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Iowa's prairies have roots across the state, including in some prisons

A man in green coveralls and an orange hoodie scrapes prairie seed into an auger in a metal building.
Rachel Cramer
/
Iowa Public Radio
A worker at North Central Correctional Facility in Rockwell City feeds combine-harvested prairie seed into an auger.

Since 2000, a small team at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has been collecting, cleaning and distributing seeds to reconstruct prairies across the state. One of their longest running partners to help fill orders is Iowa’s Department of Corrections.

Inside a metal building, half a dozen men in coveralls and orange hoodies feed dry stems and seedheads into machines with shaking screens and blowing air.

They’re incarcerated at the North Central Correctional Facility on the edge of Rockwell City in Calhoun County. During the winter months, they clean prairie seeds that the DNR harvested in the fall.

Rusty, one of the workers from the correctional facility, takes a big scoop out of a bag labeled Verbena stricta. IPR is using only first names for incarcerated people in this story at the request of the Department of Corrections.

“We just dump it in here. This allows us to let out just a little at a time,” Rusty said before he turned a knob. “The big stuff stays on top with this filter, this screen. The seed and smaller stems drop down through the other screens.”

Bill Johnson, wearing a green DNR hoodie, watches the machine spit out clean seed.

“Seed cleaning is both an art and a science," he said. "We have recipe cards of what we did years previous so we know what screens to use and how much air to use. But every year, the seed changes a little bit, so we may have to tweak it."

A metal building is filled with rows of large white bags. Men in green coveralls and orange hoodies are stationed around machines that clean prairie seeds.
Rachel Cramer
/
Iowa Public Radio
Several workers at the North Central Correctional Facility in Rockwell City clean prairie seed harvested by the Iowa DNR. One worker feeds the plant material into an auger, which takes it up into a "debearder" and air-screen cleaner to separate the seed from the seedpods. The clean seed will get bagged up and logged before going to the DNR's Prairie Resource Center.

Johnson manages the DNR’s Prairie Resource Unit, which creates site-specific seed mixes to reconstruct prairies at state parks, recreation areas and other state-owned, public land. Prairie habitat — which once covered about 80% of Iowa — is vital for wildlife. It also holds soil in place and filters water.

But with just a few full-time staff, Johnson said they wouldn’t be able to produce enough seed to cover roughly 1,800 acres a year on their own.

Plants grow in black plastic pots in a greenhouse.
Courtesy of Iowa DNR
Prairie violets grow in a greenhouse for the DNR's prairie seed production program. Bill Johnson said several correctional facilities, along with high schools in Shenandoah, Sidney and Cedar Falls, also raise these plants for the DNR. Prairie violets are the host plant for the regal fritillary butterfly, which was federally listed a few years ago.

“The last few years, our harvests have had a value of around a million dollars, and obviously our budget is not nearly that,” Johnson said, adding that most of the funding for the program comes from hunting and fishing licenses.

Johnson emphasized that partners, including the Iowa Department of Corrections, have helped fill in labor gaps since the DNR switched to in-house seed production in 2000. They’ve also helped his team adopt practices to bump up the timeline for seed production.

Early on, a certified trades leader at a correctional facility in Oakdale taught the DNR and other DOC staff how to propagate prairie plants in greenhouses.

Pride and new perspectives

Josh McNeil, North Central Correctional Facility’s deputy warden, sat next to a walk-in cooler for storing seeds. He said incarcerated people who qualify to work outside the prison’s secure perimeter can apply for a job with a private sector partner or the DNR.

They’re paid around 60 cents an hour through the state of Iowa, according to McNeil. But pay is not often the main motivation.

“A lot of these guys want something to break up their day and give back to the community,” he said.

McNeil added that it’s an opportunity to learn new job skills and “get into the routine again to prepare for when they are released.”

A lot of these guys want something to break up their day and give back to the community.
Josh McNeil, North Central Correctional Facility’s deputy warden

Dushaun has been in the program about eight months. He said it helps pass the time, and there’s a sense of pride from the work. In the spring, he planted prairie plant seedlings in a production plot at the facility.

“You see a little plant, and then weeks later, it’s a big plant. And it’s like – we planted that,” Dushaun said.

Yellow flowers bloom next to weed tarp in a field.
Rachel Cramer
/
Iowa Public Radio
The DNR recently partnered with the Iowa State University Horticulture Research Station to add production plots for prairie plants. Laura Miner, a natural resources technician, said this method increases the amount of seed available to reconstruct prairies at state parks, recreation areas and other state-owned, public land. Upper Iowa University, seven county conservation boards, North Central Correctional Facility, Newton Correctional Facility and Fort Dodge Correctional Facility also manage production plots.

Dushaun said he’d like to start a garden when he gets out of prison, and that he appreciates working alongside Johnson and the other DNR staff. It’s something echoed by Richard, who has been in the program since April.

