This post will be exclusively devoted to what might happen down the road, meaning down the road after I am gone. While it will be specific to my home farm, the 587 acres where I grew up, and which houses the restorations and native prairies that this blog documents, it also contains the same ideas and processes that Linda and I are talking about regarding the 420 acres of native grass 35 miles east of here near the Minnesota border that are in a conservation grazing system she manages with about 90-100 cows. And, perhaps it may even include the 54 acres where we live, about halfway between, which has a creek bottom pasture, a little native grass and some woods by the creek. This is not a lot of land in comparison to a full time farming or ranching operation, but 1000 acres is still significant and worthy of thought and care. This is the legacy we are leaving to our daughters, their children and further descendants, and really to the world. We now have permanent easements on all the native and restored prairies, about 720 acres, which is good, but who cares for it 20, 50, or even 250 years from now? Who makes sure the maximum ecosystem services and benefits will accrue to our family and to society? Can we manage from the grave, and do we want to?

Well, I think it’s getting clear we’re damn sure going to try. We’ve made a decent start at it, talking to a lot of people: lawyers, our accountant, philanthropy professionals at a couple nonprofits, and most importantly in my mind, a group of people with ties of various sorts to the conservation world, who I may describe another time. Other than the conservation/ecosystem services angle, the other things they all have in common is that they are entranced by prairies, that they are a lot younger than us, mostly about our two daughters ages, that they are both smart and motivated, that they have ties to this area making them likely to continue to live within a couple hundred miles of us, and that we respect and treasure our relationships with all of them greatly already. As I wrote in a recent post, the best, most logical legal structure will be worthless without good people behind it, but good people will be able to do wonderful things with an imperfect structure.

We do not plan to saddle them with a crappy structure, however, and the main topic of this post is the goals we want to accomplish when we create that structure. When I say “manage from the grave” I don’t mean micromanaging specific actions. Life is on fire; it changes both incrementally and in leaps. The whole purpose of finding good people is to have the ability to respond to those changes and ride forward to a better future when we are no longer here. What Linda and I can do to help that is to inform them about what we have done, the results we have gotten, both good and bad, and the outcomes we think are possible and desirable. It will include some specific management concerns and techniques we feel are integral to achieving those outcomes. Then, when we are gone, or just unable to be active participants in this, others can take over. But for now, in this post, we start with a list of goals. These are my goals as I define them now. They are not yet projected to be in the bylaws of an entity or a trust, but more of a first iteration of a learning process that can add, subtract, multiply or divide as seems best. Here goes:

Goal #1. To manage the land to maximize the ecosystem services and societal good that will be derived from it. This is the goal that dominates everything else. However, even this idealism is complicated. What services, where, and how does one “maximize” them? I’ve given the laundry list many times before in blog posts: Wildlife habitat, pollinator habitat, water quality enhancement, carbon sequestration, erosion control and recreational land for everything from birdwatching to bird hunting to bird painting. A person can parse this down to finer distinctions and different terminology depending upon the author’s preference and the audience’s needs. For my farm, I can add a couple other important benefits as most of this is still a working farm: raising responsible beef and crops. We are definitely planning to raise food on almost every acre while still fulfilling our goals in all the other ecosystem services, Ultimately society needs it all. We will, however, add some specific items which fit within the rubric of ecosystem services:

1. Emphasize habitat composition and management with the Dakota skipper butterfly in mind. Since we have an endangered species that has been found here, we have and will continue to manage to enhance and expand habitat for skippers.
2. Attempt to aide the long term conservation of the native prairie plants, particularly the forbs/wildflowers that are found in my native prairies and other native prairies in this area. While none of the plants native to my prairies are endangered, I firmly believe that the local genetics, the local phenotypes that we see, are threatened by existing pasture management, and it should be important to establish and augment populations of as many species as possible by increasing populations and bringing in seed and plants from the surrounding area to provide a larger genetic pool.
3. To use this land and these plant populations as a sort of “living seed bank” which will be available to the larger conservation community, perhaps in conjunction with a traditional seed bank, both specific to this geographic/climatic region.
4. To use this farm, these 587 acres, as an educational hub, whether for conservation professionals, individuals involved in restorations, graduate students who might use the land for research projects, school groups, or the local community. It’s all good.
5. To consciously promote this farm as a site investigating the integration of farming and wildland/wildlife/native plant conservation.

Goal #2: We want to have the land continue in our family so our grandchildren’s grandchildren can continue to enjoy and perhaps engage in this work. This doesn’t preclude other ownership of some of the acres, such as creating a nonprofit based around these ideas which owns some or all of the land, or a formal collaboration with another organization such as South Dakota State University in a joint ownership, but it does put constraints upon other paths. As of now, we are not planning to donate the farm to any charity and then walk away, nor would we consider selling land to a for profit person or entity, no matter how well meaning their goals.

Goal #3: We want to create a management framework for the future which does not place undue burdens upon our daughters who have busy lives hundreds of miles away. Should they, their children, or even their more distant progeny wish to actively manage this down the road somewhere we need to find a way to leave that possibility open, but the goal is to create a structure able to continue effective management without the need for them to devote too much time or money. The work should be self-sustaining.

Goal #4: Once the first three goals are taken care of, any unallocated income not needed as working capital can be distributed to our heirs.

There’s my first list. I doubt it will be my last. Linda and our daughters will undoubtedly have other ideas, as may some of our advisors. As I said earlier, life is on fire, and undoubtedly there are problems and possibilities down the road that I do not envision which could change this, and we need to have mechanisms to do that. I feel a personal responsibility here, however, to make the best start that I can. This is the land my grandfather homesteaded, that my father beat himself up to hold on to and manage. This is the land I worked on and wandered in that contributed to the person I am today.

And the person I am today will be 70 soon, with enough existing and potential health issues to need both fingers and toes to count. I will not be any smarter, healthier, more energetic or more active in the future than I am today. We have responsibilities to our descendants, but also to society as a whole. We are citizens of the world, and I don’t shy away from that thought. We were lucky enough to be able to acquire and steward this land and we plan to do the best we can to fulfill those responsibilities. There are perpetual easements on over 300 acres of the 587 acres, on the native prairies and restorations (there are also easements on 410 of the 420 acres of native grass that Linda stewards). This should provide opportunities for others to enjoy and benefit from our efforts far into the future. This is a just the beginning of the work we need to do to provide the best chance for those descendants and others who may have an interest to immerse themselves in our prairies 20 or 50 or 250 years from now. One has to start somewhere, however, and the next steps await. We need to start creating the documents that flesh out a legal structure to help these efforts. I hope there is another blog post this winter discussing those next steps as they occurred. What was it that Buzz Lightyear said in Toy Story? “To Infinity and Beyond!!!!”