A Ten Year Plan

Last fall while I was writing about the planning and execution of planting 20 more acres of prairie I was also planning and the surgeons were executing a laryngectomy. A laryngectomy is a serious operation (mine turned into three operations) that removes the larynx (voicebox), rebuilds the esophagus and, as a result, separates the air (going in the tracheostomy tube in my throat to the lungs) from the food (mouth to stomach). There is no longer a connection between the two paths. This leads to some interesting effects such as a greatly diminished sense of smell (since air no longer goes through my nose while breathing) and difficulty spitting (since I can’t summon up air to provide force). More importantly, it means that I should no longer be prone to the chronic lung infections and pneumonia which were fed by the leakage of food and secretions into my lungs. Big stuff, because to paraphrase my surgeon, “If you think you’re going to live a long life getting pneumonia regularly, you are mistaken.

In other works, a long range plan was a pointless exercise. While I may not have been in imminent peril, it was unlikely that I would be around to execute a ten year plan. The surgeries that I had four months ago appear to have accomplished their purpose. I no longer suffer from a chronic bacterial infection in my lungs; I am breathing better than I have for a very long time. This means that even through my healing and rehabilitation, which was significant, I usually had more energy than before the surgery. The reconstructed esophagus is even allowing me to eat again. And I now feel that I have a future. I can begin the work on a long range plan for my farm, what I am calling “the ten year plan”.

Any plan is simply a road map of actions to achieve goals, so first I need to define my goals. I’ve discussed this in the past, but I feel that my good fortune in having control of a substantial block of land, almost 590 acres on my “home farm”, meaning the farm where I grew up, creates both the opportunity and the obligation to try to do something grand. Maybe I should capitalize that to emphasize the idea; to Do Something Grand! The goal is nothing less than to produce food, improve the productivity of both the farmed acres and the rangeland, store carbon, filter water, provide habitat for native plants and animals; and to provide recreation, pleasure and peace for my family and others who may visit. If I can tie this in with any neighbors and neighboring land then those benefits can hopefully accrue in a widening circle, amplifying the effects of actions taken on my farm. How does one accomplish all this on 590 acres? “Aye, there’s the rub!” to quote Shakespeare. There lies the need for a carefully thought out and flexible plan. This post is an introduction to that and will begin once more with a map.

Not a fancy map, one with a few scribbled notes, and one I hope to edit and update with more specific planning information in the future. We own three quarters and a 40 in Section 12, and a 65 acre chunk of grass in Section 11 to the west, on the southeast side of Anderson Lake. At this time there is about 150 acres of native grass in four parcels, 210 acres of restored prairie of various qualities and 220 acres of cropped ground. This surrounds 120 acres of cropped ground owned and farmed by a neighbor, who also rents my pastures (though not my cropped acres). This is the canvas, so to speak, though the metaphor falls flat when one thinks about it. We are not creating a painting, an image that pleases us. We are trying to engage in a dance with the natural environment to modify the biotic community on this 590 acres to provide the various services I listed earlier. The idea of control, or the idea that we can create something is dangerous and counterproductive. What can be done is to create conditions, a starting point; and then let time, weather and the seasons develop what they will, and dance with the results.

So what are the tools that can be used to initiate and engage in this metaphor of the dance? I have already seeded down 210 acres to varying complexities of native species, and that may be all that I seed of the farm. There will probably be topdressing of additional seed on the most recent restoration, and perhaps on some of the less diverse restoration acres (about half has 100-150 species seeded and the other half 20-40). We will probably use fire as a tool on some acres on occasion, including on 15-20 acres this spring. On the cropped acres we will be incorporating cover crops, and hoping to move from reduced tillage to a pure no-till system. The big tool to tie everything together, and hopefully to make the dance really swing, will be creative use of cattle to achieve management goals.

Ultimately it’s all about the fate of the biomass that grown on the farm. Perhaps 4-5,000,000 pounds of dry matter biomass will be created on the 587 acres every year, and the fate of that biomass will determine whether we achieve the ecosystem services we desire. Biomass as wheat or corn or soybeans will be removed, providing food and fuel. Cattle will remove biomass to create beef, as will other grazing animals from deer to rabbits to grasshoppers. The stabilization of biomass as organic matter will sequester carbon in the soil. The soil will be physically protected both by the covering of biomass, and chemically protected by the “glue” effect of the microbial byproducts as they eat and modify the residues of the year. Those stabilized soil clumps (peds) allow water infiltration and thus reduce runoff and cleanse the water as it percolates through the soil profile. This is obviously dependent upon a robust microbiology in my soils, and the biomass is the home of the microbes, as well as the feedstock used by the microbial community, including the symbionts that will support lush, efficient plant growth. It is the structure, both above and below ground, which provides a home for animal life. In the prairies it’s density (or lack thereof) will favor different suites of plants, and thus other life. Managing land is then, to a large extent, managing the fate, distribution, height, density and type of biomass left after a year of growth and use. As every year gives a different symphony of rain, temperatures, wind and sunlight, the dance needs to be a little different every year.

