To keep with the plan of enhancing wildflower populations, with the goal of creating an area for others to use as a seed bank to collect from for their own use, I have used the open winter to spread more seed.

With apologies to Hemingway I call this picture “The Old Man and the Seed” as behind me is 20 bags of seed. A couple are from my gathering days last year, but most were purchased from Milborn Seed, the local purveyor. Jason Tronbak, my contact there, had given me a list of all their native species with a South Dakota, North Dakota or Minnesota origin, and I purchased a group that fit my needs as presumably locally adapted seed. Though I had spread a lot of seed over much of 30 acres that were burned by my friend, Ben Lardy, last fall, mostly seed gathered by me and by Levi Waddell. a neighbor, I haven’t wanted to miss the opportunity that the excellent burn would give me to get seed down to black soil. Thus I purchased more seed, and yesterday I mixed up batches of 7-12 species mixtures for different areas that I had a particular desire to enhance. Here’s what the area looked like yesterday.

As you can see, there’s a little snow, only showing some of the burned ground, but nothing that impacted my getting around the site. Seeding in March is an ideal situation: the winter birds have very little time to eat the seed you fling out, you have the opportunity to access seeds from vendors that was harvested in 2023, rather than 2022 (which is what you get if you purchase seed in October), and best of all, the seeds have the opportunity to be stratified, immersed in the cold, damp period they need to overcome dormancy so they are prepared to burst forth as the weather warms. The above pictures were taken late afternoon yesterday. Here is what it looks like outside our house today at 1:00 PM.

We are 3″ into what is supposed to be 12-18″ of snow today and tomorrow. This means the seed spread yesterday, and earlier this month will be well moistened and stratified by the time the weather and soils warm up sufficiently six weeks from now. My daughter, Diane, texted how exciting it will be to see what comes up in May. That sounds pretty optimistic to me, but it should be possible to know if plants we find are from this winter’s seeding as I spread almost all the seed in areas which don’t have those species, and concentrated some of the seed along the edges of the burn where it will be easy to survey and identify anything new.

Here’s a map of the quarter section that has 120 acres restored prairie.

Though my hands are too shaky (as well as my editing and drawing skills) to make an exact representation of the seeding that I did, here’s an approximate representation. Zone 1, the blue oblong in the lower left, is an area of quite xeric, gravelly soil south and east of our old gravel pit. It has good diversity, but lacks some of the wildflowers in similar soils to the north and east. Thus, I put together a mix adapted to those soils with a few missing species as well as a couple others it already had.

1. Standing milkvetch (Astragalus adsurgens)
2. Pasqueflower (Anemone patens)
3. Hoary vervain (Verbena stricta)
4. Purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea)
5. Textile onion (Allium textile)
6. Alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii)
7. Western wallflower (Erysimum asperum)
8. White penstemon (Penstemon albidus)

The blue area with the 2 in it is an area of slightly better soil, a dry mesic environment, which is one of the areas that got the full complement of seed from the original seeding by the Day County Conservation District, and has had much less gathered seed spread the last few years. This is an area that I particularly wish to enhance, so much of it received additional gathered seed last November, and was spread yesterday with:

1. Rough blazingstar (Liatris aspera)
2. Prairie onion (Allium stellatum)
3. Hoary vervain (Verbena stricta)
4. Maximillian sunflower (Helianthus maximillianii)
5. Purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea)
6. Wild rose (Rosa arkansana)
7. Thimbleweed (Anemone cylindrica)
8. Leadplant (Amorpha canescens)

Later this spring this is also an area where I hope to transplant perhaps 100 of the seedling plugs being grown for me at SDSU.

The blue zone with the 3 is around the base of a highly diverse hill, plus a draw extending uphill to the south. The combination of competition from the grasses originally planted and herbicide treatments for some very dense thistle patches has caused less diversity in these richer soils. Thus, I am hitting this area pretty hard with seed. In addition to last fall’s seeding I have spread the following this March:

1. Canada milkvetch (Astragalus canadensis)
2. Mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum)
3. Rough blazing star (Liatris aspera)
4. Meadow blazing star (Liatris ligustylis)
5. Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis)
6. Rattlesnake root (Prenanthes racemosa)
7. New England aster (Symphyotricum novae-anglia)
8. Wild Rose (Rosa arkansana)
9. Maximilllian sunflower (Helianthus maximillianii)
10. Purple meadow rue (Thalictrum dasycarpum)
11. False sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides)
12. Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis)
13. Porcupine grass (Heterostipa spartea)

Finally, there is a small area circled in blue with a 4 inside on the map on the south side of the pasture that was not burned last fall. If fortune is kind this year it will be burned in April and be overseeded with a mix approximating the mesic mix above, probably including a few more species. Over the next two days while we are kept inside by the weather I plan to get my remaining seed that I have saved for that area in a large container with a soil medium to stratify for a month so that there is a better chance of immediate germination should the burn occur. If we are unable to accomplish a burn I will likely spread it over more of the mesic areas which were burned. And if the forecast is correct that will likely be the end of the March seeding and the rest will have to wait until spring returns. If we are fortunate some of these areas will go from 15-20 species of forbs to 30-40 species from the various seed additions of last fall and this winter.

Returning to the topic of the restoration as a seed bank, I have a bit of an existential dilemma. What if no one is interested in using the property to gather seed? While I believe that Ben and Levi will be interested, whether governmental employees and nonprofit types are or not, and that really is good enough for me, I feel it worthwhile to consider this. What is the downside?

What I am trying to do is to build a restoration which is endowed with what might seem an unnaturally high population of a large number of forbs, of wildflowers. Is there really a downside??? Actually, I can think of a couple things. First, these fields, at least 140 acres, and perhaps 200 acres eventually, will also be grazed. Grazing will be integral to their management. The grazing, however, will be subservient to the seed bank. On the one hand, not all wildflowers are loved by cattle. Even diehard prairie loving grazers might balk at the group of plants that are poisonous, such as larkspur and locoweed, and other plants such as the sages, the Ratibida coneflowers and the goldenrods which are not loved by cattle. Grazing will also be limited by plants on the other end of the spectrum. Many wildflowers are cow candy, and I will have to limit grazing to allow those plants to make seed for us to gather. The other disadvantage is all mine: it will take a lot of money and a lot of work to achieve what I envision. It already has, and I am far from done.

But what a glorious journey to be on! How can a physically limited, boring old farmer like me have any more fun than this? Grandkids, I answer myself. But I will not neglect my grandchildren, and am not neglecting them even as I spread seed in the snow. This is a legacy for them and their children as well. I have visions of them coming 30-50 years from now with their children to learn and be amazed by the life that can grow in those hills. For me this is a path to transcendence. I can transcend my physical limitations. I can transcend the challenges of my damaged body. Hell, I can transcend this lifetime, with this project being the gift I give to the future. Yesterday I was out there in my parka flinging bits of life over those barren hills, snot dripping out of my nose in the cold air, putting my shoulder into the frigid wind as I turned my head away – and my heart was singing.