By Women, Land & Legacy Coordinator Wren Almitra

Women, Land & Legacy (WLL) is providing opportunities all throughout Iowa for agricultural women. Since 2016 our teams have provided over 60 events just for women on relevant topics to their day-to-day lives. As more counties join Women, Land & Legacy, more and more of these opportunities will be available. In addition to sharing what events are coming up when, we also like let you know some of the highlights of events past. Below are two re-caps of some exciting ones that happened this spring.

Estate Planning

On March 26^th, Tama Women, Land & Legacy sponsored an estate planning workshop. Presenter Melissa O’Rourke of ISU Extension & Outreach covered the Top Ten Estate and Transition Planning Mistakes to an audience of 26 people who learned a ton about the do’s and don’ts of planning for themselves and their family’s future. This was Tama Women, Land & Legacy’s 32^nd since they kicked off in 2007. Check out their next event coming up on June 19^th, a fun tour of Adolphs Produce in Traer.

Women Gaining Ground Conference

As the coordinator for Women, Land & Legacy, one of the biggest perks of the job is participating in the great events our WLL organize for women all throughout the state. In March I attended the 4^th annual Women Gaining Ground conference in Glenwood, coordinated by the Southwest Women, Land & Legacy team (made up of Fremont, Mills, Montgomery and Page counties). Bringing in nearly 140 women from all over southwest Iowa, southeast Nebraska and other locations, participants shared in a full day of networking and workshops on a variety of topics.

The keynote for the conference, Dr. Deanna Davis, shared tools for women to reduce stress and bring balance into our day-to-day lives. One of the tools she emphasized was for women to make connections, which wasn’t a surprise to me. One of the goals of Women, Land & Legacy is to connect women with each other and helpful resources and we’ve seen over and over again that these connections lead to more confidence and less stress as women make decisions about their farms or other life choices. You can read all about the annual Women Gaining Ground conference in an interview I did with one of the team members here.

Women, Land & Legacy is a locally led USDA outreach program coordinated through the Women, Food & Agriculture Network. If you want to see if there’s a local Women, Land & Legacy network in or near your county, check out our map of active teams here, and look for upcoming events throughout the state here. Don’t see your county listed? Contact us to find out how to get a local chapter started!