 Welcome to the first edition of our quarterly Women in Ag Newsletter Soil Sisters: Conservation Harvest, focused on women farmland owners, women farmers, and those devoted to the conservation of our farmland! Please encourage your friends and colleagues to join the list. Remember, we'll just send out quarterly emails like this one, and we will not sell or share your email address. Enjoy! Caring for our Lands 
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| Sue Glende is a District Conservationist, or DC for short, with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) serving Winona County in southeast Minnesota. Renewing the Countryside had the opportunity to work with Sue during a Women Caring for the Land workshop in the fall of 2015.
As a DC Sue’s work includes a wide range of activities ranging from providing information, design resources and technical know-how on conservation programs, providing financial assistance to implement these actions, helping landowners establish wildlife cover, and working on projects that help landowners conserve energy and improve air quality. Being the person leading the office there are management duties as well. he NRCS staff at Sue’s office works hard to provide these conservation planning and implementation resources to those who need it. They routinely have 20 – 30 new contracts annually for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). To do this work well requires a lot of one-on-one time with landowners and producers to help get funding applications processed and practices installed. The variety of the work keeps her coming back as she notes that “No day is the same. Each farm and landowner is different with its own opportunities and challenges.” |
| Farmer Profile: Q & A with Kathy Zeman |
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“If it ain’t simple, we can’t do it,” shares Kathy Zeman with a smile about her 20-acre diversified organic operation she’s been running as a solo woman farmer for the past 10 years. |
| Leadership Opportunity |
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With Earth Day coming up I’ve been thinking a lot about actions people take to improve the environment. The list is long and runs the gamut from picking up trash, to planting rain gardens, to attending rallies to advocate for changes to laws, to countless other options. Any action to make our world a healthier, cleaner more sustainable place is good. With this year being an election year there is another opportunity to protect and improve our soil and water that most people have never heard of but is very important; it’s being a Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) Supervisor. |
| Recipe Corner |
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Cucumber Buttermilk Soup and Mess o' Beans - And learn about the amazing women farmers who love them! |
| Upcoming Events Women Caring for the Land Workshops |
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May 11th 10 AM - 4 PM
Windom Community Center
1750 Cottonwood Lake Drive
Windom, MN 56101
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May 24th Riverside Town and Country Club
36259 150th Street
Blue Earth, MN 56013
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May 25th 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Dakota Extension and Conservation Center 4100 220th St. West
Farmington, MN 55024
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Thanks for keeping in touch!
Jan, Beth, Lisa, and Grace
Renewing the Countryside
http://www.renewingthecountryside.org/
2637 27th Ave S, Suite 17, Minneapolis, MN 55406
You can also keep up with Renewing the Countryside on Twitter or Facebook.