The tools are cows, combines, mowers, tillage implements, seeding, and the lighted match, though not always in that order. I emphasize that cattle are integral to the plan, and that is a complicating factor, as they are unlikely to be our cattle. I will need to have a partner who understands my goals and has some flexibility, even as I will need to understand the constraints that he is working under. That is a challenge I welcome, as I feel it will sharpen my thought and reasoning. We all get into mental ruts, but that won’t cut it if I am challenged by a sharp young farmer. Our goals will not be the same, but I am optimistic that collaboration will lead to the results we both desire.

So that is the big picture. The next post will delve into the specifics of actions I plan to take this year and how they advance the greater goals. Every action needs to advance the capability to provide those ecosystem services, if only indirectly. Every action needs to enhance the ability of the land to grow food, store carbon, filter water, support pollinators, enhance the biodiversity of the neighborhood and to provide pleasure and peace to those who go there. Those goals need to be taped up where I will see and remember them, at least metaphorically, in the conversations I have with myself and others. So today I am putting up the bulletin board in my brain and writing my goals in capital letters. And then we will begin with a slow, simple waltz, but more intricate routines may lie ahead.

Progress Part 2

Last spring I wrote a post with lots of pretty photos showing a group of early blooming forbs I was seeing in my restoration and called it “Progress”. Soon after that I took a series of pictures which I meant to be reflective of density of seedling establishment specifically in an area where I had seen almost no perennial seedlings the year before. Before I get to the pictures I will once again show my map of seeding zones on the restoration.

Zones 1 and 2 got enough seed from the original seeding to have little need or room for the additional seed I have since spread. Zone 4, on the other hand received almost no seed in the original seeding, grew up to Canada thistle, and is being managed to control thistles. Which brings us to Zone 3, a gravelly, very xeric soil which got almost no seed from the original seeding. It has been topdressed repeatedly with supplemental seed and is where the most interesting things are happening (and is where I spend most of my time when I am out at the restoration).

So what was I seeing last summer? What I was seeing on most of Zone 3 was wonderful progress in establishment of seedlings from the many times I spread supplemental seed. Here’s several pictures from June. They show many crowns of perennial grass and seedling forbs. When I closely examined the areas I estimated 25-30 species in a 5′ diameter circle.

Not everything that is green in these pictures was planted by me of course. There are plenty of opportunistic weed species to go with the native plants, and the fact that these hills were barren for almost two years allowed many weeds to establish. Much of the area was a jungle by the time it was mowed in mid-July. Still, I don’t want to diminish the excitement that I felt when I realized that all the money and work was turning into something with potential. During the year the restoration raised a family of sharptail grouse, was used by upland sandpipers, various grassland sparrows and dickcissels; and was visited by countless bees of many species.

I think I have one more year of hard work spot treating thistles and then we will see what this becomes. I will be watching particularly for reproduction of the forbs. Many grasses are almost immortal because of clonal reproduction by root and crown, and that can allow them to “choke out” or at least outlive the forbs. I don’t think that this will happen on most of the restoration for a variety of reasons, but am hoping to learn the management techniques to combat this, foremost of which will be the use of fire and grazing. The gravelly soils will benefit the xeric adapted forbs as there is less chance of an impenetrable sod forming, allowing seedlings to establish. There is likely always going to be room for a new generation of seedlings, especially with grazing.

Something similar was seen in the wet area of the northeast patch on Zone 2. The aster is from a mesic area above the wetland in the northeast part of the restoration, and was one of several blooming this fall. The revelation was down in the wetland itself shown in the first picture. This is a particularly robust specimen of sawtooth sunflower growing on some subirrigated soil, close to 10 feet tall. This picture was taken in mid-September, not June, so it’s hard to pick out all the different species in the riotous growth, but I was thrilled to see not just what I planted, but rushes and sedges that were either already there or traveled in from nearby wetlands. This is an area where farming was commonly delayed or was left fallow because of excess moisture the past 20 years. How heartening it is to see the rich site producing biomass and using some of the nutrients that were potentially being leached or transported downstream. This is reflective of several acres of the restoration, and a similar site to the wetter area on the 20 acres of new restoration that I seeded last fall where I hope to see the same results.

Restoration ecologists and conservationists often speak in dry tones about ecosystem services, and I have written about the services I hope my prairie provides in past posts. There is something more we need to feed the soul, though, even the soul of a boring old Norwegian farm boy. With all my health problems it can be difficult for me to feel joy these days. On most days a sense of quiet satisfaction would be the high point of my emotional day. Yet I can find joy in my prairies, and in my restoration. And there is great satisfaction now, after three years, to feel there is something developing that can be a legacy.

