On October 23, 2025, Ruth Rabinowitz received the Farmland Owner Legacy Award from Practical Farmers of Iowa. Reprinted below are her remarks from that ceremony.

I want to take a moment to ground us and acknowledge we are in the unceded territory of Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Osage Nation, Sac & Fox Nation and a multitude of others.

It’s time for my story….

My father David was born in Atlantic City,  New Jersey, in 1936, during the heart of The Great Depression.  His parents Rae and Sam, had a simple row home in Camden, New Jersey, with a small rose garden he tended. Dad set his sights early on to own a larger piece of land. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps, studied hard, became a Physician and saved. Dad led our Brownie Troop and purchased forest land in northern Arizona where we would camp and go fishing at the lake. We hatched chicken eggs under heat lamps on the back patio and had a coop that housed rabbits, turkey, geese, and a variety of exotic chickens that we entered in the Arizona State Fair. Dad loved Charlie Chaplin movies, a good bookstore, and his two daughters. He researched where the best soils in America were located and purchased his first Iowa farm in 1978. 

My mother Barbara, born in Chicago, Illinois, was raised on a century family farm in Michigan. In the summertime,  as children, we visited Grandma Pearl at the farm house and went blueberry picking down the road. My mother was a musician and we sang songs together as she played her piano and guitar. Mom led The Silverlake Improvement Association in Los Angeles, recruiting neighbors to clean up graffiti and trash. She was awarded “Pioneer Woman of the Year” by the City of Los Angeles. She removed her lawn and replaced it with native plants before that was popular practice. My parents met on Valentines day in Detroit, and I was born in Michigan several years later.

Don’t sell the farms

In 2014, I was minding my California photo business when Dad called me. He was in the hospital, he had fallen. “Someday these farms will be yours”..became today, right now. All of my work experiences were needed to take the reins of ten farms in Iowa and one farm in South Dakota. One thing I knew for sure was we weren’t selling any farmland. Dad had instructed my sister Shauna and I over and over, “Don’t sell the farms”. Since that was crystal clear, I needed to understand the 1,600 acres to do my best.

I earned a Bachelor’s degree in Art from the University of California Santa Cruz and had completed some horticulture and landscape design courses at our local community college. I had planted gardens for years. I had been a florist, a Life Lab Science Program educator, and worked with plants in a greenhouse for a researcher. Plants were familiar territory. 

I took a deep breath and began.  

I walked into my father’s office and was overwhelmed by unorganized farm paperwork. I asked a friend, Heidi Raber, to help me organize the documents by farm name and we got to work. Reviewing the financial statements, I could tell the farm management team wasn’t maximizing our income. Reading  the annual reports showed that many farms had years of delayed maintenance. Unsecured wells, trash dumping, grain bins, a windmill and cattle barn with trees growing at the foundation, missing fences and trespassing. Realizing how poorly the land had been cared for lit a fire in me. I wanted to protect what my father had worked his whole life to obtain and also give the land the care she needed. 

There was a farm mortgage and operating line of credit. We needed to conserve resources and tighten our belts. What I understood right away was: No one was showing up for the land. The relationship I saw was transactional and extractive. Land as income. Soil as a factory. 

11 farms over six counties

It took time to convince Dad to trust me to run our business but he came around to the idea. He ended up being the best business partner I could have hoped for. We ran the business together for five years until he passed in 2017, just three months after our mother passed.

I stayed up late on my computer watching YouTube videos on cover crops, reading USDA websites and educating myself by way of the internet. I had run a photography business for 15 years and had used contracts the whole time. Surely this would not be so different. I kept saying to myself, we are at the bottom now, we can only go up from here, and I was right.  

Dad had never met his farm operators. I knew I had to meet everyone soon. Dad gave me the green light to step into full management of all 11 farms spread out across six Iowa counties. I moved our farm business towards land as a holistic, healthy, diverse ecosystem. I wanted to be a natural areas designer and soil healer, not a farm manager. I wrote our farm lease based on several I had obtained and blended the best parts. No-till, mandatory cover crops, no collection of artifacts, no Atrazine, no overspraying of waterways and terraces. I had a lawyer and a farmer review the finished lease. I located new farmers who I could build new relationships with.  

These days  I ride on the planter and combine with them.  

No longer satisfied with viewing farms from the gravel road in August when the corn was tall, I began visiting the farms with USDA staff in April, before planting. With bare ground in view, we discovered  erosion that was five feet deep in some areas. Where hidden scars of eroded land lay are now grassed down waterways.   

As an artist, it was easy to fall in love with the farms. Dad appeared to have a gift for acquiring beautiful landscapes. Most of the farms had a stream, pond, river, wetland, forest, or some type of wild area with rolling hills in parts. I used my photography skills to document the farm work and how the seasons changed the scenery. I began posting images of my  journey on Oxbow Farms Iowa social media.

I initiated conversations with the farmers about planting cover crops and received pushback. After that, Sarah Carlson with Practical Farmers of Iowa met with our family and farmers bringing her shovel, digging in the undisturbed fence row, then in the tilled crop field, illustrating the difference in these types of soil.

Shortly after, we seeded our first ever cover crops. The impossible became reality. I have mentored other landowners to successfully seed cover crops on their farms over the years.  

One District Conservationist said while we stood on my Clarke County land: “And that’s your Oxbow Lake”. A crescent shaped lake, teeming with life where bobcat, coyote, fox, bald eagle, pheasant, canadian geese, turtle, green winged teal, and wood ducks dine and make their homes in the shady waters surrounded by walnut groves.  

