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| Iowa farmers rising above challenges of flood waters |
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This is just all a little too familiar: network journalists in hip waders, skirting the edge of a rising river; kids diving into the “deep end” of a flooded playground; sandbags and kybos dotting the streets everywhere.
Yes, the floods are back and they’re looking “bigger and badder” than those most Iowans remember in 1993. But then, as now, Iowans are proving their mettle.
Decorah is one such place where folks rolled up their sleeves to save their little Norwegian jewel of a town from the muddy floodwaters of the Upper Iowa and Turkey Rivers.
Any good Iowa Norwegian knows the northeast Iowa town of Decorah, a town nestled in the sleepy bluffs of Winneshiek County. When I was a kid, it was an annual pilgrimage to visit Decorah during their Norwegian Festival to stuff my face with kringla (and just about anything else with sauerkraut). This town has seen many ups and downs in its more than 200 years of history, but none like the trouble that boiled out of the Upper Iowa River this week.
Kyle Holthaus, Winneshiek County Farm Bureau president and a farmer who grows produce and flowers for the town’s popular local food co-op, certainly doesn’t remember anything quite like this. But, his voice lilts when he talks about what could’ve happened, if not for the help of a few local farmers.
“Fourteen inches of rain fell in the last couple days, and we knew the river was going to take the whole town,” said Holthaus. “Farmers here didn’t wait to be asked; they just showed up with tractors, end-loaders and huge manure pumps. These guys had crops under water, but rather than sit around and watch their topsoil erode, they went in to town to help. They stayed there as the water rose up their tractor wheels from Sunday before dinner, well into nightfall on Monday.”
Five different tractors ran 13 pumps, courtesy of local livestock farmers, which cleared out 200,000 gallons of water per minute.
What these farmers did was buy the town some time - time to fill a dump truck full of sandbags; time to move things to safe ground; time to get away.
What happens next for Decorah, or the little muddy towns of Bluffton, Eldorado or Dorchester, is anyone’s guess. But, it’s Holthaus’ hope that the differences of opinions about big or small farming operations and locations of hog barns will recede with the floodwaters. Because when people came together this week in crisis, none of that mattered.
Laurie Groves
Iowa Farm Bureau |
| 6/25/2008 |
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