About Us
About Us | 2007: The Year in Review | Climate Data
We are a small family farm. Sand Hill Preservation Center consists of myself (Glenn) and my wife, Linda. Our two grown sons, Nick and Cory (no longer living at home) who come back occasionally to help out. In addition to what we produce here, we also work with several close friends to produce some rare and unusual seed varieties and poultry breeds. Though we have 10 acres in seed production and evaluation, we are not a large operation. We put in long hours, and take a lot of care in what we do. All of the work is done by members of our family with occasional help from outside sources. We grow over 90% of our seed offerings on our farm.
First, and foremost, we are genetic preservationists. We are not a typical seed company or commercial hatchery. We are doing this work in love and service of the genetic diversity of this planet we all call home. Because supporting genetic diversity is our main priority, the nature of this work means that our lives are governed by the seasons of the year, the life cycles of our seed plants, and the biological rhythms of poultry and hatch dates. What this means for you, our customer, is that we do not provide "just-in-time" inventory management, and instant order turnaround, because seeds and poultry are not manufactured items. For the same reason we do not accept on-line orders and phone orders using credit cards. We do, however, invite orders sent through the mail. All we ask is that you read the ordering information carefully before placing your order and follow the ordering instructions. Your patience will be rewarded with access to seeds and breeds that you won't find many other places.
2007 - The Year in Review
Each and every year brings with it a series of new experiences, some great and some that leave you wondering what can possibly happen next. We had a mild winter up until the middle of January and then things just fell apart and got colder and more difficult until Spring finally did come. We were getting a good quantity of eggs and, because of the weather, the birds, the first part of January, had combs and behavior much like the first part of March. Well, once we got into a serious cold snap it gave me a good chance to gather data on which breeds can handle sub-zero weather when they are in full laying mode. The cold continued and, as a result, we had no eggs for our first hatch in March. As it turned out, that was a blessing in disguise. We had an ice storm in late February that left us without power for a long enough period of time that we would have had no hatch anyway. Our end of March hatch was about like my usual test hatch in February. So, it looked like we were going to have a difficult year. Many breeds rebounded and we did get caught up on most orders with some exceptional hatches in May and June.
I always look forward to taking a short break from teaching around Easter to get things going big in the garden. Well, the apricots just started to bloom the week before Easter and then - BAM! - the entire vacation ended up bein, on average, 10 degrees colder than the period between Christmas and New Years. We even had days when it didn't get above freezing. Miracle upon miracle we even had a few apricots survive that horrible mess and, as usual, they tasted so good! One has to work so hard here in Iowa to get apricots that I would probably think they tasted good even if they didn't.
Our sweet potato starting beds were out on time and ready to go, but some varieties just did not send up the sprouts as needed. I usually have a rough idea about what each variety can (and does) do when it comes to sprouting. This year some of my tried and true varieties produced very few sprouts. We did stumble onto the fact that the ones which were bedded into the starting beds after they were pre-sprouted in the warm incubator shed did much better at sprouting. For 2008, we have fixed a pre-sprouting room to try to increase our yields and, hopefully, fill more of your orders and also achieve one of our goals of spreading those sweet potatoes around to as many folks as we can. With as many wild creatures as there are that pursue them, they have to be good. The only problem is convincing folks how good they are when the only thing they have ever been exposed to are those awful things that come out of a can that they serve in the school cafeterias.
We had a bit of a scare when we had trouble getting some of our sweet potato varieties to sprout and then we set out to contact others who were maintinging them. We were so grateful to Tom Bruning, Chris Inhulsen, John Inabnit and Chuck Voigt for working with and maintaining parts of our large collection. The only problem is, it seemed like each of us had similar problems with the same varieties. It really appeared that there needs to be a central place that has not only root storage but the back up of rooted cuttings to provide the insurance needed when a crop was lost to weather or pests. We are excited to say that Amy Goldman heard of our desire and most generously offered to provide a greenhouse for us to maintain such a collection to insure the future of the many varieties out there. In August, with the help of our dear friend, Bob Boock (who is always willing to tackle the most difficult jobs), we set out to put together what was supposed to be an easy-to-assemble 14 by 20 foot greenhouse kit. Bob is a carpenter and craftsman way above the ordinary and can build and design some fabulous things. Well, never believe the instructions with a kit as they were full of spacing and building design errors that, had I tackled this project on my own, would have been left with a giant pile of bent metal poles and chopped up poly-carbonate sheeting. Bob spent many hours and now we have a wonderful facility that, we hope, will give the added stability the collection needs to be safe. I expect that this first winter I will make some mistakes and it may take a few winters to perfect the system, but I hope that the days of losing varieties are soon to come to an end. We are deeply indebted to Amy for her generosity and concern for genetic preservation and to Bob Boock for the many hours he put into making it all work.