In 2024 our Oxbow Restoration was completed with funding from The Nature Conservancy. An elk, river otters, and beaver have also been seen on the southern Iowa farms. 12 acres of native prairie was also discovered on my South Dakota farm. 

I was invited by The Environmental Defense Fund to become a Monarch Ambassador. They contributed funding for a two-acre prairie reconstruction and riparian buffer, supportive of Pollinator Habitat. Climate Land Leaders has provided funding to maintain and add additional trees to the design. The Xerces Society awarded us a Conservation Innovation Grant to transform an acre of brome grass to a mixed pollinator planting. We held a collaborative Field Day at the farm with Women Food and Ag Network (WFA). I became a Stewardship Ambassador with WFAN. We are encouraged to speak out at events, to have the minds of women and their thoughts about farming present at the table. The data is clear: Women own or co-own almost half of the Iowa farmland. Women have been in the background and have been invisible, speaking out raises awareness and may empower women to make conservation changes on the land they own. 

We teach that healthy soil has the consistency of chocolate cake and not cocoa powder. I became more interested in the health of my soil rather than its ability to produce a cash crop. I understand soil itself is a living organism.

Building an Iowa home

Being a long-distance landowner was frustrating. My solution was to live on one of the farms so I could be more involved. In 2019, I enrolled in a Permaculture design year-long course. Utilizing the permaculture principles we studied, my classmate Karen Haralson and I worked together meeting at my California kitchen table and designed the entire property: House, outbuildings, vegetable garden, orchard, compost area, windbreak, riparian buffer, water hydrants, water catchment,  and an emergency shelter.  

All of these plans were in place before any soil was disturbed. I built my home on the farm here in Madison County in 2020. Living in Iowa has been the ultimate way to appreciate  the farms. Waking up and falling asleep to the sights and sounds of the land has been a dream come true.  

The home site was once three acres of crops for several decades. In 2020, we seeded a prairie reconstruction comprising  50 species of native grasses and flowers. The 300 trees and shrubs, with design assistance from Pheasants Forever, were planted in sequence from 2020-2024. Today pheasants are  living near our home. Through these plantings, the farms are getting reconnected back to the web of life. My partner, Cresta Nutter, and I faced multiple years of severe drought and the plants required  watering, mulching, and weeding–all done by hand. Our planting survival rate is excellent. 

We walked parts of the farms that had only been shapes on a map. We discovered the personality and occupants of the land; and names emerged: Firefly Forest, Pollinator Hill, The Secret Garden, David’s Pond. We carved wood farm signs, colorfully painted them, and mounted these emblems on posts.  

As the prairie plants grew, we observed that wildlife and pollinators quickly moved back in. Giving other species what they need to thrive is important. Water, tall grass, dark skies, little disturbance, fruit, nuts, grain, nesting areas both above and below ground.  

Baby deer have been birthed in our prairie just steps outside our home.  

We leave the leaves and the old snag trees, make wood piles on the perimeter so overwintering will be warmer for the rabbits, snake, mink, fox, or whoever enjoys those rustic homes. On many of the farms, the population of scarce bobwhite quail and pheasant are plentiful now. 

This is all thanks to the 40-year-old USDA Conservation Reserve Program. Oxbow Farms has 24 CRP contracts that total 300 acres. The Conservation Reserve Program was launched in 1985 and without a new farm bill its future is uncertain.

The pond we built a year ago to stop erosion is already filled with water and has singing frogs. If you step towards soil health and plant natives, the wildlife takes even more steps towards you. 

There is an African Proverb: “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I want to thank the generous individuals and groups that have forged a trusted circle around me; My father David Charles Rabinowitz, my mother Barbara Diane Dakin, Cresta Nutter, my dog Lucy, Karen Baldwin, Karen Haralson, Scott Powers, Heidi Raber, Practical Farmers of Iowa, Climate Land Leaders, Women Food and Ag Network, The Xerces Society, The Nature Conservancy, USDA, Pheasants Forever, Trees Forever, Ducks Unlimited, Sustainable Iowa Land Trust (SILT), South Dakota Soil Health Coalition, South Dakota Game Fish and Parks, Iowa Farmers Union, Iowa Prairie Network, Iowa Women in Agriculture, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, Iowa Woodland Owners Association, Iowa State Extension, Department of Natural Resources Foresters and Wildlife Biologists, Hunting Lease Network,  The Environmental Defense Fund, and my friends and family that have been there for me on this journey.  

These groups provided education, design, and funding for projects such as cover crops, oxbow lake restoration, pond construction, prairie reconstruction, timber stand improvement, grassed waterway development, tree and shrub plantings, solar cattle water station, grazing plans, and prescribed prairie and oak savannah burns.  

In 2012, I began this fixer-upper farm adventure isolated in California, physically removed from Iowa. I am grateful for the collaboration from my neighbors, contractors, farmers, and hunters. At this time of climate crisis, these groups provide hope, education and financial support that declares: “We are in this together”.  

It takes everyone doing their part to help reverse climate change: plant native trees and seeds, use natural fertilizers and support local farmers. By doing these actions,  we can leave our slice of earth better than when we found it.   

Thank you all for sharing this evening with me!

Copyright 2025 Ruth Rabinowitz. Reprinted with permission. View a video of the award event here.