Threading of the Prairie.

Faith.

Moments like these give me cause to believe I may be a man of faith. So begins a writing that may see the light of day …  since its being published depends on the beaming up of our internet. I’m happy to report that yesterday we were connected most of the day, which was the first time we’ve enjoyed a full day of service in what seems like weeks. “Months” might be more accurate, but I write as a man of forgiving faith.

Despite becoming on a first name basis with our designated service rep, Chad, we awake each morning wondering if life on our farm will reach beyond our small prairie. We are at the mercy apparently of a universe beyond our blue planet, as explained by Chad. Sun spots. And this: “If you can see the Northern Lights, forget the internet.” I haven’t seen them here on the farm, yet we still lack a worldly connection. So sun spots and Northern Lights are among the culprits. So, too, are tree limbs, rain and fog, and the other day, the talkative young man suggested we keep the modem out of the sunlight. We moved it from the top of the printer where we had anxiously monitored the status lights, which blink like a Dallas disco … all except for the little designated light of wonder, which barely and rarely comes to a full summer green.

Among the culprits of our outlandish internet issues is the sun … on the modem, spots out in the universe, and the cosmic rays producing Northern Lights!

Chad and I took a walk through the lawn that morning when he was here, and it was still early enough we collected a drenching dew on the toes of our boots. He studied the angle of the technological arrow protruding from the corner of our solarium and the distant tower, then eyed the tree line that had previously been deemed perfectly fine. “Leaves. Look at those leaves,” he said, pointing toward the tower. “I see interference.”

When the system was installed the sight-line was deemed as perfect. Back in the day he and another tech rep both considered the signal so strong they somehow toned it down, fearing perhaps that my iMac might explode from the overwhelming wealth of beamed, wireless data. A few weeks ago, on a rather frustrating Sunday morning just after returning from the BWCA … where the lack of technology was a blessing, I might add … the crisis line fellow took me through all sorts of technological guts to measure something he called “pings.” Making it simple for such a technological moron, he painted a picture for me of watering my garden when 53 percent of the water had  leaked from the hose before reaching the nozzle. “I’ll make a report to the office,” he generously offered.

Apparently his report was lost in the email … provided the company’s crisis center uses its own internet service to communicate between their offices. Since I’m a man of faith, this seems a logical possibility … sans sun spots, the Aurora Borealis, errant tree branches, a non-shaded modem, or that our nearest neighbor a mile and a half to the south baking a cherry pie.

So far, the bee balm in the prairie have escaped scrutiny.

I told Chad I would saw off those wayward limbs from three of the trees. “Don’t do the evergreen,” he interrupted. “I love evergreens.”

Ash, elm and basswood must offer more interference than spruce, which pleases me, for like Chad, I also love evergreens.

Meanwhile we “limp” along with our “smart” phones. We could probably survive our social media addictions and email with the phones, although they’re a bugger when you’re trying to read the morning papers. Yes, I do subscribe to the papers, so when the internet isn’t up, those cyber dollars reek of a bad investment. Rebecca does the majority of her office work here on the farm, and how she can manage her anger so well is beyond my limited faith.

For me it seems I’m always doing some sort of research. For example, yesterday I spent a good portion of my day trying to repair our rider mower by making Google searches for such things as owner manuals, mechanical repair sites and You Tube repair videos. Time was also spent seeking information on making stainless steel table tops for Rebecca’s commercial kitchen, and in looking for greeting card stands and other ideas of photographic marketing. Every day seems to bring new ideas ripe for necessary research, and since I lived in a small Minnesota town with a state-of-the-art fiber optic internet system, perhaps I arrived here on our little spot of prairie hopelessly spoiled. Like most who lived in the drive-past berg, the town’s system was certainly taken for granted.

Yes, fog is suspected!

Indeed, when we bought and moved to our farm here in the Minnesota Bump we didn’t even think to inquire about internet services. While I can’t speak for Rebecca, my assumption was that the entire state was equally blessed with broadband speed. We both were given an abrupt wakeup call, and in our first full year here we tried three services before we found one that was functional. It was owned locally by a middle aged fellow with severe physical limitations due to his many falls from his towers, and who basically relied on his sweet mother for the business side. His last tumble was rather seriously disabling, and more than he could handle pain-wise, and he simply wrote a letter to his customers saying that by the end of whatever month it was, he was shutting the system down.

