My introduction to prairie began when I was four or five years old and began to tag along with my older brother to bring the dairy cows home for milking. Almost every farm in our neighborhood milked cows and had a small pasture adjacent to the farm for the cows. Ours was bigger than most, a 50 acre mixture of native and tame grass. The native grass wasn’t pristine after 70 years of continuous grazing, but there were a surprising number of native grasses and forbs that were still scattered across the hills.

In April we engaged in the spring ritual of children everywhere, bringing the first flowers of spring home to our mother. For farm kids of the northern plains that meant pasqueflowers (Anemone patens), or Mayflowers as we called them. The first blooms of the spring emerged about April 15-20, the first stalks only two or three inches long. If it had been a cold night they would be brown from frost damage. There was little aroma, and they usually came with ants which were feeding on the pollen or the sap that oozed from the base. Still, my mother would make the obligatory fuss over us, her good boys bringing her flowers.

A short digression here: This Easter I had the good fortune to go up to my prairies with my daughter, Diane, and her boyfriend, Ebi. Spring was late with 20″ of snow and a blizzard on April 11-12, but a quick warm spell had melted most of the snow, and I hoped for the best. Here is what I found:

My phone doesn’t have the capacity to show the scope of the bloom, but the reputed “superbloom” in the California desert this spring came to mind (the comparison is a bit inflated, I admit, but it really was a lot of pasqueflowers). This was as many pasqueflowers blooming as I had ever seen on these hills.

I was even able to gather several ounces of seed for my restoration. The wispy, feathery plumes attached to the seed make great handles to pull the seeds from the head if you are lucky enough to get out before they blow away in the wind. With some help, I was lucky.

I have already spread the seed to add to the seed I gathered and spread last year. And of course we brought a handful of blooms back on Easter to display on the kitchen table. Though humble, they were glorious. If a boquet can be gathered in the future on the restoration that would be a success to cherish.

Returning to my theme, what held more interest as I got older was learning what could be gathered and eaten out on the prairie. Foraging wild foods is a hot topic among foodies these days, but the history didn’t start with Euell Gibbons in the 60’s. I was fortunate to have a rich source of knowledge in my Polish grandmother, Busha. Her parents had homesteaded when she was a toddler, and her family welcomed families of Native Americans to camp and trade. Some of what was traded were foods gathered from the prairie. It’s impossible to know how extensive the interactions were between Busha and the Dakota families, but she came to know how to use many native plants.

The most important target was breadroot scurfpea (Pediomelum esculentum), which we called wild rutabagas. The plant has a tuberous root, a bulb which begins an inch or two below the soil and is about two inches long. In order to harvest the tuber one has to dig a hole about four or five inches deep and broad enough to get a grip around the tuber to yank it out. Of course, at seven or eight years old that meant prying out soil and stones with my fingers. Getting two or three tubers exhausted my patience, and I would shove them in my pocket, peeling one to eat as I walked home.

The flavor was bland, but pleasant; fibrous, with enough starch to give it a satisfying chew. As I got older, my intentions were to cook some tubers, or perhaps even make pemmican, but invariably I would eat the raw tubers before any of my bright ideas came to fruition.

In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that I wasn’t more proficient at digging prairie turnips as their reproduction is a bit slow, and even an eight year old boy could make a dent in a local population. I no longer find prairie turnips on the home pasture, but they are fairly common on the prairies bordering my restoration.

Last summer I found that they were also one of the more frustrating plants from which to gather seed. At maturity they break off at ground level and merrily tumble around, spreading seed as they go. I was probably able to salvage 100 seeds last year, and less this year, by picking up the determined travelers and shelling out the remaining seed. I will be surprised if I ever find any in my restoration.

The last plant I will mention is groundplum milkvetch, which Busha called buffalo beans (Astragalus crassicarpus). Buffalo beans, or groundplums, bloom early, and the fruits are juicy and tasty for a week or two. Though they look like little plums their taste is more like snap peas, if not quite as sweet. They quickly become tough and inedible.

Many species of Astragalus and a closely related genus, Oxytropis, are poisonous. The locoweeds, or crazyweeds, are members of the lineage. Though I knew this fact even as a teenager, it never occurred to me to be careful in eating buffalo beans. Poisons are dosage dependent, and there might be a line one would not wish to cross. Still, plants which presumably disperse their seed with the help of hungry animals are unlikely to have poisonous fruits. In any case, I doubt that I ever ate more than five or six at a time, and remember no ill effects.

What causes one person to crave these experiences while another lacks the desire? While my grandmother imparted the botanical knowledge, it was my older brother who showed me how to dig a prairie turnip and how to find buffalo beans, and I am certain that we ate them together. Yet, though we came from the same place and the same formative experiences, he has only mild interest in prairies and in my restoration project. He encourages me when I tell him about it, but there is no visceral connection. It was also obvious by the time he was twelve that he was no farmer ( though he worked more diligently on the farm than I did) and he now lives in a suburb of Minneapolis.

My younger brother, on the other hand, really wants to get back to the farm sometime to see the project. He too lives in an urban area (Orange County, California), but as a kid he would choose to wander in the pasture with his free time. If we knew the combination of nature and nurture, of experience and education, which developed a deep connection to nature it would be easier to develop a new generation of conservationists. For my part I will continue with my little project and draw in who I can to the wonder I feel as I wander the hills.