Agriculture

Rob Riley windsurfs on Lake Winnebago.

Rob Riley knows how to have fun on the water. From paddle boarding to sailing, white water canoeing to windsurfing, he’s no stranger to lake recreation. But when he first moved to the Fox Valley, he was a stranger to water quality concerns on Lake Winnebago.

“You can’t really miss the problem,” Rob said. “It limits your ability to participate in activities. There are days I think: I’m not going in there; it’s looking pretty green.”

It hit him in a new way when he was at a concert at Waterfest. The emcee on stage made a joke about Lake Winnebago and the green water, and everyone laughed. “I couldn’t believe it,” Rob said. “That’s not a punch line; that’s our drinking water! Are we really going to just accept that this is the way it is?”

For Rob, the answer is a resounding no. “It became a personal mission,” he said. “This is what I want to be about.”

Because Rob is an entrepreneur who owns his own business, he was able to expand his capacity for change through his company. Motto, Inc., located in Appleton, got its start selling skateboard grip tape. He experimented with having specific items that supported specific causes. “If we printed a wolf image on the tape, some proceeds would go toward wolf protection,” Rob explained. Given that a core market for him was young skateboarders, his customers weren’t really into the same causes Rob was trying to promote.

A few more experiments later, and the idea has grown. “Now it’s more about the mission of the whole company,” Rob said. “We do different things, we branch out into new products, because it funds what we want to do. It’s what drives us.”

Because Motto, Inc. is a small business, having a focus on environmental mission has a big impact on the staff. One of the newest hires has a background in environmental science and will be working to connect staff to local opportunities.

“Mainly we do this through Fox-Wolf,” Rob said. In 2023, the staff participated together on volunteer projects, including native seed planting and the annual Fox-Wolf Watershed Cleanup.

Thanks to Rob, Motto, Inc. is the first business to become a Lifetime Member of Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance. And while he invested in Fox-Wolf as a way to create a sense of mission for his team, his business has benefited as well.

“Environmental sustainability registers in the marketplace,” he explained. “We speak to it all the time, and people value that.” Beyond sales and promotion, “it has also helped me hire more conscientious employees,” Rob added.

Ultimately, Rob really wants to see our waters stop getting worse and start getting better. “I hope that people will start to have gratitude for our water,” he said, “and will live accordingly.”

Join us on Saturday, May 4, 2024

The annual Fox-Wolf Watershed Cleanup takes place every year on the first Saturday of May. This event brings over 1,600 volunteers to over 60 sites across our watershed. Thanks to their efforts, thousands of pounds of trash are removed from the shores of our waters every year.

Read about it and sign up today! (Registration closes April 23, 2024)

Watershed Moments is a publication of Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, sharing the stories of how your donations have impacted lives in our community. Read our latest project updates, make a secure online donation, or become a member at www.fwwa.org

Emma and Rory spend time outside with their troop.

It’s not just about the cookies.

Girl Scout troops 2278 and 2378 have been working together to care for our watershed for years. No one can remember quite when they started, but they remember the badge they were working on.

Troop leader Julie Schubring explained that some badges are part of a series called a Journey. The Brownies in the troop were working on their Wonders of Water journey and needed a service project to connect them with water. For their final task, the Fox-Wolf Watershed Cleanup was a perfect fit.

“They all love water things,” Julie said. “We go kayaking, hiking to waterfalls, swimming.” So it wasn’t hard to get them interested in keeping their water clean.

Those same Brownies are now middle and high school students, some of whom are still invested in caring for our local waters. But their understanding of water quality has grown beyond just picking up trash.

“Some of the older kids have gone to the water plant and learned about how water is managed,” Julie said. The scouts wanted to learn how to help with water quality before it even gets to the treatment plant.

It would be easy for these kids to get their badges, complete their Journey, and move on to something else. Instead, they keep volunteering, year after year.

“They’re so excited to participate,” Julie shared. “They want to find new things, but their hope really is to find that there is hardly anything there to clean.”

In the past, this troop has found a wide variety of items to pick up.

“People throw away a lot of cans and wrappers,” said Rory, age 16. “And fishing line is annoying to clean up. It gets tangled in the trees.”

Emma added that they’ve seen big things too, like tires and even a whole muffler!