A reasonable question to ask is: A legacy recognized by who? My daughters, certainly, but the circle is steadily widening. There is Ben, who has helped on the project from the start, of course, but there are perhaps 8-10 other people who have helped gather or spread seed now who have a vested interest in the success of the restoration. A young woman interning with the Nature Conservancy used my land as a site in a research project. I am now cooperating with another young woman who works for Ducks Unlimited. And then, much to my surprise, I had a couple other visitors last summer. My advisor from my MS program, Paul, and an private crop consultant, Kim, who lives 90 miles west of here, were guests at a barbeque I sponsor every year for a group of agronomists to allow a time to brainstorm or just let off steam, and both really wanted to see the restoration. Paul’s son, Leif, who now works for the Nature Conservancy, came along to the gathering, and was certainly interested in what I was doing. But I was very surprised at the interest of Paul and Kim. One would assume that both would feel that the highest use for land is farming, as that is where both spent their careers, but they took a short tour of my restoration and agreed that it was a project of great worth. So if it can also be a vehicle to allow old farmer/agronomists to dream and ponder, then the reach of my prairie widens, and there is another sort of ecosystem service provided.

My dream, for several years, has been to have a retirement business of putting together a group of like minded people to buy, restore and monetize awkward pieces of land. I might elaborate on what I mean by an awkward piece of land another time, but in short it would include marginal farm ground. It’s a valid concept if you accept that you are doing it for fun and societal benefit rather than to actually make money. The trouble is that ten years ago when I started to dream on the possibilities I didn’t take into account the health issues we have as we get older, and the physical and sometimes existential fatigue that envelops us. There is a reason that people retire rather than work until they are 80. My dream business is a pipe dream, no more, and my own farm is more than I can probably handle. But there are many people like me who have a farm they grew up on and still cherish, often from afar. And perhaps I can inspire one to go down the road that I walked, and restore some prairie where they grew up. I have never seen myself as evangelical, but I now have the example to preach about. At least I will try to be a good example.

My New Restoration

I’ve alluded in the past to a new 20 acre restoration that I had planned to do. The planning is over now, as I was able to get it seeded the first week of November, right before I had my life changing surgery. You might say that this is the third iteration of a restoration that I have done, my third try at doing something great with the crappy soils on the west end of the farm where I grew up. My first attempt was a nine species planting made on 36 acres on the southeast side of Anderson Lake, a botched attempt if the goal was a prairie restoration. I just didn’t think big enough because I was mostly concerned with getting some cover over some unproductive, erodible farm ground. That was accomplished, but so much more could have been done. I have regretted my lack of vision ever since it was seeded and vowed to do better if I got another chance.

The second iteration was the 100 acres that most of this blog has been about. It’s still hard to evaluate its success after three years, as so much has been reseeded over the top of the original seeding. Actions that I take next summer, particularly on Canada thistle control, could mean the difference between something I am proud of and a project I have deep ambivalence about.

Still, much has gone right there. I have seen almost 100 of the 147 species that were seeded, including many that were gathered from my adjacent prairies. Many forbs that I really wanted to see are already common, such as slender penstemon, tall cinquefoil, black samson, alumroot and prairie onion. Others, such as pasqueflower, groundplum milkvetch and prairie smoke are more widely scattered, though I hope to find more in the future. It was a big undertaking though, and there were painful lessons learned.

And so we went forward with the third iteration . The Day County Conservation District brought up a drill and a base mix of 20-25 species was drilled over the entire site, and then the real fun began. I had purchased and gathered another 70 species, and spent two days spreading them over appropriate environments across the 20 acres. Some were combined in large enough quantities that my compatriot Ben Lardy and I were able to put them in a broadcast spreader and pull it around to appropriate areas. Much was spread by hand, which allowed us to get very specific as to where they went. At the end of the two days I was very satisfied that I had done my very best and was able to go to the hospital at peace with a project I had been working on for a year. Though parts of this have been written in past blog posts, it seems worthwhile to summarize the year’s work leading up to the seeding.

The first step was getting the land. The 20 acres is part of a 120 acre inholding in my home section that an uncle and aunt of mine originally owned, the north half of the northeast quarter of the northwest quarter. Shown on the maps above, it had been prairie when I was growing up. There was a trail across it to our 40 to the west, and I have clear memories of riding across native grass as we went to work on the west pasture. It was broken out of grass in the early 80’s, but there was a reason it had been left in prairie until then. It is a truly crappy piece of farmland, outwash gravel hills surrounding a waterway that seeps and makes the only decent soils unfarmable. It clearly should never have been broken. Thus, a big reason to do this is to right an old wrong, and while I can’t make it what it was I can still do the right thing, which is to do the best that I can.

The next step was to plan out the seeding and to gather as much native seed as possible to use in the restoration. I wrote a blog post in mid-summer lamenting the lack of seedheads this past year because of a warm, dry summer. Unfortunately, that didn’t change as summer turned to fall. In comparison to the previous wet year, there was perhaps 25-30% as much seed to gather. I supplemented that by gathering at some other prairies which weren’t as droughty, but in the end had to give in and buy more seed than I had originally planned. I did my best, though, repeatedly wandering over the hills on my farm, trying not to take every seed out there. Some species, such as porcupine grass, groundplum and blanketflower, I did well on. Others, like leadplant, prairie onion, silky aster, pasqueflower and whorled milkweed were almost total washouts. And, of course, that leaves many species in the middle, providing a significant amount of seed, but necessitating some purchases I hadn’t planned. Something that helped was that I had the pleasure of gathering three or four species on my 100 acre restoration that had grown from seed I had gathered in my prairies and spread there two or three years ago.

