Author: <span>Robert Narem</span>

Speculations on Natural History

Fire Part 1

The regenerative and restorative properties of fire in native landscapes are detailed everywhere in conservation literature. One reads that the lack of fire has negatively impacted almost every landscape, because almost every landscape developed with periodic fires. After a while fire seems almost gentle, or nurturing. Anyone who has fought a fire, even a trash fire that got away, knows that fire is scary shit. Farmers, however, are fairly experienced and comfortable with fire. There is always a garbage pit, a pile of tree branches or some four year old hay bales that need burning. So with that experience informing my thoughts, in early 2017 I began to think about burning 23 acres of native grass hayland.

In early April I was wandering in that prairie trying to imagine how I could make a safe burn happen. There were grazed pastures on three sides which would be pretty easy to manage around, but the north side has a winding boundary with 37 acres of CRP I had planted several years before. The CRP was a tangled mass of tall grass, sweet clover and wormwood sage which would be difficult to manage around. How could I do a safe back burn? How many people would it take to complete a safe burn? How soon could I start preparing?

While I pondered this I knelt down to assess how ready the old foliage was to burn. The ground was still wet from recently melted snow and frost still in the ground. I grabbed a fistful of grass, took out some matches and lit it. The grass flared right up, and then things began to go horribly wrong. What had been a dead still day suddenly blew up a gust that started some surrounding grass on fire. As I calmly was stomping that out another gust and then another started other fires around my feet. It was suddenly beyond my ability to stomp out. Panicking a bit now, I took off my vest to help smother the flames. My vest, made of a witches brew of petrochemical derivatives, was fuel to the fire. Before my hands were encased in molten plastic I dropped the vest to survey the situation.

Though the fire was still only burning an area of 10-20 square feet it was evident that I could not put it out. I began to walk back to my pickup, perhaps 200 feet upwind, to drive to the neighbors while I called the fire in to the local fire department. I reached into my pants pocket for my phone, and realized that the phone was in my vest pocket, merrily burning away in the blackening landscape. Worse yet, when I got to the pickup I found that I had pulled the keys (which I almost never do) and they were also in my vest pocket. That would not have been so bad, but the keys to my Dodge were also plastic. More fuel for the fire. Not good.

A smart phone is an inadequate tool when paired with a stupid operator

As the fire expanded, more quickly now, the breeze became a steady 10 mph from the south, I considered my options. The neighborhood is fairly empty, and the only neighbor I knew would be home lived over two miles northwest of where I was. I began to walk. And as I walked I saw two things. First, the fire was backing steadily towards my pickup, which meant I might no longer have a vehicle when I returned. Second, the fire would soon reach the CRP, and we would see some fireworks.

As I walked north on the section line trail the fire hit the CRP to my left and it exploded. Flames shot 10-12 feet in the air and the burning front accelerated as bits of burning plants blew ahead and ignited new areas. Though I was walking on the dirt trail, I was just a few feet from the CRP and I was intimidated into crossing the fence to the east to put more distance between myself and the fire. Soon the fire jumped the trail and started crawling into the pasture, though I was staying ahead of it.

Both the fire and I had now passed the pasture to where the CRP bordered a neighbor’s 120 acre winter wheat field planted into the previous year’s stubble. Here was the biggest financial risk of the day; if the winter wheat sustained substantial damage we were talking real money. As I looked back it appeared the fire was unable to burn into the wheat, but I didn’t wait to see as I had only walked half a mile, and still had two miles to go.

The CRP field comes to a point on its north end, bordered by the section line trail on its east side and the curving shoreline of Anderson Lake on its northwest side. The only path forward was for the fire to burn into the shrubby growth along the lake. This slowed the fire down while I advanced ahead along the lakeshore far enough to lose sight of the fire. Eventually it would come north to another winter wheat field and I still had a mile and a half to walk. Time was of the essence, but health problems related to cancer treatments twelve years ago have limited my breathing to where I cannot run,. I am, however, walking like a son-of-a-bitch, now halfways to the neighbor’s. Finally, while still a half mile away, I saw a pickup stopped on the township road wondering who the crazy fool was walking across his alfalfa field. The neighbor, Derek Butler, figured it out and drove out to pick me up. Before he could speak I said, “Call the fire department and take me over to my hayland to see if I still have a pickup.

Yellow X is where fire began. Area in red is approximate area of burn. Outlined field top center is winter wheat field. Black outline in lower left is boundary of my land.

It had been a tough day. I had done something careless and stupid, and now I would get to see the results. I was at peace with paying for the fire department to come. I was at peace with paying Derek for any damage done to his winter wheat. I was past the rationalizations we all do when we fuck up to minimize our personal responsibility for the consequences of our actions. I was ready to bow my head and do some serious penance. However, my luck had changed, beginning with running into Derek.

First, Derek’s brother Andrew was on the Waubay Volunteer Fire Department, and Derek gave him a call. It turns out the entire crew was at a training exercise with all their equipment, so within 20 minutes I had the entire crew out on my prairie, hoses blazing.

