Jefferson County ISU Extension and Outreach: A century of serving farmers, families and 4-H

Jefferson County ISU Extension and Outreach celebrated its 100th anniversary this year.

The occasion was marked by a Business After Hours event in June at the Cambridge Building at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. The public was invited to peruse scores of photographs and historical items from the past 100 years of extension in Jefferson County.

The event was also an opportunity for those most familiar with extension to reminisce on what it has accomplished over the years. Few people were as important to the success of Extension as Ron Bower, director of Jefferson County ISU Extension and Outreach for nearly two decades from 1986-2004.

Ron Bower

Bower was born and raised in Jefferson County. He became interested in Extension by taking its agricultural classes, useful to him as a farmer. He was good friends with Stan Stover, former county director, and ultimately succeeded him at the helm of the operation.

Jefferson County Extension has taken up residence in quite a few different buildings in town. Bower recalls when it was on North Main Street, north of where the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center is today. It shared a building with Farm Bureau, which was the Extension's sponsor when it was started by the Iowa Legislature.

In 1955, the extension office moved to the northwest corner of the square, above what was then Gaumer's Drug Store. Two years later, the first extension council was established. In 1959, extension moved to the east side of the square in what is now Noah's Raw Chocolate. Shortly thereafter in 1962, Stover was hired as the county director, and he remained in that role for about 20 years.

In the 1980s, the Jefferson County Fair Board began making plans for a brand new office, and in 1991, it built the extension office at its current location on the west edge of town on West Burlington Avenue. Extension rented the building from the fair board, with whom extension has always had a close relationship, Bower said.

Bower was hired as an agriculturalist, meaning his initial focus was overseeing the organization's ag programs. His responsibilities grew to include work with the 4-H youth. That meant he was called upon to be the chaperone on 4-H trips to Kansas City, Minneapolis and one where he got to float down the Apple River in Somerset, Wisconsin.

'One time we went to one in Chicago with the top 4-Hers from the state. I was the male chaperone with the Iowa delegation,” Bower said. 'That was quite a trip, because we stayed at the Hilton Hotel, and I had never been in a hotel with golden knobs on the sinks.”

Over the years, Bower came to be in charge of home economics and family programming as well as the youth and ag. His title was changed from county extension director to county extension education director. He hired staff to help with the 4-H program. Now that position is known as the county youth coordinator.

Ag program

Bower recalls that, during his tenure, extension was very active in hosting pesticide training courses. He was also in charge of the master corn and soybean growing contests, whereby participating farmers would submit a portion of their harvest to see who had the highest yielding acres. Awards were given to the top placers.

'If your acreage reached a certain yield, it had to be verified by another inspector,” Bower said. 'That's why farmers left some rows in their plot unharvested, so they could be checked later. We usually tested an acre or two.”

Bower said nearly all chemical dealers in the area have been trained by ISU Extension and Outreach staff.

Extension hosted programs in home economics that covered topics such as pressure-canning safety: how to read the gauges properly and ensure the jars were sealing right.

'Food safety was a biggie,” Bower said about the classes extension offered. 'We had classes on how to keep cold foods cold and hot foods hot. Many times, that's required for grocery stores or delis to get a license to serve.”

Clover Kids

One of the new programs Bower shepherded was Clover Kids, a program 4-H began in 2000. Clover Kids allows children to participate in the fair but who were too young to join 4-H (for kids ages 9-19).

'We had six members that first year, and eight years later we were up to 45 members,” Bower recalled. 'The Clover Kids could do projects for the fair, and they'd get a participation ribbon. Their projects were not judged against anyone else. It was supposed to be a learning experience.”

Bower said he judged at a nearby county fair earlier in July, and remarked at how excited that group of Clover Kids was to graduate to 4-H.

Not just farm kids

In its early days, 4-H was dominated by kids who grew up on farms. It was only natural since so many of its programs were related to agriculture. However, Bower said that the organization has done well of late to attract kids who don't live on farms.

'As the number of farms started to decline, and the 4-H numbers declined, we said, ‘Wait a minute. You don't have to live on a farm. We have a lot of things for you to do,'” he said. 'Kids might know somebody who owns a farm where they can raise a calf. Or they can have a small animal like a rabbit. You don't need many acres to raise a rabbit.”

Bower remarked on the explosion of 4-H activities in recent years, which includes robotics, Legos, welding, woodworking, photography, and more.

School enrichment programs

As extension has faced greater budget constraints, its search for funding has broadened. Bower said grant-writing became a big part of the job in about 1995, and has remained so ever since.

