Category Archives: Life Science
Conservation Crowdsourced
Back in the 1940s the US Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) was called the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) and as a young beginning farmer my dad was using that as an information source. For example, we’ve got … Continue reading
Place-Based Stacked Experiences
That’s a weird title! It’s trying to communicate that some places seem to host multiple experiences that don’t seem to be related. But, sometimes these “coincidences” have a common thread, other than sharing a specific location. This picture taken in … Continue reading
Battling Brome
Prairie restoration programs often involve attempts to eradicate or at least limit smooth brome. This invasive, non-native, cool season grass is a vigorous sod-maker that usually expands to turn a pasture into essentially a monoculture. I understand why the restoration … Continue reading
Extraction, Restoration, or Regenerative Agriculture
We’re glad that we live in a neighborhood of diversified farming operations. Naturally, the Kanaranzi Creek valley dictates that grazing and livestock are one way for the pastures to pay their way. The corn and beans on the surrounding uplands … Continue reading
Tracing Native Prairie
Big bluestem, aka turkey foot, is a warm season grass that’s pretty easy to identify in a native prairie. That’s because it ripens to a distinctive purple-red color this time of year. And, the top has a shape like a … Continue reading
Mother Trees on the Prairie
There’s a growing body of scientific evidence that trees share information, warning their neighbors about danger and nurturing nearby small trees. If you Google “trees communicating” you can get some notion of the traction that this idea is getting. Trees … Continue reading
Oxbow Mystery
OXBOW MYSTERY When a channel cuts through the steep bank in a meander loop there’s a distinctive landform produced called an “oxbow”. This blog has a number of posts describing our oxbow because it’s a cool complex of unique small … Continue reading
Weeds and Feed: Learning from a Prairie Hill
About ten years ago, a part of a west-facing hill was fenced off (“exclusion”) from the rest of the pasture because it had a remnant prairie with lots of native plants. This year the exclusion was added back into the … Continue reading
Animals in the Oxbow
Last week I saw this turtle in the Creek. Usually we see snapping turtles (and have had some exciting family adventures with them!), but this one is different. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen one like this before. It’s … Continue reading
Rural Fall
We had about two inches of snow the other night, but it blew into drifts. Several weeks ago, we had our first accumulating snow that stayed on the level. I had forgotten how much traffic is recorded in a few … Continue reading
