Gabi Bolwerk, Extension Educator - Water Resources and Soil Health, joined University of Minnesota Extension and the Water Resources Center in February 2024. During her first year as part of the team, Bolwerk had a lot on her plate from creating new programming to winning a national award.
Roots and Rotation
When she first joined Extension, she was given a blank slate to create any educational programs that she saw a need for in the fields that interested her.
“A choose your own adventure!” as Bolwerk explained it.
In a previous internship, she worked with a rangeland specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), so she already had an interest in livestock systems. When she joined Extension, she saw a lack of conversation about the interaction of soil health, crops, and livestock together. Here, she saw an opportunity to educate people on that interaction and co-created a field day series called “Roots and Rotation.”
This series was conducted in partnership with MN Grazing Lands Conservation Association (MNGLCA) with the goal of teaching soil health practices in livestock operations in a field-based setting. In this series, the MNGLCA led five events on grazing for soil health and Gabi led two events on crop and livestock integration for soil health. Bolwerk’s two events were held in Sleepy Eye and Park Rapids, Minnesota.
The goal of these events was to open minds to integrating crop and livestock systems. This meant not just having livestock and crops separate, but to have livestock on cropland through grazing cover crops, crop residues, and annual forages.
Bolwerk’s role in this series was event coordination and education and worked with MNGLCA to plan the overall series. For the events she led, she found the farmer hosts, built the agenda, coordinated schedules, and spoke at the events.
Her presentations included talks about soil health and soil health principles. These help teach people the basics of soil function and health, and give guidelines for healthy land management.
One part of her presentation included running a tabletop rainfall simulator. In this demonstration, they would simulate rainfall on soil samples collected from nearby fields with different soil management practices. The simulator captures the water that runs off the surface (runoff) and water that is soaked through (infiltration). Soil health can be determined through the runoff color, sediment present and through the amount of water in both the runoff and infiltration containers. Samples from fields with healthier soil management practices had less amounts of runoff and cleaner runoff than samples that came from fields with conventional soil management practices.
The program team is currently reviewing post-event evaluations. After review, they are hoping to have an idea of audience learning gains and how to best conduct future programs. The team plans to follow up with attendees to track what sort of impact the events had on their practices.
“Not every farm is the same,” says Bolwerk. “So it’s cool to see how folks can adapt to different systems or situations.”
Soil Management Summit (SMS)
Not only did Bolwerk help run the “Roots and Rotation” events, but she also led communication and promotional efforts for the 2025 Soil Management Summit. Communications-related work is a large interest and a strength of hers.
Throughout undergraduate and graduate studies, Gabi created social media content and communications for different organizations. She actually started as a graphic design major before switching to the natural resources side.
When she joined the SMS conference committee, they were deciding what her role would be, and it happened that they had a need for more communications help, and Bolwerk ran with the opportunity.
The National Association of County Agricultural Agents (NACAA) has a list of communications awards that Extension folks can apply for. The awards land in three tiers: state, regional, and national.
Bolwerk submitted an application for her event promotional package and a fact sheet. She then found out that she was a state winner and a regional winner for both items. Soon after, she learned that the event promotional package was a national finalist.
Bolwerk attended the Annual Meeting and Professional Improvement Conference (AMPIC) of the National Association of County Agricultural Agents (NACAA) in Billings, Montana where she found out she was the national winner.
“I was absolutely not expecting that. I did that within my first year of employment here, and it was just crazy,” said Bolwerk. “I was really proud of my work, and to be recognized at a National level is just wild. It feels really good to have your work recognized like that.”