Spice and I went out to have a work day at The Place, the first time we have been out there since the grass has greened up this spring.
We really weren’t sure what we were going to see when we got out there, but we were both surprised to see what we did. Lots and LOTS of dead grass.
It’s spring, and everything around The Place is green… and our property’s grass looks dead as a doornail. What gives?
All of the pastures around us with Red Fescue grass were as green as green can be, whereas our place was (except in small places) brown and dead. What the heck is going on here?
Well, fear not prepper friends, all this dead grass is intentional.
Last fall, after the grass went dormant, we had our local conservation agent kill all of our “cold season” grasses around the cabin, on the road over to the long clearing and in the long clearing it’s self.
There is a method to our madness… we are working to strengthen our big clearing’s remaining prairie remnant. It’s one of the few tall grass prairie remnants in our part of the state, and it was struggling to survive against the Red Fescue and other introduced grasses that are grown here for livestock grazing.
Why on Earth, you might ask, are we doing this? How are we paying for it? Why bother?
By restoring native plants and the other ongoing projects we have at The Place, we are building a better environment for wildlife and increasing species diversification. (And the Conservation Agent did it for free. We’d asked him in to consult about improving our woods, and he was excited about the prairie remnant and suggested giving it an advantage over the invasives with this one-time spraying.)
Nobody can accuse us of being tree hugers in this project, since another part of what we did last fall was to have a giant “brush hog on steroids” come in and turn over 150 trees into toothpicks, leaving a path of destruction that resembled nothing more than Tokyo after a Godzilla party.
But… why kill all this grass?
No, it’s in our own vested interest to do this on our place, not only because it’s a cool thing to do, but it also is increasing the amount of wildlife that lives around us. That’s kind of a big deal if we ever need to hunt as a major part of our food source.
An additional side effect is that by working with the local conservation agent, he’s monitoring the progress of the place by stopping by from time to time and checking up on things… which discourages trespassers and vandals from tearing things up, and it also discourages druggies from setting up shop on our land. Plus, he was able to point out some other invasive species that were gaining a toehold so we could remove them before they did ecological damage.
We knew that the spray would kill the grass we didn’t want and that the grass we did want would come up later, but it was still a very stark and eye-opening experience seeing it first hand. Additionally, it’s also a bit humorous to see a few places that the guy missed… not hard to tell, because they are green and need mowed.
Gee, I wonder where the guy missed spraying?
As far as how we paid for it, it was partially funded by a generous grant from the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF). The NWTF is a private, not-for-profit organization that supports efforts such as this one that create and improve wild turkey habitat. We appreciate their help!
We will keep you updated on the progress of this project.
If you want a place that will sustain traditional homesteading … there’s just no substitute for keeping the traditional ecology. That takes some effort these days.