The field was in wheat last summer, but the wheat was so thin in a dry year that the straw was no problem. Here’s what we were seeding into.

And so we got to have our fun as early November gave us several sunny, beautiful days for work. That was two months ago, and very little precipitation has yet fallen , but the magic of a fall seeding is that we really don’t need much precipitation to begin the stratification process that most seeds need to overcome a natural dormancy. It wouldn’t make much evolutionary sense for seeds to germinate in October in the northern plains, so most seeds need a period of refrigeration, preferably with just a little moisture, to change their inherent reluctance to germinate and face the world. It is happening now.

Again one could say that this is my third try at a prairie restoration, so it is time to discuss what I have learned to make this better than the first two attempts. The first attempt was eight years ago on 36 acres on the section to the west. On the map above it would be just to the left, with only a small strip showing on the map. I seeded nine species, of which seven are still in the field. At the time, I was too cheap and had an inadequate vision of what could be realized. Then I went a little crazy on Iteration Two, the 100 acre restoration that was seeded three years ago. There are 147 species that were seeded there, but many species were seeded at such miniscule rates that I may never see them in the restoration, or the few scattered plants will fail to find pollination partners and die unloved. For that iteration, I gathered as much seed as I could locally, but I also purchased small packets of species that don’t occur in my prairies but have been found in my neighborhood.

As you may have already guessed, this is a Goldilocks situation, and I am searching for the answer that is “just right”. I don’t know if I found that, but I decided that I would try to seed significant quantities of every species that I was able to. And with a few exceptions I would only seed species that were already found in one of the adjacent native prairies. If only a few plants of a particular species are able to establish they will have compatriots nearby. This allows cross pollination to occur and will mean that those few plants may be able to make a contribution to the greater gene pool and to evolutionary development of the species locally.

This is also much easier to do on a 20 acre piece than on a 100 acre piece. When we were hand spreading seeds of individual species in November we could feel that we had covered the appropriate environments on the entire field. I took on too much when I tried to do a 100 acre restoration. There were practical reasons that drove that decision, but if the goal was to create a restoration which would have an intuitive connection to the native prairies nearby, it was too big. In the end what I have now in that field is a 40 acre restoration, along with a 40 acre diverse prairie seeding and a 20 acre grass planting that may be turned back into farmland eventually.

Going back to the idea of a lesson learned, what I learned meant that I didn’t try to do a second 20 acres. I will manage this 20 acres for a year or two, along with putting time into the 100 acre restoration, and then I can decide if the next 20 acres gets restored.

The third lesson was that more care needed to be taken with the seeding itself. The sloppiness of the manner in which the 100 acres was seeded will haunt me for the rest of my days. It necessitated multiple fixes which will never truly fix it. I hope to have the time, opportunity and physical stamina to spot treat the Canada thistles across the 100 acres this summer. It will be a Sisyphean task, perpetually rolling the boulder up the hill, but I will try. There will always be thistles in any perennial seeding in my area, but I hope to help the establishing forbs get the opportunity to get roots down. Much of the area is xeric enough that the thistles should be at a disadvantage once more drought tolerant species get a foothold.

And so I was able to set up a preferred fall seeding, rather than the late spring seeding date I was stuck with on the 100 acre restoration. A Truax drill was used, rather than the John Deere grain drill that caused the problems in seed distribution on the 100 acre restoration, and I was able to be there during the process, watching to see how everything went. It is still possible there will be bare areas because of drill malfunction, but not likely. This will hopefully make it less likely that the thistles get the same foothold on this seeding, as well facilitate erosion control. I have high expectations that I will be seeing some results by mid to late summer.

Finally, I think that I learned what I really want to accomplish with the restoration. More than anything else I want the restoration to be an extension of habitat for the plants and the attendant fauna that are adapted to the gravelly outwash hills of the area. Bigger picture ecosystem services such as water quality improvement and carbon sequestration come along for the ride. I really want to see more groundplum and maybe some prairie turnips. I want to see grasshopper sparrows and upland sandpipers. I want to see, God willing, a Dakota skipper butterfly nectaring on a black samson flower from seed that I gathered and spread. I want the 80 acres of existing prairie to grow and develop into 200 acres of prairie under the protective umbrella of the perpetual easement that I hope to put on the restorations. Much depends upon what I accomplish in the next few years to put things on the right track. And after that, forever is a long time that I humbly bow before.

And then the World Changed

I haven’t written a post for a long time, though it’s not because nothing has happened. Quite the opposite, as the Buddhists say, “Life is on fire.”