Second, when Derek crested the hill south of my hayland I saw that my pickup was safe. The fire had burned underneath my pickup, but the grass on the knob where I had parked was short, and the fire was comparatively cool. The pickup smelled like smoke for a few weeks, but no real harm done.

Third, the damage to the winter wheat was so minimal that no recompense was necessary. The fire had burned all or part of two pieces of hayland, the CRP, a 40 acre pasture and the brush along the lake, but not an acre of any neighbor’s land.

Fourth, I provided great entertainment for the Waubay fire crew, the neighbors who came to see the show and the county emergence services manager (who teased me mercilessly), and provided a wonderful training exercise for the fire crew. The crew got to try out some new equipment in the field, ran all around the prairie hills containing borders and had everything wrapped up so quickly they were home in time for supper. The teasing was welcomed by me because by this time I welcomed a little humiliation. In the end the whole day was considered their scheduled training exercise and I was not charged for their work.

Finally to put a coda on the tale, I went into the county Farm Service Agency (FSA) the next week to report the fire. Judy, the employee in charge of CRP, looked over my file and asked only one question: “Did it all burn?” I told her it burned very well. She then told me that I was scheduled for mid-contract vegetation removal that year. With a smile she checked the metaphorical box and I was given credit for efficiency. Rather than have to pay Butlers to hay the CRP that summer and then destroy the bales, I was rewarded for my foolishness.

The saying is that “karma’s a bitch”. Karma is also sometimes a kind and generous companion. While I am afraid there is an overdrawn karma account that will need some serious deposits soon, all one can do in the face of such things is to bow humbly, smile and move on.

Speculations on Natural History

The Neighborhood

A big impetus for the prairie restoration, as I’ve discussed before, was the discovery of the Dakota skipper butterfly (Hesperae dacotae), a federally threatened species, on my adjoining native prairie. I hope to expand potential skipper habitat, as well as provide a buffer between the skipper habitat and farmed acres. This will double the grassland on this part of my farm to 200 acres. What makes this more interesting is the surrounding neighborhood. The reason for the native prairies on my farm is a terminal moraine, the dump of piled up materials left by a glacial advance, just to the west of my land. This strip of land runs north and south for about twenty miles, generally a couple miles wide, and is almost all in native grass. Though my farm is not actually on the moraine, it is in an area of glacial outwash, sand and gravel laid down by the melting glacier. The west half of my farm, and the west half of the restoration field, is in this area of outwash. While some of this is farmed, much is in grass, as shown in the map below.

My farm is in the northeast corner, with the restoration field highlighted

In the nine square miles shown, almost 6000 acres, there is about 3500 acres of grass, 1500 acres of farmground and 1000 acres of water. Most of the grass is native pasture though there are about 800 acres of public land in low diversity prairie restorations. Extend this landscape north and south and you end up with a fair amount of grass. My restoration field is highlighted in the upper right.

A little aside I may elaborate on in a future post: on the west side of the map you can see the east edge of a large lake. When I was growing up the lake was a salt lake (it is the final home of the water in a drainage area with no outlet). In the drought of 1974-1976, and again in 1988 it was almost completely dry, a muddy, foul smelling salt flat. It was surrounded by several thousand acres of salty grassland, much of it owned by the state as a game production area. The grass is all underwater now as the extremely wet years of the 1990’s filled the basin. 3000-5000 acres of shallow salty water which held no fish is now a freshwater lake of 15000-20000 acres up to thirty feet deep and a magnet for fishermen from far and wide. It blows my mind, but for now I will close off this tangent and return to the main topic.

Connectivity is a buzzword of the conservation community of late, the physical connection of habitats which allows the movement of species across landscapes. My neighborhood has excellent, though not perfect connectivity. In looking at Google Earth one day I estimated that because of the moraine there was about a 25 mile stretch of connected grass (with one or two very small gaps) connecting perhaps 25,000 acres of grass in total. I wonder about the significance of this to the long term value of my restoration. To put it another way, is my project more worthwhile because of the surrounding neighborhood? Much of the grass in the area is overgrazed pasture, some has had herbicides applied to rein in the weeds that are the inevitable result of that overgrazing. I would like to assess the neighborhood to ponder its relationship to my restoration, though I obviously can’t trespass over all of it (I’m not above trespassing on some of it to look around).

One indicator is the presence of the Dakota skippers. Individual skippers have a limited range, reputedly reluctant or unable to travel over a half mile. There is obviously a large enough block of grass which has sufficient nectar and larval food sources in the area to sustain a small population. And in my immediate vicinity I know there is a connected block of at least 1000 acres that shows no history of significant herbicide history. If I can go to the border of the pasture and see black samson (Echinacea angustifolia) heads I am confident there are other wildflowers.

