Prairie pride
The Allen Family farmhouse and prairie strip.
In the NYTimes, this article (gift link, so read it free) highlights the growth in replanted pieces of farmland across the middle of the United States.
The restored swaths of land are called prairie strips, and they are part of a growing movement to reduce the environmental harms of farming and help draw down greenhouse gas emissions, while giving fauna a much-needed boost and helping to restore the land.
Last month, when I visited Illinois, I spent an afternoon with my Aunt Ginger and Uncle Stoddard at their farm in Cortland. Stoddard, my cousin Tom, and I walked outside for an hour, talking about the chicken coop and pigeon roost, the concord grapes, the black walnut and other trees Stoddard has planted over 50 years, and the strip of wildflowers and native grasses that he put between the house and the corn field to the east. You can clearly see Stoddard’s prairie strip in the satellite image above.
As he identified the cone flowers and bluestem grass, pointed to a butterfly that landed nearby, and demonstrated how to crush a seedpod and scatter seeds, he was visibly proud of this strip of life. I knew he would be—he’s been teaching me about flowers and trees for more than half my life. In 2002, I wrote this on my blog:
Back on the highway, I frequently tried to snap pictures of the swatches of wildflower color that burst into my vision as I sped along. The red poppies were my favorite, but the fields of yellow or purple or white were pleasant, too. These wildflowers reminded me of my Uncle Stoddard Allen, who loves to plant flowers and trees. When I worked with him on the farm 10 years ago, my favorite task was to sprinkle wildflower seeds among the fields of prairie grass. Uncle Stoddard, the husband of my mother’s sister, Ginger, is the one who arrested Uncle John Zuiker when he chained himself to a condemned tree at Northern Illinois University, where Stoddard was a policeman. Uncle John these days takes care of trees for Fairfax County in Virginia.
Stoddard is still inspiring me. (Uncle John is retired from the tree work, but he’s the one who was in Raleigh last week for bluegrass.) Behind my own house, in view from the bedroom window, is my own patch of wildflowers, planted with seed from Garrett Wildflower Seed Farm (a North Carolina company). This week, I’ll be working on a strip of land for yellow Indiangrass.
In another sign of the times, the field to north of the Allen house, land once owned by Stoddard’s parents, is now a solar farm (look again at that photo above).
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© Anton Zuiker