So what has changed for me? The big change is that I had a big surgery, a laryngectomy, about seven weeks ago. A laryngectomy removes the voice box, the larynx, which allows total separation of the two pathways that normally are conjoined in the mouth, food and air. Now my lungs are only connected to a hole, a stoma, in my throat. Nothing that goes in my mouth can get to my trachea or lungs. Similarly, my mouth (and my nose) are only connected to my esophagus and stomach. I am unable to blow my nose because there is no source of air to push. Coughing only concerns my lungs, not my mouth or nose, though old reflexes mean there are still complementary spasms in my throat, but they are “all dressed up with no place to go”. The core reason to do this was to eliminate aspiration, the leakage of material from my mouth and throat into my lungs, which was causing me to have repeated lung infections leading sometimes to pneumonia. As my surgeon told me when suggesting the procedure: “If you think you can continue to regularly get pneumonia and live a long life you are mistaken.”

So this is my love song to my family. I would undergo a difficult surgery (which actually ended up as three surgeries over the course of a week because of difficulties), go through a tough recovery with various complications, and lose my voice; and the trade-off will hopefully be that I will be there for them for a long time. No promises, no surety, nothing that provides a warm blanket of comfort around the process. Simply put, “Do I want to take a shot?” Big risks and big rewards. I decided to roll the dice.

That was seven weeks ago. So how has it gone?

To start with, as I said, my radiation damaged tissues didn’t want to cooperate so, as I said, one surgery turned into three, the last surgery yanking my right pectoral muscle up from my chest to put it around my neck to stabilize and cover the other work. With three surgeries, three areas of skin were borrowed from my legs to put the seal over the top, leaving me with what looks like the worst sunburn you have ever seen. A chunk was taken out of my right arm, borrowed to form a new esophagus to replace my old radiation damaged esophagus that was basically causing all my problems. And now Frankenstein lives.

As difficult as this has been, and I have purposely left out many gory details and anecdotes, I would be remiss not to mention a couple side benefits of the surgery. First, it should allow me to breathe better. This is not yet true, as I work through healing and management of my new paraphenalia. If I can work through a couple issues my breathing should not be as limited as it was through the tiny opening of my trachaeostomy tube. We will see. The second benefit is the ability to eat now that I don’t have to worry about aspirating food into my lungs. The reformed esophagus is significantly wider than my throat used to be and I am getting about half of my calories orally now, learning what foods I can manage and what foods my stomach and gut can manage. It’s not easily predictable, but more of a trial and error process. Two nights ago was an error and I was up most of the night with a protesting digestive system. It is pretty interesting to eat again though. My somewhat phlegmatic personality is overwhelmed by my subconscious saying, “Hell, yes, I’ll have some of that!”

So the winter is for healing and therapy, probably into February. What therapy can accomplish will be interesting. I am late to start therapy, primarily because I have been occupied with some serious challenges to healing. Hopefully I can make some progress this winter and be ready for a fun and productive spring. And if the Covid vaccine truly becomes widely available then an expansive life can begin anew. The world has changed and I need to respond appropriately to learn how to live an abundant life in this new world.

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Progress

It has been a while since I last posted because my messy life gets in the way of all plans and schemes. It has been a very nice spring, especially the last three or four weeks, and I have been trying very hard to accomplish something outside every day, even if it just to walk in the spring breeze on my restoration. There are a limited number of days that the combination of decent weather, decent health and the time and opportunity converge and those possibilities can collapse into an experience (that’s a metaphor from quantum theory, but I am not a physicist so it’s probably a bad one). Right now, thankfully, that may be four or five days per week, but that doesn’t mean next week or next month will provide the same opportunity. And while I am definitely making plans for future years, I have no illusions; it is my responsibility to live now, and not live in the future. Thus I have been out looking around, and these are are some of the things I have been seeing.

First, I need to return to the make-up of the restoration: zone 4 is being managed to control Canada thistle and has almost no wildflowers, so only 75 acres can still be called a prairie restoration. And only 50 acres has the full panoply of gathered seed spread, as Zone 1 received extra seed when the Day County Conservation District drill performed the original seeding and there was no room at the inn for added plants. The situation demanded that I go big on the restoration, but 100 acres is a lot to manage for one person, and mistakes will be made. Thus, most of the writing and the pictures I show are on half the restoration, particularly on Zone 3 on the map below. With that I will show some of the plants that I have been finding the last couple weeks.

The common thread on all these is that they are growing in Zone 3, where almost no seed was applied in the original CRP seeding. This means that almost everything I see was spread one of the innumerable times it seemed we were adding more seed, perhaps 5 or 6 times in areas. Some, like the blue eyed grass, the pussytoes and the white penstemon had only gathered seed tor a source. Others, like the silky aster, the prairie violet and the prairie smoke were a mixture of purchased and gathered seed.

