My story of farm ownership began 20 years ago at the 2004 North American Prairie Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, where I met Dan Specht. We were on a field trip to a hill prairie above the Wisconsin River, and Dan made the comment, “This looks like my farm in Iowa.” I said, “In Iowa?” I was surprised, because I didn’t think of Iowa as having steep bluffs with so much natural vegetation.

Part 2 of 2. Climate Land Leaders’ Indigenous Advisor Teresa Peterson (Utuhu Cistinna Win) recently sat down with Executive Director Teresa Opheim to offer insights from a Native American perspective (printed here in bold). Utuhu Cistinna Win is author of the award-winning Perennial Ceremony: Lessons and Gifts from Dakota Garden. She is Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota…

Part One of Two Teresa Peterson (Utuhu Cistinna Win) is author of the award-winning Perennial Ceremony: Lessons and Gifts from a Dakota Garden. She is Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and a citizen of the Upper Sioux Community, located in what is now Minnesota. Teresa recently began serving as an Indigenous Advisor to the Climate Land Leaders…

New Climate Land Leader Deborah Jacobi stewards amazingly diverse land in the Driftless Area of Northeast Iowa. We asked Deborah to tell us more about the landscape and her stewardship. What are some distinctive features about the land you steward? Distinctive features at Middle Bear Bluffs Farm include the range of terrain from former cropland,…

The original version of this piece was published on My Wisconsin Woods. Thank you to author Steve Swenson, Program Director at My Wisconsin Woods, for permission to share the story here.

Never have nonprofit organizations needed our support more, especially those that center Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities. We asked Climate Land Leaders which groups they support with their dollars, and here’s the 2025 list. Check out these groups doing wonderful heart work. 1619 Freedom School All Square Appetite for Change Black Iowa News…

At Climate Land Leaders, we envision a world where plant, animal, and human communities thrive through our land stewardship. How will we get there? Our new Strategic Plan provides the roadmap for the next two years. Our mission: to provide community and support for land stewards creating climate resiliency. We are guided by a set…

Climate Land Leader Bryan Simon is owner/operator of Lakeside Prairie Farm, and has a B.A. in Biology from University of Minnesota Morris and a M.S. in Ecology from South Dakota State University. Lakeside Prairie Farm currently offers targeted goat grazing to control invasive species and custom grazes cattle. The land’s most defining feature is the…

by Oliver Luker* As a landowner with a keen interest in addressing the climate crisis, this is a question that I have struggled with myself. The moral dimensions alone can be considerable – what is the best that I can do with my land is a very different question from the very best that the…