North Central Iowa Weeks 5 & 6 | Region 4

Weeks 5 & 6 Summary

Week 5

Week 5 was an exciting week! We spent our week preparing for the Worth County Fair, met with the Farmers’ Market Vendors at their monthly meeting, and met with the Peace Park Council in Hampton to review designs. Friday was a busy day. We took off to Clear Lake bright and early at 5:30 a.m. in order to attend their Quarterly Coffee. Afterwards, we made our way the the Worth County Fair. At the Fair we had several tasks: surveying the community about their thoughts on community gardens and advertising a Lawns and Gardens event that will take place in August. Overall it was an eventful week!

Week 6

Compared to last week, we had much less traveling throughout the counties. On Tuesday we met with the Principal of Lincoln Intermediate to discuss some of our ideas for the greenhouse. We were met with great enthusiasm which has motivated us to keep working hard to ensure the greenhouse becomes a part of every child’s Lincoln Intermediate career. Throughout the rest of the week, we primarily worked remotely on tasks for the greenhouse, the Hampton Farmers’ Market, and more proposals for Peace Park.

See below for the progress made in our three projects over the last couple of weeks!

Summer Project Updates

Lincoln Intermediate Greenhouse

Mason city, IA

We will be working with Lincoln Intermediate staff and community to integrate the use of their recently built greenhouse into their classroom curriculum, particularly math and science. Throughout the summer we will: initiate the use of the hydroponics system, develop lesson plans, and create a sustainable growth & maintenance plan for the greenhouse.

Worth County Fair Booth

Northwood, IA

The Worth County Fair is fast approaching! The Rising Star Interns will be hosting a booth on Friday, June 18th. At the booth, we will be conducting a community survey to research the community’s outlook on community gardening and their knowledge and interest in the Master Gardener program. We will also be advertising a gardening event that will take place on August 5th.

Peace Park Transformation

Hampton, Ia

The decision on a final design for the Hampton IA downtown park is expected very soon! Since the revisions that were suggested last week have been taken into account, a final design is expected by the end of week 6, and will be proposed to Hampton community officials during week 7.

Activities and Accomplishments

Our team will be working together on each project to accomplish the objectives and goals. Together we have developed weekly tasks, schedules, and internal deadlines to meet the desired outcomes. These will be updated weekly to reflect our progress.
  • Created agendas and attachments for a meeting with Lincoln Intermediate’s principal.
  • Prepared workshop activities brainstorm list, including descriptions and benefits
  • presented list of activities to Lincoln Intermediate’s principal, and discussed logistics of holding learning workshops in the greenhouse at the end of July!
  • Developed a step by step guide for various processes within the greenhouse that will be compiled into a growing handbook for the greenhouse
  • Met with Dennis Johnson to tour the fairgrounds and local all the necessary items for the fair booth
  • Finished the flyers and posters for the August 5th lawns and gardens lecture
  • Printed informational posters about Master Gardener
  • Put together a poster to advertise the goody bags for survey participation
  • Finished the community garden survey and received ISU approval
  • Attended the fair and spoke to fair attendees about Master Gardener, our survey, and the August 5th event
  • Determined what specific materials will be purchased and used for construction
  • Determined what local design/build firm will take on the construction of this project
  • Began technical/utility plans with regards to the specific site
  • Refined final design concepts after meeting with Hampton city officials as well as the project donor.
  • Finished up final design plans that will be presented to Hampton city officials during week 7
Rough draft of a growing timeline we will finalize and share with faculty as part of the final report. Teachers can use this for lesson planning in relation to the greenhouse
Here’s a graphic that was designed to advertise the prizes being given out as a reward for taking the survey.
Visualization of potential purposes/designs that can be applied to the empty lot in order to transform the site into useable green space.