The most gratifying discovery of the spring, however, was finding several blooming groundplums (Astragalus crassicarpus). There are three or four forb species which for some reason have an iconic status for me. One of those is groundplum, aka buffalo beans. I began eating buffalo beans over fifty years ago, after learning about them from my Polish grandmother. I have assiduously been gathering pods and in many cases manually tearing apart the dried pods to get seeds out. A little sandpaper for scarification and refrigeration for stratification. And then some Astragalus specific Rhizobia to help the legume with nitrogen fixation when they are spread finishes the process. I have not been that careful or diligent in preparing all the seed that I have gathered, but this was a labor of love. And damned if it didn’t work! I saw four or five this spring and I think it likely there will be many more visible next year. There are many challenges still occurring and more to come, but I will relish a success when I get one.

A preliminary count now shows 49 species identified in the restoration, and many more forb crowns still unidentified. I will wait until this fall, and then post a list of species found. Also, with the help of a young Brazilian entomologist/agronomist I now have the samples taken for the baseline measurements for a long term study on the ability of the restoration to sequester carbon. More on that in the future. Also in the future is the discussion on how to respond to the various problems I have in the restoration. Life is not all sunbeams and buffalo beans. For now, though I leave you with one final success, not due to any efforts of mine, but the vagaries of wind, weather or animals.

There are plenty of fringed puccoon in the pasture nearby, but I don’t remember being able to gather any seed, and I know that I didn’t buy any seed, so the seed for this plant seems to have wandered over on its own. This is a phenomena I hope to document for other species in the future.

Spring Prairie

Over the weekend I took a long walk on Linda’s grazing unit, 340 acres about 15 miles east of where we live. Here’s a few things I ran into.

As I type this three days later it is snowing lightly and has not been above freezing for two days; thus any brave pasqueflowers which had emerged are well frozen. Still, its always a treat to see the first flowers of spring.

I was a little surprised to see snakes out this early, with the temps in the mid 50’s, but they were vigorous enough to scoot when I tried to get a close-up photo.

It wasn’t a surprise to see the ants out. A sunny, 35 degree day in March will bring them to the surface. I don’t know how old the colony in the first picture is, but it is about 18 inches high. When I was growing up there was a colony just behind our house which was there for at least 30 years. Perhaps a large mound like that is even older.

While it is cold today, and I am under the weather, I hope that warmer weather later this week coincides with resurgent health to allow another walk very soon.

Building a Prairie Unit

For over a year I’ve been posting short essays centered around a 100 acre prairie restoration on the farm where I grew up in Day County, South Dakota. The blog has slowly expanded to the restoration’s place within the entire “home farm”, 590 acres including other native prairie pastures and haylands as well as cropped ground. That is not all the land that my wife and I own, however. We have also accumulated 420 acres of native grass pastures in several transactions which are managed within our cattle LLC, a business set up to own the pastures and cow herd that grazes them, and which allowed us to take on a partner, Mark, a young farmer who lives ten miles east of us.

The story begins 36 or 37 years ago when I visited with a middle aged farmer from 15 miles northeast of where we now live who had hired me to take soil samples on his crop fields. After a few minutes lining up that work we began visiting about the pasture which took up almost all of his home quarter. I complimented him on its excellent range condition and asked if I could take a walk in it. He was flattered, and said I could walk in it anytime. Though it was grazed, it was full of four foot tall indiangrass and big bluestem seedheads waving in the October sun.

I kept an eye on the pasture over the next couple years, and soon noticed the quarter to the north was almost as good. The owner had recently gone bankrupt in the carnage of the farm crisis of the 1980’s, and the pasture was ungrazed. I couldn’t resist trespassing to have a look around, and found a good quality tall grass prairie.

Why hadn’t these prairies been turned into corn and soybeans like the rest of the neighborhood? The glacial history had left a legacy of boulders that you can literally step across in some areas without touching the ground, as well as an intricate network of wetlands. In between the rocks and the water is a deep, rich clay loam soil as productive as any in the area. You might call it the “Flint Hills effect” after the area in Kansas and Oklahoma which houses the largest area of remnant of tall grass prairie, still there because the underlying geology makes farming too painful.

From there we move forward to the year 2000 and a conversation with Russ, a client from that neighborhood. He was attempting to buy a quarter of farm ground about two miles south of the pastures I’ve discussed, and mentioned there was an adjacent 80 of pasture he wasn’t interested in. He encouraged me to look into it. The pasture wasn’t impressive when looking at it from the road, but made a better impression as I walked across it. The fences were crap and there was no stock dam for water, just a shallow scrape which would dry up in a drought, but there was 40 or 50 acres of decent quality prairie. I saw potential there.

The realtor I went to visit was a nice gentleman named Chuck. ” Bobbie thinks she has a buyer for the 80,” he informed me, “but I don’t think it is a done deal, I’m not her agent on the pasture, but I’d like to see her treated fairly. If you think you have financing I will inform her of your interest.”

A few days later I got a call from Chuck. “The deal on the 80 fell through. The buyer said he would be by with a check on Tuesday and didn’t show. You know how worried old people get. She cancelled the sale at the end of the day and wouldn’t even talk to him the next day. Now, she is going to give you each a chance to rebid. Get me your bid in the next couple days and I will present it to her.

