The Farm

The land is what will determine the farm.  Nature had a plan and it was stable for many, many years. but modern farming changed the landscape over the last 50 years.

Above is an aerial photo from 1964.  The fields had many different crops and areas of pasture that were rotated frequently.  It was definitely not a monoculture.  The creek does not have a lot of surrounding trees and the larger ones were Burr Oak.  This area has rolling hills consistent with an Oak Savannah, which served as a transition from the great plains to the mixed forests.  This type of area typically had an abundance of different grasses and flowers.

The above aerial photo is from 2013.  The fields are now a monoculture rotating between corn and soybeans.  The original oak savannah area is now heavily wooded.  The very old oak trees are still here, but they are rapidly becoming dominated by buckthorn.  Once the farm animals were removed from the oak area, the other trees and vegetation grew quickly.  It takes about 20 years for a prairie or pasture to change into a forest if nature (e.g. wildfires) or animals (e.g. buffalo) don't interfere.

Over the next 2 to 3 years, my first goal is to establish a native prairie in the former farm fields.  In the next post I will talk about the grasses and forbes that we look to establish and how that process will work.