Who could have guessed that his service was the best of the rest. This time we did a more thorough search. It came down to one area phone co-op with a rock-solid reputation and the Dish Network. Since we could “bundle” with Dish, we went that way. Their system was installed on a Tuesday, with the technician patting the iconic gray disc with pride while telling us our internet issues were certainly a thing of the past. On Thursday, less than two days from his paternal patting, the router began blinking. On Friday the lights went out all together. Calls were made to the company. On Tuesday, exactly one week later, that tech still had not returned to take care of the problem, so we called again and canceled the service.

The next day we contacted the local co-op, which is actually a multi-county co-op, to sign up for their wireless service, since they had not hardwired this portion of the county. We celebrated that night with a fine wine and a delicious dinner. Our internet issues were supposedly behind us. Oh, how my faith has been tested since. We were advised that they were one of the rural internet services being considered for a huge broadband grant within the state, and amazingly, a year later they were chosen. After another delicious dinner with celebratory wine, we began our latest wait for connecting with the world beyond our plat lines.

In the BWCA, technology wasn’t even a thought.

Then a letter arrived from the co-op admitting that their wireless system was severely inadequate. They offered to lower our monthly fee against a blindfold allowance out of the three-year contract we had signed. With great adherence to faith, we stuck with them and have since become ever closer to dear, talkative Chad.

And, come each early morning as the sun rises above the bluestem, I’ll turn on the system to watch the blinking beacons of communication. I’ve still not seen the Northern Lights, so I comfort my soul by watching our modem blink instead. Chad excitedly says the hard wiring in our half of the county has begun, starting in a small town six miles northeast of our farm. Instead of heading this way, however, the crews are spider-webbing across the former prairie toward the northwest ­— that top half of the Bump.

“You’ll get it,” he promises. “It might be late next summer or fall, and certainly by the following spring of ‘17. Once you have it, it’ll be beautiful.”

So, if you happen to have seen this writing, realize that for one blessed moment that single status light was beaming bright and beautifully green. And, that my friends, is the essence of my faith … a single tiny green light about the circumference of the cross section of a broken-in-half round toothpick.

Later this week I’ll saw off those errant limbs before kneeling on the prayer rug.

Life … from Fire.

Spring Winds.

As the recent Clean Up the River Environment (CURE) annual meeting was winding down, I had a conversation with a long time friend and farmer who had ambled up. “Like to say those are nice pictures,” he said, nodding toward the row of canvases on the wall. They’re not, just for the record.

He was referencing my Art of Erosion show that had been featured as a backdrop during the all-day event for the clean water advocacy group at the Maynard Event Center. His comment was not uncommon nor unexpected, for many find themselves equally astounded and disturbed by the natural beauty created by the wind and black dirt on the clean white snow. Which is precisely the reason behind focusing my camera on what is commonly called “snirt” here in the prairie, all taken along roadsides in three western Minnesota counties. This was the third hanging, with the fourth coming up this weekend, and that “bipolar” response between the beauty of the artful patterns and the ugliness of the wind-blown dirt has caused many to simply stare at the images.

When my friend faced this situation on his farm a generation ago, he sought to change his cropping practices … eventually turning his nearly 600 acres into a commodity crop organic operation.

“My dad told me when I first started farming many years ago that the key to controlling thistles and pigweeds was to keep the soil black,” he told me. “That first winter my ditch banks looked just like your pictures. That spring, before planting, I took my tractor and front end loader out and scraped the dirt out of the ditches and back into the fields. It was a harsh lesson and my field edges haven’t looked like these pictures since.”

He and his family, including his son and son-in-law, farm just under 600 acres in the midst of the “black desert” in Chippewa County.  Because we were in a conversation rather than a formal interview, he will remain nameless. Back when I was an editor of the country weekly in Clara City, he was the subject of several stories. He seemed to come up with interesting ideas, including once leaving his corn crop unharvested through the fall and winter because of high moisture content and incredibly high propane costs. In the end he figured he came out ahead since the spring price of corn is typically higher than he would have fetched in the fall, and he didn’t believe he had lost as much ear and kernel drop as he anticipated.