There are also both sharptail grouse and prairie chickens in the neighborhood. I regularly kick up sharpies on my prairies and have seen a covey of chickens a couple miles south of my land. Prairie grouse need a landscape of several thousand acres of grass and we have that. I don’t know if there is a lek nearby or if the grouse are part of a population from a much larger area of grass a few miles to the east. It certainly would be fun to find a lek in my immediate area.

Other grassland birds such as bobolinks, upland sandpipers, grasshopper sparrows and marbled godwits are reasonably common in the neighborhood. One of the joys of late spring is listening to the sound of upland sandpiper flights as they establish territories and try to impress potential mates. I am not skilled enough at bird identification to know whether there might be more unusual birds such as a Baird’s sparrow or a Sprague’s pipit, birds of similar habitat mostly found farther north and west. I would like to learn of other biotic indicators to monitor, perhaps entomological ones.

Until a few years ago I considered almost all the grass in my neighborhood as very “safe” from conversion to farming. Any area that made sense as farmground was already farmed. Actually, there is probably more grass now than when I was a kid, and more grass then, than right after the turn of the century. Just as the poor farm fields of the Appalachians have gone back to trees, many small farm fields broke out over 100 years ago were allowed to go back to grass. But a few years ago a 240 acre piece near my farm was bought by the local owner of a sizable gravel business, just to the southwest of my restoration. I assume that no mineable gravel was found, so the owner decided to improve the value of his investment by breaking some of the grass. This was not a fancy bit of prairie; I am pretty sure the 60-80 acres he broke out the first year were farmed at one time. Then the next year another sizable chunk of the farm was worked up right over steeply sloping hills I am confident were native grass. It was appalling. Even the hard core farming neighbors thought it a bit unethical.

Very little crop has come off this land since it was broke, though we have had decent rainfall the past two years. In a drought most of the farm will raise nothing. During heavy rainfall events it will wash like a bastard. At some point in the future the land will likely get planted back to grass after a great deal of erosion and loss of organic matter. The hubris is breathtaking. This instructive little example shows the purpose of US Fish and Wildlife grassland easements. In the past I had considered easements on unfarmable land a waste of taxpayer resources. I was wrong.

While much of the grass in the area is under easement, I hope others consider that path. The neighbors I have talked to invariably think that farming the steep, rocky hills is foolhardy, but many are very uncomfortable with the idea of a perpetual easement. Though I have been willing to place my grass under easement, I understand their concern. Forever is a long time. In an ironic twist I think the perpetual easement program is aided greatly by our inherent short term focus. Wave some money in front of our faces and “perpetual” becomes a less scary term.

There was a point to this digression. If my restoration is effective in providing a helpful addition to the prairie landscape in my neighborhood I am planning to offer it for a perpetual easement, and have an indication that it will be accepted. I have 100 acres of adjoining prairie in the program, and two of the nearest neighbors have another 500. There will be a great deal of satisfaction in expanding the prairie habitat in the neighborhood, and if the government will wave some money in front of my face, I will gladly take the money and run. I can use the exercise.

Looking at pasqueflowers on Easter Sunday

more about connectivity and Dakota Skipper
Speculations on Natural History

When is enough enough? Part 2

In my last post I considered how to evaluate the sufficiency or completeness of my restoration, hoping to inform my decision of whether to add more seed this spring. I am also starting to think ahead to this coming summer. What is the worth of gathering seed to add to what I hope is an existing stand later this year? My assumption is that the areas that were actually seeded last June will begin to fill in this summer, but that we will not yet have a “sod”. There will still be a lot of bare ground which should mostly be spackled with new seedlings, both native perennials and weeds. That would seem to provide a window for some success for further seeding.

And now I go back to the concept of redundancy from the last post. To have surplus seed ameliorates the effects of two different weaknesses of last years’ seeding. First, I know that the drill used in the June seeding failed to deliver much seed to about half the field, and the subsequent spreading of seed that we did in November probably had imperfect coverage. Seed that I spread this coming summer and fall will in some cases fall where there is no native seed. I hope those areas are very small, but I believe they are out there. Add in some bird predation (there has been a persistent flock of horned larks and snow buntings hanging out on the field all winter) and perhaps a little water movement as the snow melts, and I may have more empty areas than I think. This means that, like last fall, I need to create a diverse mix to spread if I wish to create a diverse community on the entire field. I will have to buy some grass seed to blend with all the forbs I hope to gather.

Second, the June seeding was the approved CRP seed mix integrating seed from many sources, sometimes far away from my home in northeast South Dakota. What will be the longevity of western yarrow (Achillea millefolium) from Oregon or blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata) from Colorado? I have already gathered small amounts of blanketflower and yarrow from my prairies and spread them last fall. It seems prudent to gather and spread more to provide plants with the genetic staying power to live through temperatures of 35 below. Last fall I concentrated my efforts on the areas that were bereft of seed; I should probably supplement the well-seeded areas with adapted genetics as well.

