I’m beginning a potentially long post which might be a little disjointed, as various memories, which are unlikely to all come at once, inform the evaluation of the year. Be warned, my posts are invariably pretty nerdy, as that’s who I am. The overall gist, however, is that a great many wildflowers increased, or were at least much more visible in 2024, as very good rainfall from late April through the first week of August induced many individual plants of most species to bloom and make seed, surprising me with an abundance that may have been veiled by the inherent conservatism of many prairie species. Many summers the refrain is: “Bloom and spend energy making seed? I don’t think so; it feels a bit risky. Maybe next year.” This year the the song became: “I feel good! Time to make some seeds!” With that as the intro, here goes.

As an example of the above, one of the most noteworthy surprises for me was how many standing milkvetch (Astragalus adsurgens) I saw. In the restoration I had only seen one two years ago, and hadn’t been able to find it again last year. Standing milkvetch is one of the species I am intent on increasing, one that cannot be bought from any vendors in this region, and thus I was a bit disappointed not to see any in the restoration last year. This year I saw 7-10 in the restoration, all blooming and making seed. Some were likely from transplants the past two years, but small vegetative legumes look pretty similar, and the plants that I saw this year may have already been growing for a couple years, establishing themselves while waiting for the right year to become adults and procreate. This seems likely, as I had thought I knew every A. adsurgens plant in my adjacent native prairies, perhaps 50 in all, and was greatly and pleasantly surprised to see 2-3 times that many plants in those prairies, established in many more locations than I would have dreamed, many small plants only noticed because they were blooming. I gathered a lot of seed from them, a couple gallons, even while leaving a good percentage to enter the seed bank, and have the winter to learn how to shell them out of their little husks, and then can decide how best to use the windfall. Here’s a small transplant from 2023 that was not yet blooming this year, probably 2.5-3″ tall. The continuing theme that comes from this is that there may me much more to see of many species in the future.

Other notable species that showed up in significantly larger numbers this year in the restoration are prairie larkspur (Delphinium carolinianum var. canescens), northern bedstraw (Galium boreale), slender milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus), prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis), porcupine grass (Heterostipa spartea), meadow rue (Thalictrum dasycarpum) and prairie onion (Allium stellatum). In the native prairies it started with a good bloom of pasqueflowers (Anemone patens), continued with both small penstemons (Penstemon albidus and P. gracilis), both puccoons (Lithospermum canescens and L. incisum), and both violets (Viola pedatifida and V. nuttallii), and progressed to acres of onions, hills of alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii), swales armed to the teeth with porcupine grass spears, narrowleaf coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia) scattered across every hill in both the restoration and the native prairies (for the first time I gathered Echinacea heads in the restoration, taking about 500 out of several thousand heads), and in late August and early September all species of asters Symphyotricum sp.), goldenrods (Solidago sp.), sunflowers (Helianthus sp.) and gayfeathers (Liatris sp.) provided a cornucopia of nectar and pollen for the bees.

The rainfall was a deal. After a dry winter, welcome showers occurred in April, too much rain in May, a short dry spell in early June which allowed some crop to finally go in and was capped by almost double the normal rainfall from June 15 till August 10. At that point we were perhaps 8-10″ ahead for the year. Though the faucet turned off then, the natives enjoyed almost unbelievable bounty. They knew what to do with it, too. Dry hillsides in both the native prairies and the restoration looked like prairies in good soil, and the areas of good soil in the restoration looked like Iowa. I hosted a tour put on by the Day County Conservation District and Ducks Unlimited in late August, taking a busload of interested people into the restoration in an area of decent, but below average soils, and it was difficult to communicate with the group with grass seedheads waving over our heads. Many people commented that I had the best restoration they had ever seen, and asked how I did it. While it’s a pretty good restoration, I shrugged and basically replied, “I just kept spreading seed for several years, and then it rained. Boom!” Below is what one of the gravelly hills, a soil too thin and poor to grow crops, looked like in late July.

Because of the large amount of seed to gather, my partner Ben Lardy and I were regularly in a quandary: do we gather specific species, hoping to get amounts that stood on their own for sale or use in a dedicated plot or do we just shovel in whatever we could find all together in big bags, and get the largest possible amount of seed per unit time invested, planning to spread it all on my project. I’m not sure it was wise or proper, but we leaned towards the former, meaning we now have significant (for us) amounts of a large variety of species, many of which we will need to experiment with to process and clean reasonably pure seed. Some of those species include the two penstemons, the two puccoons, the standing milkvetch along with two other milkvetches (Astragalus crassicarpus and A. flexuosus), a sled full of porcupine grass heads, a good sized tub of Echinacea heads, a container of alumroot seedstalks, and a small container of seedheads of Pennsylvania cinquefoil (Potentilla pennsylvanica). Some species need no processing, however, like the needles of needle and thread (Heterostipa comata) and the seeds of tall cinquefoil (Drymocallis arguta) and I have begun the process of getting them spread on the 20 acres which were burned a couple weeks ago.