In February, winds whipped up the snow and dirt in Chippewa County … had there been more snow on the ground, more snirt. Note that this is a full color photography, not black and white.

This was before his son returned from a college basketball career with a wife and new born son in tow, and before his daughter’s husband joined the family business. Their collective decisions to join in created one of those “ah ha” moments with the realization they had to do something different if their farm was to survive. Land prices were escalating right along with both machinery and crop input costs. It was a time when neighbors were coming to grips with having to join the USDA rat race or hire an auctioneer. What they decided to do instead was go organic. “We didn’t know what we were doing,” he said. “But we learned. Right now we’re supporting three families, and we’ve put two kids through college with two more almost through, and none with a college loan. After this batch we have two more. We couldn’t have done it if we’d stayed conventional. We just couldn’t have afforded to keep going in that direction.”

In March, winds whipped up the unprotected soils north of Clara City … you can see the “skyline” in the background.

When they first went into organic production, and obviously before certification, he was reluctant to share his story. “I get in enough trouble around my neighbors,” he told me at the time. Those first years were tough, especially with the weed infiltrations. Going organic meant that the family had to learn not only how to farm, but also how to market. Financial survival meant the end of “plant and dump” marketing. Saying “no” to Round Up farming meant developing cultural farming practices practiced by a very few organic commodity crop farmers, who like his family, raises corn, soybeans and sunflowers.

They did find sources of information and peers, and eventually settled into very productive crop rotations that have virtually eliminated weed issues while helping with natural fertility. “Our soils are totally different now. We can hold moisture like we couldn’t before. It is more pliable and alive. This past harvest we had the best soybean crop ever, averaging almost 60 bushels per acre. We beat our next door neighbor who farms conventionally by 25 bushels an acre. The key is learning the right rotation. Like that real estate slogan, it’s ‘rotation, rotation, rotation.’”

One of the scenes from my Art of Erosion series, showing the effect caused by wind blown dirt.

He told of attending a recent meeting over the buffer strip controversy going on in Minnesota and found many of the comments made by those attending bordering on asinine. My word, not his. “One guy asked why we needed buffers to keep nitrates out of the rivers when there is more nitrogen in the air than in the soil. ‘What are they going to do,?’ he asked. ‘Make us buffer the sky?’ This was met with a round of laughter and cheers. Finally one guys stands and suggests that as farmers we need to do something, that continuing to drain and let the runoff ruin the rivers just wasn’t neighborly or sustainable. The place was completely silent, so I clapped, then another two or three others clapped. You should have seen the hatred of those toward us.” He paused. “For us, we maintain 100 foot buffers on either side of our ditches. not the 50 feet the governor (Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton) is proposing.”

Obviously going organic isn’t for everyone, yet he made some interesting points. One hundred foot buffers. Supporting three families, including two with college-aged children, on just under 600 acres of tillable land. Rotation, rotation, rotation. Pliable soils with good moisture holding capacity. Significantly reduced crop and machinery inputs. Learning how to both farm and market what is raised..

An example of an effective buffer strip in Chippewa County.

“This ‘snirt’ situation is getting worse each year around here,” he said, once again nodding toward the canvases. “I’ve taken pictures of it, too. Used to be you could count on having snow cover, which we haven’t had for the past couple of winters. We don’t fall till, so our soils are staying put. But as farmers we need to do something different, whether it’s leaving stalks in the field until spring or planting cover crops. Soils all around us have blown all winter, and with this dry spring the winds are picking up even more of it. Bottom line, we have to take better care of our soils.”

My goal with the Art of Erosion photographs was to spark conversations by showing the ugly beauty created by the snow and wind. Hopefully some of those conversations will lead to change. Our civilization is farming the last of the earth’s tillable soils, and once those soils are eroded by both wind or water, where will those farmers of future generations find resources to grow food? How will humans eat?

Many years ago a dear friend and fellow nature photographer, Greg Ryan, and I were invited by a nature loving Cajun friend to visit the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge near Hackberry, LA, late one afternoon. As the sun settled over the coastal wilderness, the Sabine came alive with gorgeous sounds, of which our naturalist did all he could to identify what we were hearing.

