-Submitted photo
Chris Henning is a crop-share farmer in Greene County. She and her farmer-operator have breathed new life into the land that reflects sustainability efforts, such as a 10-acre prairie wetland, stream buffers with crop rotations, a pollinator habitat, prairie CRP on highly erodible ground, and more.

JEFFERSON — When Chris Henning turned 18, the oldest of six sisters bid goodbye to her family’s farm without any plan of farming again.

She could drive a tractor and tackle virtually any farm chore. But she couldn’t deny the pull of the land and, in 1991, returned to Greene County with her then-husband, Max, to live in the country. Their property included an 1870s farmhouse in need of restoration, four creeks and 120 acres of rented corn and soybean fields.

“From chickens and eggs to cattle and pigs and sheep, to German shepherds to six daughters and all sorts of activities and 4-H, we were a busy family,” Henning said. “My dad was one of the first farmers in Greene County to do contour farming. He was doing no till and leaving corn stubble.”

Fate had other plans for the Jefferson native and her now late husband.

They purchased a 145-acre farm near Jefferson, a rough chunk of land, and Henning spent 30 years breathing new life into it. She incorporated prairie restoration efforts through CRP enrollment with an eye on raising her return of investment per acre while bolstering the health of the land.

“The ones who had leased it before we bought the farm were farming 1950s style,” Henning said. “They may have been cultivating, but didn’t use herbicide. We had such a weed seed bank that when we planted the first crop, we grew as many weeds as we grew corn. The corn yielded 100 bushels an acre. Beans were horrible, 25 (bushels per acre).”

Today, Henning remains a crop-share farmer on land she named Prairie Skye Productions Farms located east of Squirrel Hollow Park along the Raccoon River. The floods of ’93 ravaged the ground, but Henning, along with her farmer-operator, have breathed new life into the land that reflects sustainability efforts, such as a 10-acre prairie wetland on the family land she inherited, stream buffers with crop rotations, a pollinator habitat, prairie CRP on highly erodible ground, cover crops and minimum tillage as a way to protect the watershed and replenish the soil.

Roads north and south of the house were gone after the “Great Flood.” The farm’s four creeks overflowed and rainwaters flooded the land. When the waters finally receded, Henning was left with gullies carved so deep “you could lose a tractor in them.” And the precious soil had been carried downstream. In fact, central Iowa was without safe drinking water for weeks, laced with soil and other things, which concerned Henning.

“In 1993, I was at the Greene County Fair with my sister. We got 8 inches of rain that day. We went to my car to pick it up from the fairgrounds and the water was all the way up to the floorboards of my car. So many streets were closed. By that night, my sister’s basement was filled with water,” Henning said. “By morning, there wasn’t a creek by my house and there wasn’t a road either.”

A local agronomist approached Henning and encouraged her to sign up for a program to install buffer strips along her creeks. But because of how the streams wandered, the buffers removed 26 acres out of production.

However, it ended up being a good decision on many levels, Henning said.

When faced with poor prices for corn and soybeans in the early 2000s, Henning rallied other farmers to research and invest in raising edible beans and other alternative crops to compensate for the loss of income from traditional crops. Their group, known as The Greene Bean Project, led the farmers to plant 1,000 acres of alternative crops in 18 Iowa countries, including garbanzo and adzuki beans for export to Japan. Tom Thorpe, his 12-year-old son, Troy, and Tom’s dad helped plant those beans on Henning’s farm. She ended up switching to Thorpe as her crop-share farmer at the time.

“Azuki beans have a lot of carbs in them. They’re used for candy in Asian countries,” Henning said. “We cooked them and made an azuki paste. If you add enough brown sugar and dates, it’ll make a bean paste that tastes like chocolate.”

Henning also is active in the Women Food and Agriculture Network and encourages other women involved in ag to have an opinion and not back down. She’s been named a Cover Crop Champion for the National Wildlife Federation and served as chair of the RRWA. She also was a 2022 recipient of Practical Farmers of Iowa’s Farmland Owner Legacy Award and received the Iowa Farm Environmental Leader award presented by Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig and other officials at the Iowa State Fair.

“I enjoy learning new things myself, trying different things and seeing how things work,” said Henning. “I still ride in the planter and the combine. I marvel at the technology available today.”