I have touched upon this topic before, but the question of how much additional seed to put out, past the original seeding, is a big one, both in terms of time and money involved and in terms of how best to accomplish it. It can seem a bit futile to bring out bags of gathered seed, that represent many, many hours of gathering, and then fling them into a very uncertain situation in the matter of an hour or two, hoping a few will grow. The plan this year was similar to what I did last year: to purchase a significant amount of seed gathered by my neighbor, Levi Waddell, and spread them after an area had been burned to remove the year’s growth which would allow most of the seed to contact mineral soil. Last year the area that was burned had all been seeded five years before, and while there was some soil showing, it was obvious that competition would be fierce for any seeds that would germinate. Below are a couple pictures depicting where I spread seed a year ago, the second picture just a close-up on the first.

While there is bare ground in areas almost all of the blackened clumps represent the crowns of plants that may have been 3-4′ tall with extensive root systems. Many of the areas that were burned, and subsequently spread with seed were more dense than this photo. Compare that to a picture from the 20 acres where I have been spreading seed the past week.

This is the 20 acres that were first seeded in the fall of 2022, have had two years to develop, and that was burned about 3 weeks ago. Thus, rather than competing with 4-5 year old plants, any new seedlings that grow will be competing with 1-2 year old plants at perhaps a third the density of the previous pictures. Rather than an exercise in futility, we have what I see as an exceptional opportunity to give all the seed I spread this fall and winter (and next spring, if necessary) enough biotic space to thrive. That is the hope and the dream, and the expectation, anyway. As I was repeatedly walking across the field throwing seed into the air all I could think was that I needed more seed to take advantage of this seedbed. This had the potential to be far more than a supplement to the previous seeding; it was a better situation for seedling establishment than I had two years ago in the original seeding, a gift that I needed to grasp and use. Thus, one of the stories of 2024 is the attempt to turn this 20 acres from a disappointing beginning, that I was assuming would never be as diverse and vibrant as the best areas of the 100 acres seeded in 2018, into a powerful addition providing buckets of ecosystem services and seed to supply new restorations. Below is a map I have used before of the restoration, the area where I have been spreading seed in the upper right, hoping it can become the diverse, productive habitat that Zones 1 and 2 are.

And what of the bounty of the summer we gathered, mentioned earlier? Some will end up here after processing and cleaning, some may go to help other areas and some may be grown into seedling plugs to be planted next summer. Though it is unlikely I will be able to spread seed throughout the winter as I did last year, perhaps there will be some opportunities to enter that portal to enchantment, spreading life back to where it once resided 130 years ago, while enjoying the winter environment. I hope to reprise “The Old Man and the Seed” that I was able to act out last winter. If it takes an extra couple thousand dollars to purchase more seed to go with what I have gathered I will likely do it. How many more years can I do this? Will I have another opportunity this enticing? One never knows, so it is incumbent upon me to make the most of this chance.

So, what about the future? Besides me slogging along the next few years, with Ben’s help, picking at things. I have written earlier about developing a more formal relationship with the Native Plant Initiative (NPI) at South Dakota State University (SDSU). I hosted a group of students from the lab in July, along with their professor, Dr. Lora Perkins for a field day. Lora and I have been discussing a framework for formalizing that connection, including a probable research project on my land starting next year. I have written about that in the past, and significant progress will deserve its own post in the future.

Finally, this year has seen the beginning of a process I will describe in more detail in a subsequent post: What happens when I am gone? Who manages, improves, worries about, buys seed for, controls invasive weeds and documents the happenings on these prairies for others? Linda and I have invited several people with conservation experience to join us as an advisory board to help carry on the work. With the exception of Dr. Perkins they are all about our daughters’ ages (who are 36 and 39, and I think Lora is 50, still 19 years younger than me). Linda and I are very seriously considering forming a nonprofit, geared originally to support continued management on both my project and on Linda’s conservation grazing system (420 acres of native grass north of Milbank). The advisory board could easily segue into a managing board of the nonprofit. If fortune is kind, and funding can be found, it could perhaps look at prairie conservation more expansively in this neck of the woods, but to start we are concerned with building a model to aid our daughters on our land, a model which others in our situation might consider. We hosted two field days/conversations with the group, the most recent about six weeks ago in early October. While our daughters have an interest in our projects they don’t live here, and they have their own very busy lives. When we first visited with them about estate planning and the future of our projects they were a bit overwhelmed, but they are both firmly behind this path to aid them in the future. I will leave further discussion of this topic for a later blog post; this will be a big part of our winter’s work, and there should be much more to report on in the future.

So, once again, a helluva year. Any year I am on the topside of the earth and can be out in the explosion of life that is the prairie is a helluva year. Any year that I can host others at the prairie is a helluva year. Any year that I can learn new things, see new things, meet new people and show love to those I see is a helluva year. While I have my dark days, usually in conjunction with health issues (as we age we find there are an amazing number of things that can go wrong with a body), I always keep the light before me. And the light is not at the end of a train tunnel, it is shining as a beacon in front of me, leading me forward. That light goes to the future, beckoning me, taking me to the next day, If I am fortunate, it will include sunny days on the prairie to spend with the coneflowers again.