Plants

Iowa native earned students' trust teaching on reservation (09/25/08)
Maria Valen remembers her former Crow and Cheyenne students fondly, especially this week -- Native American Heritage Week. Valen, a new high school English teacher at Gehlen Catholic School, spent two years prior to coming to Le Mars educating American Indian students in Montana...

Vintage harvest: Dittmers' vineyard produces juicy crop (09/22/08)
With a juicy plop, a bunch of grapes falls into a heaping pail of the purple fruit. All around, people are talking, laughing, and clipping away at loaded branches of grape vines. It's Sunday and it's harvest time at Barry and Brenda Dittmers' vineyard in Hinton...

AmeriCorps team preps Loess Hills for bison (09/11/08)
Men and women ages 18-24 from across the nation are building fences, restoring grasslands and helping with research in the Loess Hills through Oct. 2. The 10-member AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) team, has been working in the Broken Kettle Grasslands and Five Ridge Prairie in Plymouth County since August...

Locals find garden oddities (07/30/08)
There's always a little mystery in gardening -- watching black earth give way to thriving vines and leafy rows of vegetables. But some gardens have a little more of the unusual to offer. Take Angela Von Hagel, for example. When the Brunsville woman went out to her garden last month and checked on her potatoes, she had a surprise waiting for her...

Fair auction sets record for total sale (07/29/08)
Sunday afternoon's hot, muggy weather made for some quick bidding at the 2008 Fair Auction in Pioneer Village on the Plymouth County Fairgrounds. Auctioneer Bruce Brock kept the pace brisk as fair royalty displayed the items for sale. When it was finished, $23,335 was added to the fair's treasury, the highest auction total ever. The previous high total was $21,395 in 2000...

Youth plant a little Iowa history at fairgrounds (07/24/08)
Want to travel back in time in Iowa? Step into the patch of wildflowers and grasses behind the log cabin on the Plymouth County fairgrounds. Thanks to the Pheasants Forever youth council, a 575 square foot plot of land there has been transformed into a piece of prairie with native Iowa plants...

From field to shelf: Local stores sell local foods (07/21/08)
Right now, Le Mars' grocery stores boast a few shelves of ripe red tomatoes grown only a couple dozen miles away. Later in the summer, shoppers might be able to fill their carts with sweet corn, green beans and other produce that were grown locally...

Corn oil plant seeks property tax relief from county (06/18/08)
A proposed $30 million corn oil plant near Merrill inched closer to reality this week. The Plymouth County Supervisors on Tuesday approved five years of property tax relief for Plymouth Oil L.L.C. The first year will be a 75 percent break declining to 15 percent in the fifth year...

On the lookout for an invasion of tree-eaters (05/21/08)
They're leaving no survivors. They're moving in on Iowa. Emerald Ash Borers, insects that kill ash trees by eating away at them under their bark, are heading this direction, according to Dr. Mark Shour, a program specialist on pest managment and the environment from Iowa State University Extension...