An awkward impediment to the success of summer 2019 seeding is the dormancy residing in most native species. Most of what I spread in July and August this year will only break dormancy in 2020. Will there still be a place at the table then? In the best of situations most seeds don’t produce plants, and in this situation a very high percentage of what I spread will become food for some organism, whether bird, insect or microbe. We will return once more to redundancy. Plants produce a great deal of seed to waste, but that is obviously an efficient evolutionary strategy. In a native prairie some seeds must germinate and grow to replace their aging parents, or all plants would reproduce clonally rather than put their energy into seed.

This begs the question of how best to use a limited resource, my time, to improve the restoration? Should I be “wasting” my time gathering seed, most of which has no chance to improve the stand? I have an agronomic consulting business that I still work at. Perhaps my time is best used making money to buy seed and services to help my seeding. Where best should I use my limited reservoir of stamina? But no, the answer is easy, though I am not an impartial judge; I need to be out gathering seed, spreading seed and observing what is happening both in the restoration prairie and my native prairies. Though money is always limited I feel that I have more money than time, and more time than energy. The breathing problems resulting from cancer treatments led to a trachaeostomy and that has led to a susceptibility to pneumonia. I might not be able to continue doing this in future years. Though I have walked the prairies for close to 60 years, I was poleaxed by how much I learned the last two years, gathering seed and preparing for the restoration. How could I give up that fun?

What of the species that I have not been able to gather? Puccoon (Lithospermum canescens), silverleaf scurfpea (Pediomelum argophyllum), ball cactus (Coryphantha vivipara), textile onion (Allium textile) sun sedge (Carex inops) and prairie milkvetch (Astragalus adsurgens) are all reasonably common (Scurfpea is practically ubiquitous), but the seed is difficult to gather and unavailable to buy. Is it worth spending the time to transplant a few balls of cactus, for instance. If it is intimidating to use a small seed spreader on 100 acres, how much more daunting to feel able to affect species composition by transplanting. I haven’t yet decided, but I’m playing the long game here, looking to the future. Once I feel that I have a decent restoration I will probably offer it to the U S Fish and Wildlife Service as a grassland easement. There are already easements on all my prairies and an adjoining neighbor’s pasture. If I’m willing to enter into a perpetual easement I should be able to consider actions which might not have significant impact for many years. It is something to ponder.

Another topic to think about is whether to seed a soil biota. How much soil does it take to allow the native prairie microbiota to get a foothold? And is it necessary? Will the wind and water do the job for me? I freely admit to being in deep water here. Dr. Caley Gasch of North Dakota State University who has worked in mine reclamation, was encouraging when I casually mentioned the idea. When I backtracked by referring to the enormity of the task, she suggested just throwing a few shovelfuls of soil around. Seed some small areas, and if the new environment is to their liking it will hasten their spread across the restoration. Once again, playing the long game. There is a chicken/egg dilemma here, though. Which partner comes first in a symbiotic relationship? Perhaps I need to let the plants establish and let the roots explore a bit before I put too much work into moving soil.

When is enough, enough? Hell if I know. To return to the topic of adding seed; redundancy, by definition, is inefficient, but can provide comfort in covering up or ameliorating the effect of poor planning, poor execution and poor luck. In my work on the restoration this summer my goal, you might say, will be to be inefficient, but to be comforted. For at least another year or two, this project is my mistress.

Postscript

The last two posts (as well as others to come) were written during blizzards last winter, and are a bit dated. Recently I have done some more seeding which I will describe soon in another post.

Speculations on Natural History

When is enough enough?

Through the winter I have spent a lot of time trying to decide how much more seed I am going to try to spread on my prairie restoration. Here’s the history: The original seeding was done last June. As I’ve written about earlier, it soon became evident that the seed had bridged in the drill, and that perhaps half the seeding had no seed. About fifty acres would be nothing but weeds unless I reseeded.

Last fall, then, we spread seed over about 75 acres, only leaving the best 25 acres unseeded. Our process would have seemed haphazard to an observer. We would start with a purchased base mix, primarily grasses, different mixes for xeric, dry mesic and wet mesic sites, and then would blend in gathered seed, primarily forbs, from about forty different containers. Our choices of gathered seed would depend upon the soils to be seeded by the next hopper of seed. There were several tubs of both mesic and xeric forb mixtures, several pounds of black samson (Echinacea angustifolia), several bags of leadplant (Amorpha canescens), perhaps five pounds; smaller containers (2-4 gallons each) of 10-15 other forbs and then smaller and smaller containers of another 15-20 species. This last grouping included several bags of seed of species I purchased. In total there were about 75 species that had been gathered (though many in small amounts) and when added to what I had bought and the seed which had been seeded in June there were about 130 species. Most of the restoration had been seeded twice, and parts three times. I had spent over $40000 and invested perhaps 200 hours gathering seed. Why do I feel I have not done enough?

