This is a small prairie, less than 1 acre, that faces southwest, at the top of our southwestern bluff. These photos were taken in 2003 and 2004. Looking back into the prairie. It’s separated from Big View Prairie by a woods of large oaks and birches. At one time it was probably part of Big […]
Here are photos and stories of how the prairie is changing, by year: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2000/2001 This shows the point before and after clearing away the birches which were invading up […]
When surveyors were marking the townships on this land in 1852 one of them described the land as “mostly covered with scattering black, burr and white oak, aspen timber. Surface nearly covered with prairie grass” Our land still has remnants of this prairie/savanna landscape. We have overgrown savannas and bluff prairies, wet prairies and sedge […]
I’ve been putting information and photos of my insect finds on our new blog: Bugfolks.com. It’s nice to have a place to put pictures where people who are interested in insects will see them. I’ve found some wonderful bugs in the last week, so go check it out! And please join us at Bugfolks if […]
I haven’t done a blog entry in a long time because I haven’t been taking many pictures. It’s been raining nearly every day and I’ve been taking some very wet walks.
Last week we still had a trace of winter left – 6 inches of snow on Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon it was melting from the fields, and there were only a few inches left on the driveway.
We didn’t get much snow after all – just enough to dust the driveway and the open fields. Now that we have two weather stations I’m more aware of the differences between the weather conditions at the tops and the bottoms of the bluffs. There’s not much snow at the bottom of the valley – […]
This is the time of year when I collect the seeds for our winter plantings. This year I’m collecting for the 19 acre prairie planting – the middle third of Western Prairie – and also for a large wetland area that we’ve been clearing and spraying. On one of my collecting trips last week I […]
This was another sunny week – it still feels like a treat to see the sun.
Now that the end of the summer is coming, it’s seed collecting time. I collected Prairie Brome on the Cat’s Paw Prairie – our first real harvest from our planted prairies. And I collected some seeds from the roadsides. Danny and Cathy, our neighbors from down the road, said that I could visit their prairies […]