I went home to talk to my wife, Linda, who was very nervous about the whole deal. She was, however very interested in grazing cattle. She has a degree in range management and a great affinity for creatures great and small. She had also recently had a bad experience where a business relationship with a neighbor to manage his cow herd had been yanked from under her, which left her bitterly disappointed. Linda was born to run cattle. Because of that I had recently bid on a quarter of pasture at an auction but had been outbid. We also had just finished paying off the mortgage on the little farm where we live, freeing up some cash flow. I resolutely put in a bid of $28,000, $350 per acre, figuring we would have well over $400 per acre into it after fencing and cleaning out the waterhole, which was the high end of the pasture market at that time.

The next day I was back in the realtor’s office. He stood there shaking his head, “Poor Bobbie doesn’t know what to do. You both bid the same amount. She is thinking about re-advertising the land. She really wants to be done with this, though. What would you like me to do?”

The realtor was tramping down the path in front of me, sweeping the leaves away and inviting me through the gate. That’s how it seemed to me, anyway. The other bidder must have really pissed him off. He wouldn’t have done this if the land had been listed with his realty, but he wasn’t going to make a dime off the sale; he was doing this as a friend.

“Would you be willing to take her a bid for $28,500?” I asked.

“I would be happy to do that,” he said. And a couple days later we got to sign the papers purchasing what we now call Bobbie’s 80.

Because of the native prairie and the many wetlands on the pasture we were able to obtain US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) easements on it, which took some financial pressure off us, becoming a late down payment. At that time we had no cattle, so it was used for horse pasture, hayed and rented out for several years. It was also the site of many enjoyable walks.

The next opportunity came five years later. Russ had the chance to buy another piece of land which included 210 acres of grass, the land I had walked over about 20 years before. The grass was intertwined with the farmland, so was being sold as a 480 acre unit. I walked the land again and hesitated a bit, as the intervening years had not been kind to the pasture. Leafy spurge had greatly increased, necessitating herbicide treatments which had almost eliminated native forbs without really controlling the spurge. Nothing but rudimentary patching had been done to the fence for twenty years, and it was a mess. The dugout was badly silted in, necessitating an intricate piping system by the last renter to bring water from the farm site half a mile away. And it had been badly overgrazed, meaning the mosaic of tall prairie grasses I had seen were no longer evident.

Once again, the components were still there, however. The native grass bunches were still visible within the bromegrass and spurge. There were still some native forbs. Fences can be rebuilt and dugouts cleaned out. We told Russ what we would be willing to pay him, so he had that in his hip pocket when he went to the auction, and we were soon the owners of 210 more acres of native grass pasture.

Once more we placed FWS easements on the new pasture, and rented it out while we planned its future. The future of the pasture became secondary to my own future that fall, when life slapped me upside the head. I was diagnosed with stage 3/4 squamous cell cancer of the head and neck about the time of my 51st birthday in the fall of 2006. While my original diagnosis had implied that treatments were rarely successful, I had the good fortune to be referred to Mayo Clinic. At Mayo I came under the care of a prestigious team pioneering a new treatment regimen. All three doctors in the team, the surgeon, the medical oncologist and the radiologist, separately told Linda and me the same story. They would beat the holy hell out of me; I might never work again; I might never eat again; I would lose my saliva and probably lose my teeth; and I might need reconstructive surgery. At the end of my ordeal I would be cured of my cancer. Was I in or out? I signed on without a moment’s hesitation.

The treatments took three months, mostly on site at Mayo. At their conclusion I recuperated in a hospital bed in our living room at home, and within a few weeks I began to get out a little. By summer I was able to get back to work, though I had two separate scares on recurrences of the cancer. A recurrence was even scarier than it sounds because there were no tools left in the toolbox to fight the cancer. Mayo had already shot their wad. Luckily, one of the recurrences wasn’t cancer, and the other one was cut out before it got a chance to spread, so we walked on the proverbial eggshells and tried to get back to something approaching normal life.

About the time I started to feel like I might have a future we heard that Ray, the owner of the pasture that began this essay, had passed away and that the land would be for sale. Russ had been renting the farmland for some time, and was given the opportunity to purchase the farm, and he once more came to us as a partner. Land prices were much higher than when we purchased Bobbie’s 80, we had more debt and my health was still dicey. Linda, who didn’t grow up on a farm, with its attendant comfort with debt, told me she had to go into the bedroom and put a pillow over her head to block out the stress and worry. We still weren’t sure I had beaten the cancer as there seemed to be a new worrisome development every time I visited Mayo.

This was too good of an opportunity to pass up, however. Adding the 130 acres of Ray’s pasture would give us a contiguous 340 acre unit which allowed great flexibility in management, and could be complimented by Bobbie’s 80 which was only two miles away. Russ put a three way deal together on Ray’s two quarters: we would buy the 130 acre pasture, Russ would buy the 150 acres of farmground and a third party would buy 40 acres which included the house, farm buildings and livestock lots. Once again we placed FWS easements on the land which meant that in seven years and three transactions we had permanently conserved 420 acres of prairie.