To be honest, part of this is just normal angst. I have spent a great deal of time and a great deal of capital, both financial and emotional, and so far I have little to show for it. None of the seed had gone through a stratification, so dormancy has only been overcome this winter. The mantra on all native seedings is “patience, patience, patience”. If I stop obsessing and go out there next summer I will be rewarded with a glorious vista of wildflowers. Right?

The trouble is that I know too much. I know the weaknesses and the failings of both the planning and the execution. Here are some of my concerns.

First, in order for the seeding plan to be approved, and for me to e eligible for yearly CRP payments, I needed to have an approved seeding plan. This was different for the pollinator habitat than for the wetland restoration (CP 23, for anyone who is interested). Through many iterations of seeding plans we tried to come up with some that 1) Fulfilled the requirements, 2) Were available from a local seedhouse at a reasonable price and 3) Didn’t make me gag when I imagined what the seeding would look like in 4-5 years.

That is not as easy as it sounds. Many of the cheaper, easier to establish species, such as yellow coneflower (Ratibida columnifera) or hoary vervain (Verbena stricta) which are used in pollinator seedings remind me of overgrazed pastures. Others such as Maximillian sunflower (Helianthus maximillianii) and wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) aren’t that common in my neighborhood. Still, price and availability means they were significant contributors to the seed mixes.

Many of the species I wanted to emphasize were very expensive: black samson, dotted gayfeather (Liatris punctate), northern bedstraw (Galium boreale) and buffalobean milkvetch (Astragalus crassicarpus) for example. Some, such as wood lily (Lilium philadelphicum), prairie larkspur (Delphinium virescens) and breadroot scurfpea (Pediomelum esculentum) were only available in tiny seed packets. And some, such as silverleaf scurfpea (Pediomelum argophyllum), slender milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus) and hoary puccoon (Lithospermum canescens) were completely unavailable. Gathering these and many additional species was the only path forward, but the seed for the “official seeding” needed to bought as if nothing was to be added. Though my gathered seed was representative of the local prairie remnants and exquisitely adapted to the crappy soils and weather of my home farm they would not qualify to go into the official seeding. I was stuck planting a fair amount of forbs that I did not feel were appropriate to or representative of prairies in my area.

But I have gathered a great deal of local seed the past two years. I have obsessively watched which hills have the slender milkvetch and which have more wild onion (Allium stellatum), or the valley where prairie larkspur grow. Twenty acres of my native prairie were burned last spring, partly to enhance seed production for gathering. I have not been able to gather everything that I wanted, and certainly not in the quantities I desired, but I feel I have done well. And if some of what I bought isn’t well adapted, I comfort myself with the thought that there will be other plants to replace the laggards.

Second, as I have mentioned (whined about) earlier, half of the planting was not planted the first go-round. Most of the area that was well seeded was on a level, mesic area near the township road. The rest, including all the gravelly hills had seed spread last fall with an old pull type broadcast seeded pulled by an ATV. Even though most of the field was seeded twice, there is very little redundancy. In addition, the vagaries of weather and human frailty mean there were predictable skips last fall. Building redundancy into almost any system is both inefficient and comforting. You might say that I was efficient but I am not comforted.

My final concern is with the mixing of the seed. The biggest seeds are several hundred times as heavy as the smallest. Though we worked diligently to blend our mixes, the different sizes and shapes of the seeds we spread inevitably mean there was a sorting process as we bounced up and down the field. As we accept a lack of uniformity in a native stand I will accept a lack of uniformity in my seeding.

If this project is ultimately “all about me” as I believe it inevitably is, the question becomes: What will make me feel I have done the best that I can? What will comfort me with the thought that I have done all that I can reasonably do to create a viable restoration? I started a process to evaluate that question by going back over my purchased seed tags and my seed gathering notes to decide what species I felt short of. The concept is the same as triage: 1) Species I feel I have seeded in sufficient quantities 2) Species that are unavailable or frighteningly expensive, and 3) Species which I believe are under-represented, which I can afford and which come from a source near enough geographically to feel they have a chance to succeed. Another metaphor is that I am Goldilocks – you know the rest.

Of course, gathered seed is always welcome, and I hope to have a good year to gather prodigious amounts of locally adapted seed. I have a couple friends who are interested in the project and will probably hire some summer help who can supplement my efforts.

A short aside is that after years of hearing that only local seed should be used, I have now read a couple opinions that providing genetic diversity is a reasonable response to the changing climate. In my case that source might be as close as the neighborhood where I live, which is 800 feet lower in elevation than my restoration, and tends to more mesic soils. I have a couple small prairies where I can pick some seed from 10-20 species of interest and provide some diversity.

