Blog

Climate Land Leaders are artists: Ruth Rabinowitz

With this post, we start a series on the talented Climate Land Leaders who are artists. Climate Land Leader Ruth Rabinowitz brings her awe for nature and an eye for detail to her photography work. But first…more about Ruth. She stewards farms in Iowa and South Dakota and has just built a new home on…  Read More

Our leaders are readers: A Climate Land Leaders book list

At Climate Land Leaders, we try to make sense of our lives, agriculture, our land and our time through films, poems, podcasts, photos — and especially books. Here’s a Climate Land Leaders book list, with contributions from Mary Damm, Teresa Opheim, Jane Shey, Sylvia Spalding, Lee Tesdell and Paula Westmoreland. Several of these titles have…  Read More

The Bouskas’ journey to a regenerative farm: 2022 progress

On August 5th, Carol and Peg Bouska and their sisters Ann Novak and Sally McCoy (in spirit) treated Climate Land Leaders to a tour of their amazing conservation projects. Here are their remarks from the day. Our ancestors bought the first plots of this farm in 1903. They continued to add onto this land, purchasing other…  Read More

“Crazy ass, hopeful things”? Sharing resources, ensuring land access

When it comes to responding to the climate crisis, Bonnie Blodgett doesn’t believe in incremental change. Within the last several years, she has purchased two parcels of land – a serendipitous deal to preserve an organic farm in western New York and a defensive move to slow the expansion of factory farming in western Wisconsin…  Read More

We are NOT “absentee landowners”

Some Climate Land Leaders live on their land and farm it themselves. Others live on the land and don’t farm, and still others live across the country from the land they own. And the cohort includes every combination in between. But all of them agree: They are NOT “absentee landowners.” In their words, they are: “Land leaders.”…  Read More

Looking forward: Helen Gunderson’s land legacy

Helen DeElda Gunderson is a fourth-generation farmland owner who began managing over 500 acres of inherited land in 1997, embarking on a deep and intentional learning process enriched by the breadth of her work and life experiences. It’s impossible to weave here all the strands that together tell the story of Helen’s land stewardship journey.…  Read More

From Hawai’i to Iowa: Climate Land Leader Sylvia Spalding

Updated July 2023 Sylvia Spalding brings a unique background to Climate Land Leaders. A long-time resident of Honolulu, she spent a career in fisheries management in the Pacific Islands and today is bringing insights from that career to her stewardship of family land in Mahaska County, Iowa. Her family’s history in Mahaska dates back to…  Read More

What should be included in the next Farm Bill?

Totaling $428 billion in funding, the Farm Bill includes nutrition programs like SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) that provide food access for low-income families, risk management programs like crop insurance and disaster assistance, resources for starting and growing a farming operation, and support for conservation and sustainable farming practices on land. The next Farm Bill…  Read More

Tree planting anyone? Anyone?

Dear Friends, Glenn and I begin to feel like farmers – you know, those sturdy people who have to brave all kinds of weather to plant their crops and feed their animals no matter what! Despite six (yes, 6!) inches of rainfall in Minnesota this past weekend we managed to plant 250 trees in a riparian buffer and 26…  Read More