Weaning cows

I feel sorry for our cows today. They calves have been taken away. Being a mom myself, I understand how uncomfortable the cows are with this new situation.
But, having perused some old farm equipment catalogs, the separation method definitely beats having the calves wear sharp muzzles. They would allow the calves to eat grass, but the sharp points would hurt the cow every time the calf wanted to drink. So the poor cow would have to kick away the calf. But both mother and calf would WANT the calf to drink, and they would try again with the same painful results.

We finally got some rain this week. about 2.5 inches on Tuesday and a little more later in the week. It was just enough to bring out mosquitoes. Amazingly we have not been bothered by bugs all summer. One of the benefits of the dry cool weather.

Kavin Bailey from Heartland Conservation is still working away at our woody invaders out at the prairie. It is really starting to open up out there. YEAH!

Woody Brush Removal

This spring, Dad and I signed up for and received a grant from the Minnesota DNR for woody brush removal. It is part of the Landowner Incentive Program (or LIP). For us to keep a true native prairie, we need to keep brush and trees out. It provides financial help and expert advice on how to keep our prairie - a prairie - and not let it turn into woods.

No matter how much I like trees shading my house, they do not belong on the prairie. Over the years and through the centuries, the boundaries between forrest and prairie would shift... brush and trees would grown and spread slowly into prairie territory. Then fires would beat back the trees and allow the prairie to take over again. Once white settlement came and divided the prairie into smaller and smaller pieces by building roads and tilling the soil, the major fires ended. No more would fire restore vast acres of prairie.

So those of us blessed with the responsibility of caring for a tiny piece of prairie do our best to maintain the native species. The fires we have had the last 2 years are a major part of that management. The burns were very successful in that the prairie species are thriving.

UNFORTUNATELY, the quaking aspen trees increase after fire. Quaking aspen, and to some degree cottonwood trees are spread by cloning. That is they send out baby plants from thier roots. The quaking aspen rarely grows from seed. Each tree is either male or female, and most large stands are all the same gender - in fact they are the same plant. There is a stand of quaking aspen in Utah that is considered to be the largest and oldest organism in North America. Each tree is part of the same plant and is genetically identical.

That brings us back to our problem. The fires killed some of the quaking aspen and damaged others, but before they died, the roots got the message to grow more trees ASAP while there was still nutrients available in the roots. And grow they did. We have 3 foot aspen trees all over the place! The cottonwoods spread too.

What to do? Repeated burns may help, but we can't burn every year... cutting the tree causes the same "grow now!" message to get sent to the roots...

So, we enlisted the help of the Minnesota DNR and Heartland Conservation Services and are following the recommended treatment. Heartland is chemically spot treating the little shoots. They are using 2 different approaches. Where the shoots are farther apart, each little tree is getting an individual dab of poison at its base. The ones that are packed in close together are getting 'wiped' with a poison filled custom weed wipe. It is a PVC pipe wrapped in canvas. The pipe has small holes to let the poison soak into the canvas. A valve controls the air flowing into the pipe, which controls how much poison gets to the canvas. It does not drip onto the ground, but keeps enough liquid on the canvas, to apply to the leaves of the tiny trees.

This fall, we will "girdle" the larger trees. Girdling involves stripping the bark all the way around the tree. The strip only needs to be a few inches wide, but it has to go all the way around. This will kill the trees without telling them. That is this fall, the nutrients will still flow through the inside of the tree to the roots, but in the spring, the water and nutrients won't be able to flow up the bark to the leaves.

We appreciate the DNR for their assistance with this project.

Yellow days on the prairie

We took a quick trip to the prairie tonight and it is really yellow. The goldenrod, stiff sunflowers and maximillian sunflowers are the dominant flowers. Plus liatris aspera, silky aster and monarda togive a little purple splash.

The grass on the new prairie is taller than the jeep. It was like driving through a forest as the sunlight barely reached the windows as we drove in.