One could also say that I have already provided some of that diversity in my purchased seed, though I may be grasping at straws to feel better about the seed I have already bought. In any case, I will not be able to gather everything I want, and so I return to the point three paragraphs back: purchasing species which are under-represented and not frighteningly expensive

After perusing various seed sellers on the internet and visiting with my contact at Milborn Seeds in Brookings, South Dakota, I have come up with a list of about 20 species and have put together something like a business case for a seeding plan. My resources in money, time and energy are limited, as they always are, and I am trying to get the most bang for the buck in all three categories. In the end I will purchase small to moderate amounts of 10-15 species, try to keep the cost around $2500-3000, and hopefully spread this spring early enough to have a short stratification period, I have a good ATV with a new, small mounted spreader, and I can go around and through small amounts of snow. A 100 acre field looks like a continental expanse when working with such a small rig, but I’m not going to worry about covering every acre. I deeply believe in trying to create redundancy in the plans for any business project, and spreading more seed this spring will be a step in the right direction. Much of the seed I am spreading will probably be wasted because of its falling where existing plants are growing, but that is inevitable and to be expected. To believe that you can plan and execute a plan perfectly with no inefficiency is hubris and a path to disappointment. Slow establishment of my seeding means there will be more weed competition than I would like the next couple years. Even with two mowings last year I know plenty of weed seeds matured. Yet the soil is basically open, ready for colonization, and I humbly hope to do some good this spring. The next post will continue the story.

Speculations on Natural History

Restoration Blues

The last post was a big picture look at why I felt compelled to do a prairie restoration. This post will review the more immediate history and tell how I got to “now”.

There is a 37 acre field adjacent to the native hayland where Dakota skipper (Hesperae dacotae) butterflies were found. My family had not used this field in any way while I was growing up. It is hilly glacial outwash (glacial outwash is formed from the sand and gravel swept away by the water of a melting glacier), a terrible soil that was farmed for some time during the early 1900’s and then given up on. Eventually it was covered with quackgrass (Agropyron repens), which is how I remember it when I was a kid.

When my parents retired in 1979 (I was in grad school at that time), the farm was rented to a neighbor my age. I had been given an opportunity to take over the farm, but my Dad successfully talked me out of it. Eventually my parents asked David, the neighbor, if he wanted to farm the 37 acres, and he broke it out of the go-back sod. He farmed it for ten years or so, rarely raising much crop on the droughty soils, and was amenable when I told him I would like to enroll it in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). I then worked with the staff at the Day County Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to develop a seeding plan. We came up with a plan including five native grasses and four native forbs, and I was congratulated by several people for my “diverse” seeding. The field was seeded and the rainfall was kind. We got a good catch. The weeds were mowed a couple times, and by the end of the next year, 2012, we had a good stand that could be viewed as a big success.

Was I happy with my “almost” restoration? No. On the contrary, I was quite disappointed, especially after reflecting upon it two or three years later. The predictable result of most projects is that you learn many things through the course of completing the project that you really needed to know when you were planning the project. In this case, after reflection I decided the grass choices were fine. All five species : big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), green needlegrass (Nassela viridula), sideoats grama (Bouteluoa curtipendula), blue grama (Bouteluoa gracilis) and western wheatgrass (Pascopyrum smithii), are well represented, and are providing an excellent sod cover. I wish I had added three or four more species, but the choices were ok.

The problem is the forbs. Of my four choices: purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea), western yarrow (Achillea millefolium), Illinois bundleflower (Desmanthus illinoensis and purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) I am only happy with the prairie clover. The yarrow is a minor component of our prairies; the Illinois bundleflower is at the edge of its native range here, and all died during our first tough winter, and I got the wrong Echinacea species. Echinacea purpurea would be fine if I were doing a planting on good soil in Iowa; not so good on poor soil in northeast South Dakota. I needed to ask for black Samson, aka narrowleaf coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia) which is very hardy and ubiquitous throughout this area. I had ordered by the common name I grew up using, not the scientific name. The only consolation is that the E. purpurea has actually done well in some of the protected, wetter soils in the valleys of the field.

The advice I had gotten was useful if I wanted a reasonably priced seeding with a couple of neat wildflowers. What I came to realize was that I had blown an opportunity to do something more, something great. I attempted to topdress some new species a couple years after the original seeding, but by this time the grass sod was too competitive to allow entry to new seedlings. . I have yet to see a single plant from that supplementary seeding. My opportunity had passed.

Now we move forward to 2016 when I began planning to turn a 100 acre field nearby into a full prairie restoration. Once more I applied to enter the land in the CRP program, but like 99% of applicants, was turned down. The CRP program had covered 40,000,000 acres soon after it was authorized in the 1985 Farm Bill. It was designed primarily as a program to retire erodible land, but also as a supply management tool, reducing commodity surpluses. Over the subsequent 30 years it was reduced to 24,000,000 acres and had changed into an environmental program trying to accomplish everything from groundwater protection to wetland restoration to establishment of pollinator habitat. Thus my only path to CRP was to fit my land into one of the environmental titles. After reapplication I was to plant 69 acres of pollinator habitat and 31 acres of wetland protection.

With this in hand I went to work developing a seeding plan with Ben Lardy, a Pheasants Forever biologist working with the Day County Conservation District. I wanted to accomplish three goals:

  1. Do a kickass prairie restoration any Dakota skipper butterfly would love.
  2. Fulfill the CRP requirements so that I qualified for yearly rental payments and cost sharing of seeding expenses.
  3. Not go broke doing it.

