Connecting with the Land: The Story of Stone Prairie Farm

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

John Muir

Ecological restoration is an affair with nature. To understand an ecosystem or landscape you must become intimately involved. In doing so, you will discover, as John Muir suggested, that you are drawn emotionally and even spiritually to it, much as a person becomes attached to a mate. As with people, each ecosystem is unique. Your challenge is to discover those unique qualities, and seek ways to allow the natural characteristics of the ecosystem to be restored to a healthy condition, ultimately to stand on its own with minimal support. In this chapter we describe the discovery process and restoration of a damaged landscape in southern Wisconsin where Steve Apfelbaum, and later, his partner, Susan, developed and refined a systematic approach to ecological restoration that has been successfully applied to hundreds of ecosystems around the world. In the following four chapters, we describe and explain the process of ecological restoration in step-by-step detail, so don't despair at not getting enough information in this first chapter. Our aim here is to describe the overall process, through Steve's experience.

Undoubtedly, you opened this book because you are interested in nature, and more specifically, you are interested in restoring degraded or damaged land. You may already be intimately familiar with your own ecosystem or landscape. It may be thousands of acres of overgrazed rangeland or a backyard. The restoration process we describe is applicable to any landscape or ecosystem, even those that have been destroyed and that must be literally reconstructed from the ground up. While we can not promise that you always will be completely successful, or that the job will be easy, we can promise that if you roll up your sleeves and involve yourself in the process, you will learn more about nature and your land than you can imagine.

Perhaps you own property, as Steve did, where you wish to restore nature, or maybe you are a manager of property and have been asked to do ecological restoration. Whether you are a property owner, a manager, or simply someone who enjoys nature, you are beginning an adventure. Perseverance will be important. In the beginning, everything will be new and exciting, but like any good relationship, ecological restoration involves determination and work. Most important is understanding a process and finding the path to work with the land.

When Steve began restoring the ecosystems hidden beneath the façade of an overworked dairy farm in Wisconsin, described in Nature's Second Chance, he was relatively inexperienced. The art and science of ecological restoration were in their infancy. Steve had formal training in ecology, plant taxonomy, soils, and related subjects, and several years' experience working as an ecological consultant, but the systematic steps for ecological restoration that we describe in this book were largely learned by trial and error. The validity of the process can be seen in successful restoration of phosphate mines in Florida, riparian wetlands in Louisiana, coastal dunes along the Atlantic coast, forests in North Carolina, and deserts in Nevada. We use Steve's experience on his land to introduce the process, then discuss later how the process works in other kinds of ecosystems.

Exploring the Landscape

Steve first saw the land on a hot July day in 1981. As he got out of the car, he could see forests and savannas a short distance to the north. In nearly all other directions, farm fields dominated the rolling landscape, but he could see dark prairie soil between rows of corn and soybeans. Along the roadside and in the fencerows was a variety of prairie plants, remnants of the past when prairie swept across the hills from horizon to horizon, broken by scattered patches of savanna. Just southeast of the run-down farmhouse was a colorful hill, with patches of yellows and purples that could only be yellow coneflower, silphiums, pale purple coneflower and, perhaps, bee balm. The house could wait. Steve had to explore the land.

For several hours, Steve wandered across the old farm. From the window of the hayloft of the old barn, he looked beyond rows of corn growing on much of the farm and neighboring land. He could see a stream course outlined by old willows and box elder trees. Trees and shrubs also marked perimeter fence lines. The stream and fence lines continued down the valley, across neighboring farms, slicing through thick fields of corn.

For Steve, there was an organic linkage between the old house and barns, and the landscape on which they sat, the latter being more important. Buildings are more easily restored than ecosystems, and it was the landscape on which Steve and later his partner, Susan, would focus their energy. Although the landscape of the old farm was only eighty acres, it contained many different ecosystems in various stages of dysfunction, some disturbed, others damaged, and some even destroyed, replaced by nonnative weeds.

On his first visit, Steve was especially intrigued by the stream that wound through a pasture along the lower margins of cornfields. Although wetland vegetation was largely absent, the stream was bordered by black "mucky" soils that could only have been developed under former wetlands, where accumulating plant matter decomposes slowly. Wading through deep patches of nettles, thistles, and ironweeds, he stumbled onto a cattle trail and followed it to the creek. There he found green, bubbling ooze over the surface of tepid water, and bare, mud-caked banks on either side. Dairy cattle were standing in the creek, their tails actively swishing the flies drawn to the stink. Water, whether in lakes or streams, is often the best indication of the ecological health of the landscape in which it occurs. When landscapes are abused, soil, nutrients, and contaminants move, most often ending up in a waterway.

The condition of the creek on Steve's property was a result of several environmental insults, called stressors, some coming from his farm, others from neighboring farms upstream. Healthy ecosystems retain soil, as well as water and nutrients. When ecosystems are damaged, in this case by intensive farming practices, more water runs off and moves more quickly, with resulting soil erosion and loss of nutrients. The water in Steve's stream was being fertilized by...