Magazine cover story includes Greene County woman farmer
Magazine cover story includes Greene County woman farmer
~by Denise O’Brien Van, special to GreeneCountyNewsOnline
Chris Henning
Chris Henning, who farms 350 acres southeast of Jefferson, is one of five Iowa women farmers featured in the cover story of the current issue of The Iowan magazine.
Titled “Farming Like She Owns It,” the article says women are changing the face of Iowa farming, and asks, “Are they changing its practices as well?”
Henning is featured as a woman who pays attention to the land she owns and farms with soil and water conservation in mind. She was interviewed last fall by freelancer Barb Hall, and photographed among golden prairie grasses by Kathryn Gamble.
“It’s cool that the article came out in the spring, just before we’re planning to burn my prairie,” Henning said, noting that systematic burning of prairies rejuvenates plants and ensures longtime survival of prairieland,
Sometime this month, she’ll fire some of the 26 acres planted as buffer strips near the three unnamed creeks that run through her farm, and other acres of highly erodable ground and wetland prairie planted in grasses. She burns only ten acres at a time.
The prairie hasn’t been burned in three years because of the drought in Greene County, said Henning. She usually rotates areas to be burned to leave cover for insects and small animals and reptiles
“Burning isn’t for the faint of heart,” she said. “Prairie grass burns hot, tall and furious and faster than any fire you’ve ever seen.
“It will burn until all its fuel is gone, and you have to be prepared for the worst.” she said.
When the day is right for burning–and that means a day with the correct humidity and no wind–Henning will be ready. She will have mowed fire breaks into the prairie plants. She’ll have a water tank on hand. She’ll make sure there’s proper oversight as the grass is torched, the conflagration begins, turns to ashes and finally dies. And she will have notified the Jefferson fire department, whose assistance won’t be needed if all goes well.
Henning ,who also is executive director for events and tourism for Greene County Chamber and Development, got interested in conserving her land after Iowa’s infamous Flood of 1993 carried away tons of her farm’s fertile black soil. She began planting prairies in 1996. The buffer strips help keep the creek water clear; the wetland prairie filters water in the creeks, which wind for a mile to the Raccoon River; the plants covering the gullies put the brakes on erosion. All three areas serve as pollinator habitat for bees and for monarch butterflies. Not all of the vegetation will be consumed by the fire, a normal occurrence that protects insects and their eggs that can’t escape the blaze.
Henning said Hall, the article’s author, is writing a book about women farmers. Among the other women featured in the article is Liz Garst of Coon Rapids who farms and conserves her family’s longtime holdings in Carroll County