'There's only so much tax money to go around,” he said.

Grants from the federal government and private corporations have helped to fund school enrichment programs, which were 'nowhere around” when Bower started in 1986.

The Ledger asked Bower about the significance of extension's 100-year anniversary in Jefferson County.

'It shows that we are doing something, and that people still respect us,” he said. 'All of the information in our classes is research-based, not anecdotes. We're not pulling it from the seat of our britches.”

Neric Smith

A few years after Bower left, extension hired Neric Smith as its director in 2006. Smith would be the county's final director before extension moved to a system of 15 regional directors in 2009.

Before become the county's extension director, Smith had taught classes and worked on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames. He is from Davis County, and when he heard about the job opening at extension in neighboring Jefferson County, he jumped at the chance.

One of the major accomplishments during Smith's tenure was the expansion of the extension office built in 1991.

'I was able to work in collaboration with the fair board and extension council to complete a remodel and reorganization of the building,” Smith said. 'By the time I got there [15 years after it was built], we were outgrowing it. The council was looking at alternative locations, and we came to an agreement with the fair board that we would reorganize it, and it worked out well.”

The remodeling 'reversed” the building, so to speak. The office's front door used to be on the south side facing the fairgrounds, but that was moved to the north.

'One of the things my council at the time wanted was more exposure to the community, more community-outreach,” Smith said. 'We weren't just for the fair and 4-H. We had five program areas: 4-H youth, families, communities in economic development, business and industry, and agriculture and natural resources.”

The remodeling expanded the building both to the north and to the south. It added office space in the north and a larger meeting room in the south. The fair board created its own office that it could access, too.

Smith said one of the things he is most proud of is ramping up the horticulture program, which was his forte in his previous job, too.

'We focused on a lot of ag programming at that time,” he said. 'We were able to house family field specialist Mary Weinand, and beef specialist Byron Lou.”

After his position as county director was eliminated, Smith continued working with ISU Extension in a new capacity as a horticultural specialist. After a year, he was hired by Indian Hills Community College to teach landscape and turf grass technology. He is now the college's program director for agriculture and construction technologies at its Centerville campus.

Sue Henderson

Sue Henderson is director of the southeast region of counties that includes Jefferson and seven others: Appanoose, Davis, Lucas, Monroe, Van Buren, Wapello and Wayne. She has held this position since it was created 10 years ago, and has worked for extension for 26 years.

Henderson's role as regional director entails managing the 50 staff members (depending on the season) in those eight counties, and providing education and resources to each of the nine-member councils each county has.

Jefferson County's taxpayers sponsor an outreach coordinator who undertakes a variety of programs, such as 'Pick a Better Snack,” a recent one at Pekin School District.

'We do a lot of STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math] education with our homeschool group and the middle school, and we did that at Pence this last year, too,” Henderson said. 'Our outreach coordinator and 4-H offer a large number of day camps to any youth all summer long. Some are STEM-oriented, and others deal with things like gardening.”

Jefferson County Extension has hosted programs on leasing land, useful for tenants and landlords alike.

'The other thing we do in the ag arena is to have an extensive number of horticulture programs,” Henderson said. 'Our horticulturist Taylor Trudell has done programs on microgreens, landscape design, mushrooms and just did one on raspberries.”

Henderson said extension has always tried to adapt to what society needed. For instance, its youth program is offering coding to kids.

'Most companies cannot hire people fast enough with those skills,” she said.

In 2008, the United States was experiencing a financial crisis. Henderson said people came to the extension office wondering, 'Can you teach me how to create a budget? Can you teach me how to be more economical at the grocery store?” Henderson, a certified financial counselor, loved the chance to help people in that way.

Why was extension and outreach created?

A question that came up during the conversation with Henderson was why extension and outreach was created in the first place. Henderson said it goes back to the creation of Iowa State University itself, all the way back to the Civil War-era.

'Abraham Lincoln wanted to create a university for everybody,” Henderson said. 'He felt like education was the key to success, so he signed the Morrill Act, which allowed states to set aside parcels of land to sell, and with that money create a land grant university.”

A land grant university is distinct from other public and private universities in that it has three specific missions: teaching, research and outreach. Henderson refers to this as a 'three-legged stool.” Part of Iowa State University's outreach has been setting up satellite offices in every county of the state to fulfill its mission of bringing unbiased research on important subjects to the general public. Henderson said this year marks the 100th anniversary of Jefferson County raising enough money to pay a county agent of ISU Extension in 1919.