Because they’ve been participating for a couple of years, Emma and Rory have watched the trash at their local site come and go.

“Because our site is local to us, we get to go back and see it other times of the year,” said Julie. The troop has other events at the park, and the scouts have other family or community reasons to be there as well.

“It makes me happy to know I can help. But I also get annoyed and angry that it doesn’t stay clean,” said Rory. Emma agreed and added, “It’s sad that trash in my town is this big of a problem.”

Undaunted, these two scouts and the rest of their troop have been returning to the cleanup year after year. And they’re inviting family members to join them. “I went the first time because I was supposed to, but I ended up enjoying it, so I keep coming back,” said Emma.

Emma has managed to convince her siblings, her mom, and her grandma to join in. What’s the secret for being persuasive? “I just ask nicely!”

Join us on Saturday, May 4, 2024

The annual Fox-Wolf Watershed Cleanup takes place every year on the first Saturday of May. This event brings over 1,600 volunteers to over 60 sites across our watershed. Thanks to their efforts, thousands of pounds of trash are removed from the shores of our waters every year.

Read about it and sign up today!

Watershed Moments is a publication of Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, sharing the stories of how your donations have impacted lives in our community. Read our latest project updates, make a secure online donation, or become a member at www.fwwa.org

Andy Kiefer shares best practices and ideas with local farmers.

Andy Kiefer never wanted anything to do with agriculture as an adult. He grew up on a multi-generation dairy farm in Sherwood. All he knew was that it was a lot of work, and he didn’t really understand how any of it made a difference. “I thought ag was just kicking rocks!” Andy joked.

All in all, he would rather have been working with his hands as a mechanic. He was fascinated by the wind farms in Fond du Lac, and envisioned an adrenaline-filled career climbing to the top of the turbines to do maintenance and repair. He liked the idea of renewable energy, but was a bit ahead of his time. There wasn’t really a school program for that yet.

He wrote off agriculture. He wrote off renewable energy. But it all came together when his English professor made the class read Omnivore’s Dilemma. Suddenly Andy realized how farming and the environment are connected.

“I didn’t realize you could even farm that way,” Andy said. “It opened my eyes. I made a 180 and fell back in love with agriculture and what it can do. What it can do for our health and for the planet.”

Fresh out of school, Andy started working at the local co-op, telling everyone about what he had learned. “I wanted to become the cover crop guru,” he said, “but it was too new. People weren’t interested.”

Andy needed a way to share what he knew with others who were working in agriculture. When he became the Outagamie County agronomist eight years ago, he was introduced to Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance.

“Fox-Wolf helps make my job easier,” Andy confirmed. “You do an amazing job filling that piece of helping people understand what is happening in our food system. I enjoy working with you, and with Katie [Woodrow] and what she does to keep me on task with grants and help us get grants.”

The grants and resources that Fox-Wolf provides have helped Andy to encourage farmers to get started in conservation farming. “A farmer may really like the message,” he explained, “but the margins can be so thin. It takes a huge amount of courage to try something new.” A farm may be where you live, but it is also a small business. And for many of our local farmers, there is the added pressure of being a multi-generation farm.

To help farmers, Andy likes to talk about best practices like a dimmer switch. A regular light switch is either on or off. But a dimmer allows you to make gradual change. “People think conservation farming is do it or don’t,” Andy said. But there’s a lot you can do to be better and improving. Even little things start making a difference. Something is better than nothing.”

Over his eight years with Outagamie County, Andy has noticed those small things add up. Last year he was driving down a road where the fields used to be all brown in the fall. But only a few years after advocating for cover crops, just about every field was green. “It just kept going,” Andy said, “for 5-10 miles. It was amazing to see.”

He also appreciates the farmers who talk about their positive experiences. “There’s a 75-year-old farmer who just started doing no-till farming three years ago,” Andy shared. People assume he changed for money, but he did it because the practices work.

“He’d never get up in front of a stage to tell his story, but he will talk with other farmers. He doesn’t realize it, but he’s been a great ambassador and opened people’s eyes to different motivations other than money.”

Profile in Courage

Watershed Moments is a publication of Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, sharing the stories of how your donations have impacted lives in our community. Read our latest project updates, make a secure online donation, or become a member at www.fwwa.org