In December of this year (2008), it will be 20 years since I furst purchased this farm - a neglected, rundown sandy wasteland that I was able to afford during the farm crisis of the late 1980's. The goals and mission of the operation have stayed the same over the years, but the methods and ways of achieving them have been modified some to fit the needs and problems of the day. Education of the need for genetic conservation and preservation have always been the top goals and the primary mission of this farm. Since Linda and I married in 1993, we have expanded and intensified that mission to try to do as much as is humanly possible. While it would be easy to take the rout to instant business success and pick and choose the varieties and birds that are big sellers and easiest to raise and make a profit with, it has always been that we would focus on preservation and education first and leg God proviee for our needs. As long as we have kept our focus, our needs have been provided for and we have kept to our mission and goals. We have been encouraged to seek non-profit status and go out for grants. We have toyed with that back and forth for years. While it seems tempting and would make life easier at times, we have decided against it. We will continue to operate and work to reach our mission of education and preservation and any funds that we do generate in excess of our expenses we will in turn use for more genetic preservation and education projects. We are grateful for our donors and supporters whether it be new varieties, supplies, time, money or moral support. It takes an unbelievable amount of time and effort (as well as money) to keep everything going. It always saddens me when we have to list as unavailable a variety in the catalog. Many just don't understand all that it takes to get an item into sufficient quantity to offer it to others. It would be much easier if we had huge fields (or flocks) of each, but we don't and that is not realistic to assume. I like to use the following analogy with folks to help them understand just a little of what it is like. When speaking of the seed part of the catalog, we grow every variety listed in the catalog plus others in our private collection and it usually amounts to about 2,000 varieties. Planning and locating them all in the growing spaces is itself a challenge to coordinate to prevent crossing, to care for, to weed and to harvest. If we grew only say 3 varieties it would be much like having 3 children, fairly easy to keep track of where each child is each and every day and know exactly how they were doing. Well, imagine haveing 2,000 children and trying to keep track of each and every one of them each day with the same deegree of accuracy that you had with 3. I think you realize it would be hard to do.
As stated earlier, we have altered our methods to achieve our goals over the years and perhaps the biggest way is in the line of seeds that we sell. At first, when seeds started appearing in the catalog, it was only extras that I grew here from larger than usual growouts. While that is still a main emphasis of our operation we have developed a few reliable growers that we enjoy working with that can help us out with the odd and unusual to make our offerings to you a bit more interesting and still help spread genetic preservation and education. We also have picked up a few old time varieties that we can purchase from larger suppliers to help keep them in circulation. At first this seemed like a conflict of our goals and mission, but, if we can keep that many more from going by the way of the Dodo bird and not get discontinued, then we will have done our part. We are so grateful for our growers this year, most of them had a bumper crop on the special things they grow for us and, of course, each had his or her own problems as well. That is all part of growing things. You get the big crops and you get the flops. Special thanks to the following growers: Marcia Duncan, Edmond & Pam Brown, Tom Bruning, Tom Knoche, Suzanne Ashworth, Kim Mullen, and Darrell Jones.
In closing, we would like to thank the following for all the time and effort they put in this past year whether working for us here and there or for their expertise in helping us around here keeping things flowing. Teri Schroeder for the long hours of dedication and quality control in being the first step in filling your seed orders. Sherri Batts for the time she was able to help us with the seeds and sweet potatoes. Sheryl Dexter for her willingness to learn so many tasks so quickly when it came to the seeds and sweet potatoes. Bill Batts for his help getting our antique, push tractor/plastic layer going and for helping put together the new greenhouse. Joel Schroeder for his computer expertise, his help in laying plastic, and for helping with the new greenhouse. Camden Bousselot for his ability to sort eggs faster than me (I hate to admit it, but he is fast and accurate and can read my writing on the egg codes). Bob Boock for the continued help with anything mechanical. Tyler Nicklaus who started working for us on Saturdays this Fall and his willingness to learn so many things in such a short time. Please forgive me if I forgot anyone. We wish all of you a great season for 2008!
Best Wishes - Glenn and Linda Drowns
Climate Information
Most of the seed varieties in the catalog have days to maturity listed beside them. That is based upon our data here at the farm. I am an avid weather observer and offer the following climate information for the serious gardener trying to determine if a variety will grow for them in their locale. I have decided to add the data for the entire year because that is also an integral part of what the poultry can and do handle.
- Average Last Spring Frost (32) - Apr. 25 (April 15)
- Average First Fall Frost (32) - Oct. 1 (Septembe 15)
- Days between 32 degree frosts - 159 (153)
- Actual killing frosts (28 deg. or colder) this year were April 15 and October 28.
- May to September we average 21.5 inches of rain.
- Some years have brought much more rain, other times we can have long, dry spells.
Sand Hill Preservation Center Climate Data
Figures for 2007 are in parentheses "( )"
| Month | Ave. High | Ave. Low | Total Precip. |
| Jan. | 28 (31) | 14 (15) | 1.43 (0,66) |
| Feb. | 34 (23) | 21 (5) | 1.60 (1.75) |
| Mar. | 48 (51) | 29 (34) | 2.80 (6.24) |
| Apr. | 61 (59) | 39 (37) | 3.67 (4.25) |
| May | 74 (80) | 52 (54) | 4.28 (1.16) |
| Jun. | 83 (82) | 61 (62) | 4.89 (6.15) |
| Jul. | 86 (85) | 65 (62) | 3.41 (7.35) |
| Aug. | 84 (85) | 63 (67) | 5.48 (6.95) |
| Sep. | 76 (82) | 54 (53) | 3.36 (1.65) |
| Oct. | 64 (67) | 42 (48) | 2.67 (3.91) |
| Nov. | 45 (47) | 29 (26) | 2.75 (0.20) |
| Dec. | 31 | 17 | 1.78 |
We typically start planting Spring crops in early April and dig our last Fall root crops in mid-November. Winter lowest temperature is generally in the range of -20 to -25°F with the coldest being -37°F. Summer time temperatures above 100°F are rare, but it has reached 105°F.