“There,” he would say, “alligator!”

After awhile, he simply gave up. Herons, alligators, frogs and all the rest turned the Sabine into an audio jungle as darkness settled over the grassy wilderness, so much so that ever since I’ve used this as the high water experience for wilderness audio moments.

By clicking on an arrow at the extreme right corner, you can “blow up” this great image taken by Rebecca to better see the number of geese inside the clouds.

Since moving to our farm, stepping out onto the porch roof or into the yard at night this time of year is a near equal. No, we don’t have alligators nor herons, nor many of the hundreds of other nocturnal denizens that created such an euphonic chorus on that humid night in the Delta, but we have our geese. Thousands of them. Just over the hills to the east and north of us, thanks to a couple of wetland sloughs neighboring farmers have generously not drained. This time of year a third “ghost” of a wetland is also found just to the west of us.

In the late afternoon sun we can watch as we cook dinner as skeins of geese ease from the sky down to the temporary lake. This means we’re basically surrounded by various species of geese and ducks that follow the Flyway and make the many wetlands all around us, as well as the nearby National Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge and Big Stone Lake, stopping off places en route to permanent homes far north of us. Of course, some of the geese are now pairing up and claiming portions of the smaller wetlands for nesting sites, but the majority are just passing through.

The darkened “island” is actually made of congregated geese.

Although we can hear and see the nearly constant population of geese during daylight hours, our trees are just as likely to serve as temporary hosts to the clouds of murmurating blackbirds. Having a murmuration suddenly descend onto the farmyard isn’t unlike hearing a huge soccer or football stadium suddenly fill of fans. When one landed the other day, I rushed inside to catch the attention of Dale Pederson, who has been here finishing his work on our Taj Magarage. We both stepped outside just to listen for a moment, both of us smiling in appreciation.

Yet, it’s at night when the sounds of the geese ratchet to decibels not unlike that night in the Sabine. Though not nearly as varied and exotic, this sound is nearly as rich in spirit and verve. Many nights we will stand outside just to listen to the stereophonic chorus that surrounds us. “We live here,” one of us will say. We say that a lot, especially this time of year. We both take pictures, and are still hoping for a really good one. Rebecca’s image into the sun and cloud banks the other night was incredible, for once lightened just a little, the skies were literally full of flying geese. This morning, like many mornings here on our farm, clouds of geese circled over the wetland in the rising sun just to the east of us. We both had our cameras out taking pictures, and I even sneaked one in of her looking out our bedroom window.

You can see the dots of flying geese in the sky past Rebecca as she looks through the window.

Yes, there were hundreds of arcs and vees above in the sky, but inside the wetland an entire darkened island contained of thousands of geese. So dense that only the occasional movement of a head gave witness that this was an island of life, of birds, rather than some dense  “jungle” of aquatic prairie plants. And, of course, there was the sound. Though not as loud as it can be after dark, the songs were still amazing. As we look around in the trees and shrubs around the farm we can identify many different song and prairie birds we know are simply passing through. We see them on the feeders, too, and secretly wish some would stick around for awhile. We just took several moments to watch a bald eagle that had landed in the tall cottonwood on the corner of our grove. Eagles, though still a treat to see, are actually fairly common in our area close to Big Stone Lake and the Minnesota River. We often take a drive through the Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge, and the other night as the sun was setting, Rebecca excitedly shouted for me to stop. Over one of the beautiful outcrops she noticed five bald eagles in a tree, silhouetted by a beautiful, red-tinted sky.

Above the trees looking south from our deck.

Spring is a lovely time on our farm. Yes, we have varied and usually beautiful sunrises and sunsets throughout the seasons, and many nights we stare through our plate-glass window in the kitchen as we sip on a glass of wine and make our dinner as the sun wanes in the west. Soon the acrobatic swallows will arrive, along with the thrashers and other birds from the annual migrations. Come fall the geese will return, but the occasional reports of the sporting shotguns offer interruptions of silence unknown in the spring. Yes, this is the season when our neighboring wetlands come to life visually and audibly. It’s spring, and a lovely time here on our farm.

Yes, we live here.