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.

Choking the Dance.

Overnight our prairie changed. Apparently while we were snuggled warmly beneath a pile of quilts, a cold, blustery wind rolling like a freight train across land left a ridge of snow dunes and snirt along the fringe of our prairie from our neighbor’s bare-plowed field. Deep, two to three foot drifts were caught by the prairie grasses.

Our snirt dune, and the adjacent field that was so generous.

Wind is a significant part of living here, and accounts of wind seem to harass prairie writers as fog does in the novels of London. You don’t have to read too many accounts from the early settlers of the prairie to read of how they gained such a hatred of the wind. Some wrote accounts of losing their minds from the constant wail of the wind. While it is difficult to say how many of us “modern” prairie inhabitants are so afflicted, there will likely (or should) be some farmers concerned enough about the dirt being blown from their fields to do something about it. While we’ll happily take what they’re offering, for it’s free to us, the legacy they’re allowing to blow away puts their finances at peril on the short term, and humanity’s ability to survive at greater risk in the long term.

Yes, the wind is part of the prairie. With each windbreak cut, dozed and burned, and with every spare inch of sod turned into commodity cropland, we lose rather than commune with the wind. Little has changed in the natural forces over those years except for the treatment of the prairie soils we were so blessed with after the last glacier. We have ripped it open, ditched it to drain the water from the wetlands before we laid tile to empty soil moisture for earlier planting. Ninety-nine percent of it. Now a more recent generation of farmers, heaped under high production and equipment costs and land prices, are working to convert more land into crops, and to re-tile with more “efficient” pattern tiling. Yet, the wind still blows, and with it, the product of their decisions … the soil on which they farm.

We can almost guarantee these constants will not change: The wind is going to blow, winds that are often harsh and constant; and with it, soils that become roadside and ditch borne dirt.

Learning of the harshness of prairie winds has been a revelation. My first 20 some years of living in the Minnesota prairie was on the edge of a small prairie town. We joked that if we wanted to feel urban we could simply look through the front windows where a picturesque postcard scene of tranquility came from an overhanging canopy of mature trees and older, comfortable looking houses. Across the room, though, the view was of the federal version of Hawk Creek and the prairie beyond. It was, in our minds at the time, a perfect collision of town and country. We did notice a wind, especially just before a blizzard when it seemed to reside above the roof tops in a distant roar. You could hear it, and watch as the tops of the trees waved their naked branches, but you couldn’t feel it. With non-blizzard winds, there were just too many houses and, yes, urbanity, to feel the full force of a prairie wind.

Joe Pye found the snirt dune to his liking!

Now, having since moved to our Listening Stones Farm, we can hear it, feel it, and if you watch the prairie grasses nearby, you can see it. William Least Heat Moon wrote of how the wind gives prairie grasses the freedom to dance while those same grasses give face to the wind. If you lived here, lived within an actual planting of prairie grasses, you would identify with his description.

In our first year here my goal was to walk to the end of the section and back, a two mile hike on a gravel road. On one of those first hikes the trip down to the corner was brisk and easy, and I was feeling pretty chipper for my age. When I turned to return, and once past the abandoned and protective grove at that end of the section, it was a struggle make progress against what was actually a staunch breeze. By the time I made it to the protection of our grove I was worn out and working to breathe. Against a full blowing northwest  wind you are simply pleased to make progress. After a year of this, a membership was purchased at a nearby gym with a couple of wind-free treadmills.

Using the wind in a photograph of a blue stem prairie.

Like most of the farm homes on the prairie, our house is surrounded by a dense grove. That first year the buckthorn was too thick to  get through. Those walks on the gravel road in the open prairie was enough to gain a deep appreciation of the trees. Even the buckthorn. Our biggest concern of clearing the buckthorn the following year was how the new “openness” would translate with a cold wind. Our sawyer, Kurt Arner, suggested we not worry, that the windrows of downed buckthorn would still provide enough protection. He was right. Our mailbox, set just past the protection of the grove, serves as a sobering reminder of the worth of the woodland.

Last year after a cleansing of the vast buckthorn along with many of the damaged and diseased trees, including some with the telltale burnt brown “zipper” stripe caused by lightning, we planted 70 bareroot trees and countless shrubs. Some were fruit trees in our new orchard, but the rest were planted inside the canopy of the standing grove where Kurt had left “holes.” Recently Rebecca has been stewing over our next order of trees. Kurt has also returned to take down some offensive elms, buckthorn and other weed trees on the south and east portions of the yard.

Cone flower pods accented by prairie grasses moved by the wind.

In a short time we’ve learned to commune with the wind. Fighting it is futile. We raise chimes to create wind music, and I’ve learned how to use the wind in my photography. Our prairie grasses on our eight acres of tillable land protects the soil. An east wind will cause our water lines to freeze upstairs, so yes, we’re conscious of it. We’re equally conscious of the effects of the wind on the fields of our neighbors. Those who have left stubble in their corn fields have clean ditches. Those who plowed, even minimally, do not.

Although we have eight acres of replanted prairie, the two of us … migrants from tree-blessed states of Vermont and Missouri … love our few acres of trees, and actually bless them on nights when you can hear the steady “lullaby” of the prairie wind. Last night, as that gusty lullaby of prairie music played and partied, a horrible hangover of particles of blown snow along with minute molecules of our neighbor’s dirt were left in drifts along the fringe of our prairie, choking the dance.

Just down the road apiece is a prime example of the horrendous issues with wind-blown dirt … all of which will wash into Big Stone Lake in the melt and spring rains.