forb covered nobs & my kind of conservatives

Spent the morning at the Nachusa Grasslands near Rochelle, Illinois, climbing rocky nobs where some of the last remnant scraps of authentic prairie in the Midwest were preserved in a land-grab by the Nature Conservancy some 22 years ago. The Conservancy secured the parcels of land just 15 minutes before they were slated to go up for auction to housing developers who were expected to slice them into subdivisions.



True prairie started to slip away when the European immigrants first hunkered down on the grasslands with their cattle and sheep in tow, but the true beginning of the end, according to Al, our guide -- who is also steward, along with his wife, of Doug’s Nob, one of the high-quality prairie remnants within the parcel -- coincided with John Deere’s invention of the cast steel plow in 1837. [1]



When folks got around to taking a head count in the early 1900s, after Deere’s highly efficient deep cutting steel blade had had its way with the terrain, they realized that less than one percent of the diversified prairie landscapes that once covered over 250 million acres in the Midwest for nearly 8,000 years, remained.



The Nature Conservancy is trying to bring this 2,500 acre patch back, through careful stewardship that includes regular burnings, weed pulling, seed harvesting and spreading, and a hundred other ways to volunteer your Saturdays (they meet every Saturday, year round, at 9AM right next to the barn. all are welcome.)



We’re gonna try to be there, at least once a month over the course of the year, out of pure selfishness. I want to see how the fragrance of that place changes as the seasons change, see if the grasses always crunch underfoot like snow that’s crusted over, or if that’s a quality that’s unique to autumn; particular to today.

And I want to take more pictures »



[1] Of ironic interest: The John Deere historic site is just half an hour down the road from the Nachusa Grasslands.