We had already formed an LLC two years before, which gave us a vehicle to bring in the young neighbor, Mark, who was looking for ways to enlarge his livestock operation. We sold Mark a 50% interest in the LLC at a very reasonable price, but the decision was as selfish as it was altruistic. We had unloaded half the financial risk, bringing the debt down to a very reasonable level, a big concern with my health situation. More important, we now had a young, strong, capable partner who could shoulder at least half the load in both labor and management. Mark winters the cows and feeds out the calves. Linda manages the six months on pasture. Together they make decisions on goals and actions. Though Linda was born in suburban Chicago, she was meant to be born on a ranch where she could care for livestock. Over the course of seven years we got Linda her ranch, composed of 420 acres of prairie. We found a partner for her whose skills complement hers. Thus, while I write blog posts about all my activities on my home farm and its restorations, Linda is doing creative and innovative grassland management with the mouths and hooves of 100 head of stock cows and the attendant calves and bulls. It’s a full and busy life.

Retirement Manifesto

There are several great existential questions we all face. What is my purpose? What is love? How do I understand and approach God? To me, they all come down to a single question: How do I spend my time? All the metaphysics in the universe disappears at the moment I choose what to do next. Nothing counts until I take an action. That is how I fulfill my purpose, show my love and approach the infinite. The motto of the Benedictines is instructive: “Ora et labora”, prayer and work.

For the past forty years I have tried to answer those existential questions within the framework of my crop consulting business, where I spent half of my waking hours. That path is closing off to me as I turn the business over to my successor, Arne. While Arne is remarkably tolerant of my continued attempts at guidance it is steadily becoming his business. I am working about half time this year, and will retire completely within another year or two. How will I spend my time now?

There is the siren song of retirement: I can travel, visit the kids and have a kick-ass garden. For me there is the added factor of dealing with my health issues. Between tube feeding and trachaeostomy care it is pretty easy to blow an extra two to four hours per day. I have also made contact with the Minnesota Land Trust and the Nature Conservancy, and will begin volunteering later this summer. Already it sounds like a full retirement.

Except that it isn’t. The core frustration is that at 64, through my work history as an adult, I have accumulated over forty years of knowledge, forty years of connections, forty years of history and forty years of watching how things fit together so that good results can happen. How can I waste that?

And so, as always seems to be the case lately, we come back to my restoration and the rest of the 590 acres of the farm where I grew up. I did a little math and it seems that there are four acres for every person living on the planet. That’s four acres of tundra, taiga, temperate forest, prairie, savanna, tropical rain forest, desert and farmland available to grow food, fiber and provide the ecosystem services we need for life to be full and abundant. I am tremendously fortunate to own and control those 590 acres, but with great fortune comes great responsibility. This is a weight I must bear, a grand task I need to give myself to.

The task is to come up with a vision that can turn into actions that elevate the ability of those 590 acres to sequester carbon and harbor Dakota skippers, but also to produce wheat, corn and cattle, clean water and wildlife habitat, and perhaps solace to those who want to wander there. The components of such a plan are staring me in the face, inherent in the resources of the land. Sometimes the action that needs to be taken, though, is just to ponder, to allow for wise choices. Covid 19 is good for something, it seems.

Spring now envelops us with its roller coaster of weather, and the last snow will soon melt. What actions do I see being taken this year?

Much time needs to be spent documenting and evaluating progress on the restoration. As I wrote in a recent post, “Counting Carbon”, I plan to establish baseline data for what I hope will be a long term study on changes in carbon in the soil as the restoration matures. I have the opportunity of receiving help form a wonderful young Brazilian woman who was recently hired by Arne, and I need to make the most of it. If we establish reference points and get soil carbon data this year so that an interested party can continue the study in the future even if I am not able to do so.

There will be twenty new acres to seed down this fall which I need to continue to plan for. That will include gathering seed from my prairies again, a prospect that excites me greatly. I’ve actually been out twice this past week and gathered a couple handfuls of overwintered seed while I took my first spring jaunts in my prairie hills. The twenty acres to be seeded is part of a cooperation with Ducks Unlimited (DU) which will include fencing and water source development to graze more acres than I do now.

Those actions of gathering and spreading seed, taking soil samples, weed control and fencing need to be subservient to the vision. however. My job is to provide a robust and flexible, yet fairly detailed plan the someone else (like my daughter) could follow should I be unable. This doesn’t mean that I believe that anyone has an obligation to follow in my footsteps, rather that I have an obligation to create a vision that has the clarity of purpose and implementation to draw others down the same path.

Life, full and abundant, is my mantra. And this is my manifesto: The land is important. The land can feed, clothe, shelter and heal. It provides meaningful work and purpose to literally billions of people in the world. As the line from “Death of a Salesman” says, “Attention must be paid!” Attention will be paid to my farm; life will flow from it; food will come from it; lives will be improved by it. I will both experience and contribute to life, full and abundant, for as long as I am able.