Week 1 in Region 18 | Getting Started!

Hello everyone! This is Kaylee Kleitsch, one of the two interns for Region 18. Since this is my first blog post, I’ll introduce myself! I grew up on a farm just outside of Fairbank, a small town in Northeast Iowa. I lived with my two parents, Rick and Brenda, and my younger twin brothers, Brock and Brody. My family raises hogs and rowcrops, and we have a handful of cattle and other animals to show at our county fair and as pets. I just finished my first year at Iowa State majoring in Agriculture and Rural Policy, with a double minor in Political Science and Environmental Studies. I’m so excited for this summer and all the experiences that will come with the Rising Star internship! I’ll be working alongside Jacob Guthrie, and I’ll let him introduce himself in next week’s blog post.

We started things out by getting to know Newton, one of the towns that we will be working out of. Carol Camp gave us a quick tour of the town after we stopped by the courthouse to try and find some records for one of our projects. Later that day, we were able to meet some community members and help to plant tomatoes and peppers. Once ripe, those tomatoes and peppers will be donated to a local food pantry. It’s an amazing program and we’re glad that we got the chance to be a part of it.

We dove right into our project the next time we were in Newton. Jake and I were tasked with researching the history of the lot that will someday become a community garden. There was a rumor that once upon a time there were houses sitting on that lot, but we really didn’t know how many or where they were placed. The information was a bit difficult to find, but after a few hours looking at historical aerial photos and various land maps, we were able to figure out that there were three homes on the property, and their relative locations. We were also able to find information on the soil composition and the topography of the land, and figure out what sorts of plants may have the best outcome in this area. With that information, we were able to meet with the Jasper County Master Gardeners and give a presentation about the gardening possibilities on the site.

In Knoxville, we kept busy with a training about how to run the day camps later this summer. We learned a lot of very useful skills, and got to know some other interns that will be working in the area this summer. Jake and I were tasked with our next project: setting up for Day Camps throughout the month of June. This means a lot of sorting, reading, and shopping. Once the camps start, we really won’t have any more time to prep! We also got to test out some of the experiments for our Fizz, Bubble, Goo camp for kindergarten through third graders!

All in all, Jake and I had a blast this week! We loved getting to know everybody at the offices and we are so excited to see how our projects in the different counties grow over the next couple of months.