When we were first planning the prairied restoration, we were cautioned to have patience. Grasses don’t grow like vegetables in a garden. It takes time. One wildlife biologist explained that the first year after they germinate, they use their energy to put down deep roots. “They go deep,” she said. The second year the plant grows larger and puts on leaves. “They creep,” she explained. About the third year the “tall grasses” earn their name. “They leap,” she told us.
We planted our grasses from seed twenty-one months ago. Thousands germinated and we could see those little tufts of grass on top of the ground that were working hard to extend their roots deep into the sandy loam of our field. Many will grow twice as far underground as they appear above the ground. We witnessed a lot of creeping going on this year. The plants were more extensive and more noticeable.
Most of the grasses still have a way to go, but a good number of them have started leaping. We have Alamo Switchgrass that is taller than I am growing near the house, and the seed heads are more massive than my head. Little Bluestem, Big Bluestem, and Yellow Indiangrass are flourishing, blooming, and forming beautiful seed heads as well. Eastern gamagrass, Sideoats grama, Purple Lovegrass, and Green Spangletop are leaping as well in many places. This is the time of year when these warm-weather grasses do best. A walk in the prairie this morning produced some evidence of all the leaping taking place.
Today, 2 September will be the first day in many on the Creech Prairie, where the temperature does NOT reach 100 degrees. Yesterday we saw 102 with a feel-like temperature of 119.7! It’s been like this since late July. But the forecasts indicate that yesterday may have been our last blast of heat. We’ll be moving into a more seasonable mid-90s as we make our way to the 80s of late September. Today, for the first time, since August 22 (and before that, August 3), we had a bit of rain. We are hoping for more over the next few days. So, hot and dry. That’s Texas in August. And the prairie has shown it. Wherever you walk, you hear the crunch of dry grass, and only a few lonely sunflowers serve as reminders of the wildflowers that sometimes blanket the field.
August and September are the growing seasons for the grasses of the tallgrass prairie. The big four––switchgrass, big bluestem, little bluestem, and yellow indiangrass––and the others––eastern gamagrass, sideoats grama, green spangle top, and lovegrass––are doing their best with the little moisture they’ve had to work with. Perhaps a wet September will meet their needs.
How do we prepare for the future in the midst of a pandemic? Such preparation for a day in which we will be able to gather again, living with some sense of normality, can feel foolish.
With Jerusalem surrounded by Babylonian armies and its destruction imminent, the LORD instructed the prophet Jeremiah to make a real estate purchase. That seemed a waste of money. He bought a field in Anathoh, about three miles NE of Jerusalem. His cousin Hanamel sold it to him for seventeen shekels (probably glad to get something for it!) and he and Jeremiah signed and sealed the deed. The Lord instructed Jeremiah to preserve the deed in hope of a day when people would return to Jerusalem and pick up life again.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.
Jer. 32:14–15, NRSV
Our pastor in San Antonio, John Garland, closes each service with a benediction that includes the phrase, “Risk something big for something good.”
We have felt a bit like Jeremiah lately. With social life being disrupted by the Covid-19 crisis, one of our dreams has been called into question. Since 2014, we have been working with a vision for using our land to help educate seminary students around issues of ecology and agriculture. That vision was stirred when I attended a Seminary Stewardship Alliance annual meeting in Winston-Salem, NC in 2014 and heard of the farm operated by the Methodist Theologcial Seminary of Ohio. Melinda wondered why we couldn’t do something similar. The vision has been refined over these six years. We’ve engaged the prairie restoration project, found partners in both Waco and the Floresville area, and hosted two classes from Truett Seminary on Creation Care and Spiritual Practice. Meanwhile, Truett Seminary is partnering with the World Hunger Relief Farm in Waco to establish a program in Theology, Ecology, and Food Justice.
Neighbors have been kind enough to keep students in their homes, since we couldn’t have everyone here. But we wanted to build a “barn-dorminium” that would have rooms for guests to stay in. We set money aside each month toward the project. Our architect son has patiently drawn and redrawn plans as we have refined the project. We have been disappointed by talking to contractors whose bids far exceeded our means. But this past spring, we had a plan and a contractor who matched our budget. He sent us a contract to sign. And before we could sign it, Covid-19 struck. We didn’t think it wise to tie up our savings in the project when we didn’t know what was coming next. So, we hit the pause button.
Last month, after prayer and some discernment, we felt it was right to go ahead. We signed the contract and wrote a check for the down payment. We risked something big for something good. Like Jeremiah, we did this in hope that the days would come in which we’d be able to carry out the vision.
In preparation for the construction, Melinda and I removed as many as possible of the hundreds of prairie grasses growing where the building will stand. These will be transplanted to other parts of the field. We’re going to share some of them with our family in Houston (our architect and consultant) for the pocket prairie they are developing in their back yard.
And now ground is being broken. By the end of the year, the blue barn will be in place. It will have a garage/barn on one end, a breezeway and deck in the middle, and three dorm rooms on the other end (two on the first floor and one above them). We hope to use the building to house students, interns, and guests. It will stand across the driveway from our garden, between two large pecan trees my grandmother planted thirty years ago and will extend into the prairie itself.
The barn will look something like this, but blue with a metallic roof.
We are holding this with open hands, ready to discern the ways in which it can be put to use when the exiles return.
The Native Prairie Association of Texas (NPAT) is a nonprofit membership organization and an accredited land trust, whose mission is dedicated to the conservation, restoration, and appreciation of native prairies, savannas, and other grasslands in Texas. When landowners have a remnant prairie (a portion of land that has never been cultivated, but retains the native plants of its history), or a restored prairie (like ours), they can register their project with NPAT as a way of affirming their commitment to preserving Texas prairie land. We are about 18 months into our project. We registered with NPAT this summer and yesterday received and installed our sign.
Today we’re expecting a visit from Jamie Killian, the TPW wildlife biologist who has been working with us. She’s not seen the progress in a while, so we’re hoping she’ll be as pleased as we are about what we are seeing emerge across the 80 acres we’re working on.
Texas Wildlife Magazine recently reported studies indicating how the increased plant diversity on a piece of property produces a diversity of habitat, which leads inevitably to a diversity of insects, birds, and mammals. A square meter of a healthy prairie contains more biodiversity than you can imagine. (See Chris Helzer’s Square Meter Project). We are seeing already a wide diversity of plants, insects, and birds on our place.
Two-hundred and ninety-nine species of birds have been identified in Wilson County, TX. We have a list of those and have made it a goal to observe as many of them as possible, not only on our place, but around the county. This is for us a part of knowing the place where we live.
You can find such bird lists online at EBird, a project of Cornell University.
Last week I took a morning stroll through the far end of the property to see how things were coming along in the area we don’t visit often. I was pleased to see how prolific the native grass germination was through most of the field. Patience is a challenge. I am eager to see how this will all look in its maturity, but that is a couple of years away.
Some of the diversity of the prairie can be seen here if you have an eye for it.
White prairie clover is growing in several places around the field, but it is prolific in the sandy soil at the far end of property. It is a beautiful shade of green.
The Emily Dickenson poem comes to mind:
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.
Emily Dickinson
Yellow is the dominant color in the field these days. Sunflowers of various sorts are raising their heads.