My nose and eyes are itching from the ragweed pollen. The plain, ugly, green plant produces billions of grains of pollen that float on the wind to cause hay fever in many people - including me. The poor goldenrod often gets blamed for hay fever. Its showy flowers are full of heavy yellow pollen. But the pollen is too heavy to float on the wind. All goldenrods depend on insects to carry the pollen from flower to flower.

Chokecherries

There is a bumper crop of chokecherries this year. I picked enough berries off of the tree in my yard to make 2 batches of juice. There are many more on the tree, I just picked the ones I could reach easily. I managed to boil them down and press out the juice, then add LOTS of sugar and a little Certo to the juice and boil it into jelly.
I had never done the juice part before, Mom always made the juice and I sometimes helped with the jelly. It would have been more fun with her, but it went OK. Poppy helped me find the recipes and all the supplies were still in the basement. I can handle the Hot Water Bath method of canning. We'll see if I get bold enough to take out the pressure canner this summer to preserve beans. That is a much harder process.

We planted a tree in the yard yesterday. It took us 3 days to dig the hole. I chose a spot where another tree once stood, so of course, we hit massive roots. Poppy sharpened his big chisels and brought them over. Tom and I took turns chopping the roots over several evenings. At last, the hole was big enough and the autumn blaze maple is in the ground. Sophie picked it out when we visited Morning Sky Greenery the week before.

Purple phase

The prairie has its purple robe on. Purple prairie clover, leadplant, and wild bergamot are the most prominent flowers right now and they are all purple. There are a few yellows in the mix with the early and stiff sunflowers, a few golden rods throughout and the two yellow coneflowers on the new prairie. These pictures were all taken on the original prairie. It is so beautiful after the burn this spring.

Turtle nest

When we parked the jeep on the prairie last night, I noticed a hole right next to the road. Poppy thought he saw sea shells around the edges. In the past, we have found small bones near fox dens, but sea shells would be something very new. Upon further investigation, the small white things looked more like little curls of plastic. Kind of like what you get when you peel a label off a soda bottle. I also found a ping pong ball - but it had something in it. It had a small dry rattly sound when I shook it. Oh wait - that does not make sense either... Then we realized - it had to have been a turtle nest that had been discovered by a predator. The little white things were the egg shells and the ping pong ball was a dead egg.

Poor turtles - but that is how it goes. Bad for turtles, good for the predator.

2 new species discovered!

I had not been out to the prairie for a while, so it was fun to see what was blooming. I was really excited to find 2 new plants! On the new prairie, I found Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium). This is growing from some of the seeds I selected for the plantings. YEAH!!

Even more exciting for me was the Spiderwort (Tradescantia) I found growing in a low area on the old prairie. I was wandering around looking for sweetgrass and found the spiderwort buds. It should bloom in a few days. I have never seen it on our prairie before, but recognize it from working in the greenhouse. It is amazing how much more I can see growing after the burn this spring.

Blooming on the "new" prairie: Bergamot, Showy tick trefoil (lots more this year in the burn area), gray headed coneflower, long-headed coneflower, echinacea, hoary vervain, white and purple prairie clover, rattlesnake master, yarrow, milkweed, early sunflower, and mountain mint. The grasses seeding are: canada wild rye, side oats gamma, and VERY TALL big bluestem.

On the "Old" prairie: Surf pea, germander, echinacea, lead plant, black eyed susan, goldenrod (in bud), Delphinium, showy tick trefoil, tradescantia, milkweed (common, swamp, and whorled), wild 4 o'clock, wolfberries, coreopsis, mountain mint, white prairie clover, (the purple is only blooming on the "new" prairie), and the beautiful native thistles.

The Chokecherries are ripe. I don't think I'll be making any jelly this year. But I did make a few jars of raspberry jam.

Our little corn fields do not look very good this year. We have 2 fields planted with corn for the deer and pheasants to eat. We did not get them tended this year and the weeds are taking over. We do plant a little sweet corn for ourselves. Hopefully some of it will fight through the weeds, escape the raccoons and deer, and make its way to our dinner table and freezer.