) – Memorial Day weekend and throughout the summer, thousands of Iowa will be camping and building campfires. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) encourages campers to buy firewood from where they will burn it instead of bringing it from home. “Moving unseasoned firewood around the state can threaten the health of our forests by spreading insects like emerald ash borer (EAB) that live in firewood,” explains Tivon Feeley, DNR Forest Health forester. EAB is a small, metallic-green, invasive wood-boring beetle native to east Asia that attacks and kills ash trees. It attacks trees of any size, age, or stage of health. The spread of EAB into uninfected areas has been primarily through people moving firewood from county to county or state to state. “These pests don’t move far on their own, but they can travel hundreds of miles in a single day in contaminated firewood,” said Feeley.
Plenty of firewood is available locally near state and county parks. Simply ask a park ranger or campground host for local firewood availability. Make sure to burn all of the firewood at the campsite and not leave it or transport to a new area. The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship requires all firewood sold or acquired in Iowa to have the county and state of harvest location on the label of packages and the delivery ticket for bulk firewood.
Find more information about emerald ash borer and the reasons not move firewood online at www.iowadnr.gov/eab.
(Radio Iowa) – Iowa State University Extension and the D-N-R are offering more sessions of a program called Chronic Wasting Disease Ambassadors. I-S-U Extension’s, Chris Janke, oversees the program. “The idea here is that we can take people that are already may be interested in deer are interested in the management of chronic wasting disease, and equip them with the technical knowledge and skills that they really need to sort of take their education and advocacy in their community to the next level, to try to help us sort of build this broad coalition to address the challenge that chronic wasting disease poses,” Janke says. He says one of the sessions will be in Wayne County.
“That’s kind of a partnership of a bunch of counties in southern Iowa, but we’re hosting it in Corydon,” he says. “And so we’re hoping to get participants from Wayne and neighboring counties. And then also Greene County, because that’s a new area in the state where we’ve just recently found chronic wasting disease.” He says the disease is really complicated and there are some common misconceptions about how to manage it, and what sort of risks that it poses.
“So what we do with this class is we try to get these committed learners caught up to speed on that science and those technical details. And then we actually talk about how to communicate effectively about this disease and how to sort of dispel common myths,” according to Janke. He says it helps supplement the wildlife biologists in the state — which can’t cover every county. C-W-D was first found in wild deer in Iowa in 2013 — and it has been found in wild deer in at least 12 counties. Janke says the best way to deal with it is to try to contain it.
“There is no cure for this disease, it’s 100 percent fatal. And when it gets into a wild population, it basically just continues to become more and more prevalent through time. And so everything we do about C-W-D management right now is trying to reduce it spread across the state,” Janke says. He says reducing the spread also reduces its prevalence within a population of deer. Janke says controlling the disease is important for everyone in the state.
“There are of course, a lot of hunters and we harvest over 100-thousand deer every year, and it’s an important protein source for many families,” he says. “But even if you don’t deer hunt, it impacts you because deer like to run out in front of vehicles or deer can impact agriculture or forestry in the state. So any sort of major disruption to our approach to managing deer is a unique challenge that impacts multiple different sectors of the economy.” If you are interested in taking part, go to the Iowa State Extension website under natural resources — and you’ll find a button that says Chronic Wasting Disease ambassadors.
(Radio Iowa) – Boaters on both sides of Iowa need to use caution during the upcoming holiday weekend, but for different reasons. Water levels are expected to rise more than a foot on the Mississippi River due to snow melt and rains to the north. On the Missouri River, however, D-N-R fisheries biologist Bryan Hayes says it’s exceptionally dry and the water levels are very low. “The lakes that are really affected are the oxbow lakes along the Missouri River corridor,” Hayes says. “Last winter, the Missouri River was historically low and when the Missouri River is low and the groundwater is low, it lowers the level of these oxbow lakes.”
Some of the trouble areas in the west include Carter Lake in Pottawattamie County, which is is three feet below crest. The water level at Lake Manawa has been down a few feet all spring. Elsewhere, low levels are reported on Blue Lake in Monona County, DeSoto Bend in Harrison County, Snyder Bend and Browns Lake in Woodbury County, and several others along the Interstate 29 corridor.
“Boaters headed out this Memorial Day weekend will see abnormally low conditions in those lakes,” Hayes says. “It’s going to impact access through the boat ramps to these water bodies as well as present hazards while out boating, so we just really urge caution.” The watershed of the Missouri River extends all the way to Montana, with several flood control reservoirs in South Dakota.
“The Corps of Engineers has increased the releases for the navigation season on the river, so eventually we’ll start to see water come back into these systems,” Hayes says, “but the lag time, it’s just not going to happen before Memorial Day weekend and it may not happen this summer at all.”
Meanwhile, National Weather Service forecasters say the Mississippi River is rising quickly and currents are strong. That waterway is expected to crest at Davenport on Sunday around 13-and-a-half feet, that’s about 18 inches shy of the initial flood stage.
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