I was fortunate to have the help of my daughter, Diane, a botanist, as well as Ben, a prairie enthusiast, in developing a seeding plan. With a determination to do much better than my previous CRP seeding, we went through many iterations of seeding plans, splitting the pollinator habitat into two mixes, one for the xeric hills and another for the dry mesic soils on the sidehills. Along with the wet mesic mix for the wetland protection area we ended up with three mixes of about 30 species each. With overlap it added up to about 55 species in all. Since a seed tag with purity and germination percentage was needed to fulfill the requirements of the CRP program, I purchased the seed from a local seedhouse, Milborns Seed in Brookings, South Dakota.

While this was already a reasonably diverse mix I then sourced small amounts of thirty more expensive species from Prairie Moon Seeds in Winona, Minnesota. During the late summer of 2017 I had also done some gathering of seeds from my prairies, much of it with my daughter’s help. Ben had also gathered seed from a dozen species, which I purchased, and when all was said and done we had about 110 species to put in. I had contracted with the Day County Conservation District to do the seeding with their grass drill and I was satisfied that we were ready to go. And now we cross over from the ”Prairie Dreams”, the title of the last blog post, to “Restoration Blues”, the title of this post.

By profession I am an agronomist, and I had made the herbicide recommendations on the soybean field we were planting into. I had recommended that David, the renter, spot-treat some patches of waterhemp with a 50% rate of Flexstar, a contact herbicide. However, there is some soil activity with Flexstar, and I had no clue as to the susceptibility of the 100+ native species we were going to plant. Thus, I reluctantly decided to delay seeding until spring to allow for the degradation of the herbicide.

The spring of 2018 was wet, delaying seeding. Areas of the field which would have seeded beautifully the fall before were too wet to seed until the middle of June. The conservation district was finally able to get the field seeded between June 15th and 20th, a month late, and now I just needed to be patient to see what would come up. Evaluation of a seeding like this is difficult. Native seedlings are very slow to germinate and develop, and many species need a cold, moist period of stratification to overcome dormancy, the main reason I had hoped to seed the field the fall before. Still the seeding was done, and I obsessively patrolled the field to see what would come up.

It was very disappointing. By August it was obvious that the seeding was very patchy. Perhaps 25% of the field looked good. Another 25% had scattered plants and would likely fill in with time. But 50%, 50 acres had nothing. The seed had obviously bridged in the seed tank, and large areas were bereft of seed, growing only weeds. I was crestfallen.

Here is what the best areas looked like.
Here is what the worst 30 ac looked like.

It seemed to me that I had three choices: 1.Petition to have it considered a failed seeding and start over. 2.Continue to monitor, hoping that I was premature in my assessment, or 3.Selectively reseed as I saw fit. I chose the last option as the one most likely to create a decent restoration.

As I stated earlier, I had gathered some seed the previous year and had already spread it on the field. I had also begun to gather some seed from my prairies during the summer, hoping to augment my seeding a bit. Starting in August, after realizing the dire situation my restoration was in, collecting seed became a second job, one I will elaborate upon in future posts. I enlisted various friends to help, and traveled to prairie remnants owned by friends to get species not available on my prairies. Ben Lardy gathers seed to sell, and I let him know that I would take whatever he gathered. As most of what was gathered was forbs, I then bought grass mixtures from Milborns Seed to mix with my gathered seed.

Finally, on three days in November Ben and I used my ATV to pull an old broadcast seeder to spread the seed. We tried to do 10 foot swaths across 75 acres without the benefit of GPS guidance, a bit of a hillbilly operation. One of us would pace off and mark swath width by standing in a visible place to give the ATV driver something to aim for, while the other drove like a bat out of hell, trying to drive straight while paralleling the tracks from the last seeding pass. It reminded me of striking out a new land with a moldboard plow when I was a kid; pick a landmark to drive towards and don’t think too much. The new age equivalent would be Zen archery; let the arrow find the target. If you try too hard to aim you are destined to screw things up.

We laid 30-40 containers of seed across our staging area, ranging from small envelopes to 40 gallon tubs, along with our bags of grass mixes. Each fill seeded 2.5-3 acres which allowed us to customize a new blend every 15 minutes. With winter looming and snow in the forecast we did not feel we had the time to carefully plan the needs of each fill. Rather we made up blends “by the seat of our pants” taking into account the soils that would be seeded by the next hopper of seed. I would dump in more black samson and dotted gayfeather (Liatris punctate) for a xeric area, leadplant (Amorpha canescens) and rough gayfeather (Liatris aspera) for dry mesic hillsides and Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum) and showy tick trefoil (Desmodium canadense) in the wet mesic soils. I had blends of gathered seed separated by site suitability. We tossed in whatever seemed appropriate like mad bakers, or cooks creating a mulligan’s stew. It seemed a cavalier way to work with the seed we had worked so many weeks to gather, but it was a lot of fun.