“Being able to work with [them] helped me appreciate myself a little more because they didn’t make us feel like inmates. They made us feel like people,” Richard said. “And I know that these guys really appreciate the work we do for them.”

Richard said he didn’t have any interest in plants or horticulture experience, other than planting flowers with his mom in his hometown. But he said several times that the program has “been a blessing.”

“You learn to appreciate things a lot more,” he said. “Like my background, I’m a drug addict. I didn’t care about anything but myself. But out here … I sit and just appreciate God a lot more because I get to see the life of a plant from the birth of it to the death of it. And it just puts life in a whole new perspective for me.”

A yearly cycle

Large white bags fill up a meeting room.
Rachel Cramer
/
Iowa Public Radio
Bags of prairie seed fill up a meeting room at the DNR’s Prairie Resource Center while part of the workshop space is under construction.

All of the seed cleaned at North Central Correctional Facility will go to the DNR’s Prairie Resource Center at Brushy Creek State Recreation Area.

Laura Miner, a natural resources technician with the DNR, walks past a room filled with large bags of seed from across the state. She said the whole process starts with remnant prairies, which have never been plowed and contain greater genetic diversity than reconstructed prairies. Less than 0.1% of this original habitat remains in Iowa.

DNR staff and conservation partners, like The Nature Conservancy, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and Tallgrass Prairie Center at the University of Northern Iowa, collect seeds from remnants around the state.

After seed cleaning, a lot of it goes through a process called “stratification” at the Prairie Resource Center.

“Stratification mimics that winter cycle that all plants would go through naturally outside,” Miner said. “[Cold water] has time to get inside that seed coat and start to moisten and break it down the same way that freezing and thawing would over the winter months.”

Miner opened a refrigerator stuffed with Ziploc bags. Each contained seeds, silica sand and distilled water. They’re stored here for 10-120 weeks, depending on the species.

A woman holds tiny seeds in one hand and a metal cylinder with seed pods in another.
Rachel Cramer
/
Iowa Public Radio
Laura Miner, Natural Resources Technician 2 with the DNR’s Prairie Resource Center, holds several seeds in her hand after they went through the scarifier for legumes. The machine spins the legume seeds against rough sandpaper, which scratches the hard seed coat. “We don't want to damage the seed, but we want to crack it just enough that water is able to get into that seed coat and spur on germination," she said. In nature, this would happen through several freeze-thaw cycles.

In February, DNR staff germinate seeds in their greenhouse. Some seedlings go to greenhouses at Upper Iowa University and several correctional facilities to continue growing. Then, they’re planted outside in dense rows with weed tarp at production plots managed by the DNR, Upper Iowa University, Iowa State University Horticulture Research Station, half a dozen county conservation boards, North Central Correctional Facility, Newton Correctional Facility and Fort Dodge Correctional Facility.

“Having the production plots is really helpful in growing large quantities of species that we want to make sure are represented in our seed mixes,” Miner said.

But the bulk of the DNR’s seed mix comes from reconstructed prairie fields at Brushy Creek.

“Those we harvest with a full size combine with a rice head stripper attached to the front,” Miner said. “It strips the seed off but leaves the plants intact as wildlife habitat going into the winter.”

The DNR sends samples of the combine-harvested mix to professional seed labs in the Midwest to check the composition and viability of the seed. Miner said this step lets them know what other grass or flower seeds to add and in what quantities.

Mixes typically include 50-80 species, but Johnson said they work with over 100 native grasses and flowers.

“Early on in my career, a diverse reconstruction was five native grass species,” Johnson said. “What this program has done is to more closely replicate a remnant prairie.”

Greater diversity in plant species supports greater diversity in wildlife, starting with insects, he said.

A man in a mask stands on a platform above a machine that uses different sizes of screens to separate the seed from pods and other material.
Rachel Cramer
/
Iowa Public Radio
Rusty cleans Verbena stricta seed with a machine that uses different sizes of screens to separate the seed from pods and other material at the North Central Correctional Facility in Rockwell City. He said he likes hands-on work and the opportunity to learn something new.

Johnson is preparing to retire in January after 24 years with the program. He said the Iowa Department of Corrections has been a long-standing partner, helping the DNR reconstruct diverse prairies in every county.

Even if incarcerated workers don’t pick up jobs in prairie seed production or landscaping after they get out of prison, Johnson believes there’s value in working on a project from beginning to end.

“Fulfillment comes in a lot of different ways,” he added. “Seeing success in a program, or success in anything, I think is very rewarding, to not only me, but I think anybody working on their project.”

Rachel Cramer is IPR's Harvest Public Media Reporter, with expertise in agriculture, environmental issues and rural communities. She's covered water management, food security, nutrition and sustainability efforts among other topics for Yellowstone Public Radio, The Guardian, WGBH and currently for IPR. Cramer is a graduate of the University of Montana and Iowa State University.