While things haven’t gone as planned I have done the best that I could do. I haven’t elaborated of all the extra seeding that was done, as various issues necessitated individual seeding of several species, and I know I have miles to go. There are some disappointments I will return to in future posts, but I feel good about the work that was done last fall. I am beginning to see some new seedlings from last November’s work. Now I am eager to continue to supplement what has become a restoration of 130 species and to see what grows. I want to play the last chord of “Restoration Blues” and reenter the world of “Prairie Dreams” again.

Speculations on Natural History

Prairie Dreams

I am a 63 year old businessman/farmer who decided to create a 100 acre prairie restoration in 2017. It was seeded last year, and has prompted a great deal of reflection and conversation which has culminated in the decision to start a blog to document the process and results, and to reflect on many things related to the restoration, and to prairies and the natural world. I do this primarily as an exercise to clarify my own thoughts and feelings, but if it is of interest to anyone I welcome your own thoughts, observations and ideas. And so we begin.

Prairie Dreams

When I was a teenager out picking rock or digging summer fallow there was a lot of time to daydream. A teenager lives so deep inside his own head that he needs a ladder to enter the world. Then, put that teenager in a job that takes no thought or intention and leave him alone for hours. Flights of fancy swirl and cycle, multiple iterations of whatever scenario has gotten stuck in his mind circle till an appropriate ending appears, and the successful/heroic/tragic scenario is perfect.

One of those recurring fantasies I had was imagining what heaven would be like. I must have had full confidence in my personal sanctity as it was obvious to me that heaven was my eventual destination. And to my 15 year old self, heaven would manifest itself in whatever form I wished, so the daydreaming task was to decide what manifestation best satisfied my desires. There were different answers on different days, but the one I remember the best was to be wandering the pre-European settlement prairie. There was nothing but five foot tall big bluestem to the horizon. I still can see the image of myself in a sea of grass.

Now I wonder if that memory has risen from my subconscious to inform my conscious brain’s desire to do a prairie restoration. I hadn’t remembered that daydream until recently, but I don’t think a memory or desire has to be conscious to drive thoughts and decisions. Our brains all have multiple drivers working simultaneously.

However, we still need to create a conscious narrative as well, if only to tell our friends and family. My younger daughter, Diane had surveyed and characterized prairies in northeast South Dakota for an MS thesis project, with special emphasis on prairies with a record of harboring Dakota skipper (Hesperae dacotae) butterflies. Though my land was outside of her study area I had a friend, Dennis Skadsen, scout my prairies and he found a Dakota skipper butterfly. The Dakota skipper has recently been listed as a threatened species, so I was thrilled. Restoring a prairie adjacent to one harboring a threatened prairie species might provide an extension of habitat that would allow a larger, more stable population to develop. Though no skippers have ever been found in a restored prairie, I doubt the sampling population of restored prairies next to skipper occupied habitat is very large, and a man can dream. And even if they cannot be tempted to feed on the black samson (Echinacea angustifolia) that I plant, there will at least be a buffer created between the occupied habitat and farmed ground. Few insecticides are used in my area, but infestations of grasshoppers, soybean aphids and other crop pests occur occasionally and a buffer from potential insecticide drift seems prudent.

To extend the reasoning, I am close to retirement with health problems related to collateral damage from cancer treatment. Increasing retirement income to supplement Social Security is a goal. The restoration is occurring on poor farm ground with below average rental income. I was able to enroll the field in the continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) signup, primarily as pollinator habitat, at a rental rate above what I was receiving for it as farm ground. The CRP program also provides cost share for seeding, providing some help towards the substantial cost.

If I haven’t tied this up in a tight enough package there is a fourth benefit to me from the project. As I slow down in the career that I have been working at for almost 40 years I need something new to be moving towards. I have spent my entire life working outside. To retire to an east chair sounds more like the third circle of Hell in Dante’s “Inferno” than a goal to aspire to. Every week during the growing season for 38 years I have visited 25 farmer clients who are also some of my best friends. I need to have a chance to continue to interact with interesting people, talking about important things. I am rich in having a great many people to consult with on the restoration project; people I can ask questions of and hopefully brag to with pictures of my successes in its development. This will be a wonderful excuse to visit with them.

So the plan brings forth the subconscious memory of the wandering mind of a fifteen year old boy. It develops from the experiences chasing cattle, fixing fence and making hay in our prairies while growing up. The subconscious melds with the conscious desire to create a project to share with my daughter, something to look forward to working in and enjoying with her. It draws in the desire to support a threatened species and to still be a vital, contributing member of the human race. And I am doing it in such a way that it will support my and my wife’s retirement financially as well as spiritually. Art and commerce, science and industry, yin and yang. The circle may not be complete, but it begs the question, “How can I not do this?”

So I did. And I still am.

And this blog will follow the story.