Prairie Memories and Reveries I

Prairie Memories and Reveries, part I,  Posts as images authored as indicated.

Prairie Memories and Reveries I

So many of the people who responded to this request have been working on the prairies for such a long time that I thought I’d include a couple of pictures of the lunch crowd from a second Saturday workday on June 14, 2003. It was a beautiful day and we had a wonderful turnout.

Lunch Crowd at Glacial Workday, June 14, 2003, photo by Dennis Plank

Lunch Crowd at Glacial Workday, June 14, 2003, photo by Dennis Plank

Lunch Crowd at Glacial Workday, June 14, 2003, photo by Dennis Plank

Lunch Crowd at Glacial Workday, June 14, 2003, photo by Dennis Plank

I recognize Barry and Darlene Bidwell, Bill Funk, Larry Weinberg, Mike and Marion Jarisch and Cliff Snyder as some of the very early volunteers in these.

Since Bill and Larry responded to this request, I thought I’d start this series with them and with Fayette Krause who was instrumental in The Nature Conservancy’s involvement in the South Sound.

Bill Funk

Bill was one of the very early members of the Scotch Broom Attack Team. When he retired early sevral years ago, he started a second, albeit unpaid, career of environmental restoration. He routinely volunteers five or six days a week. In addition to restoration, he volunteers for numerous human service organizations. He keeps threatening to move to Seattle and if he ever does, he’ll leave an enormous hole in Olympia.

Elk on Glacial Heritage, photo by Bill Funk

Elk on Glacial Heritage, photo by Bill Funk

Some people who enjoy the prairies are plant people. Some are bird people. Some of us look forward to being the cause of the morning alarm for the red tail hawk as we arrive in the morning. Or seeing the aerial artistry of the harrier as it glides just feet above the prairie mounds. But I most look forward to the two osprey pairs rebuilding their nests and promptly laying their eggs. Listening to them talk to each other like an old married couple.

Glacial has at least a couple of resident deer does. But we rarely see any big bucks on the prairie. But each year, they seem to find the does, and that results in fawns ever spring.

Last winter, February 2019, we finally had enough snow, so I finally was able to snowshoe the prairie road for the first time in 22 years. As I did, I first noticed elk tracks. Then I discovered 4 young bull elk. The first elk I have seen on Glacial in 22 years of working. December 2019 not only were they still around, but they found a few elk cows, and formed themselves a nice little elk herd 14 strong. They even posed by one of Glacial’s “Christmas” trees for my Christmas card photo (see above). Then shortly after New Years, things got really unusual. There has been an elk herd approximately 80 strong wintering for years at the Black River NWR north of Littlerock on an old dairy farm with plenty of pasture along the river. However, sometime between Christmas and New Years, they decided to move, all 80, down the river to Glacial. At first, it was quite wonderful to see a 80 head elk herd on Glacial. But there was a big problem. They seemed to like to stay the night on Glacial. But they liked to feed on the adjoining active dairy farm’s silage field. This is a problem since this is feed for his dairy cows, and 80 head of elk can eat a lot. Seems like the elk preferred this planted sileage rather than our native prairie grasses. Not sure if it was a plan, an accident, or just a coincidence, but when the farmer started to fertilize the field with liquid cow manure, like he does routinely, the 80 head of elk moved back “home” up river to the Black River NWR. Probably for the best.  However, a small splinter group of 8 elk, maybe some of the original 14, stayed. So maybe we’ll have our own sustainable elk herd year round or at least over winter. Now if we could only see a bear once in a while, we would have a complete native zoo.

Bill at work. while he likes pulling broom more, he helps enthusiastically with planting, photo by Dennis Plank

Bill at work. while he likes pulling broom more, he helps enthusiastically with planting, photo by Dennis Plank

Larry Weinberg

Larry and I both worked at Boeing and were members of an informal Thursday after-work hiking group. One October (1998?) he mentioned that there was going to be a planting party on a prairie where he volunteered once a month. I thought that was a cool idea and came down to help. That started a marathon volunteer journey for me and until he retired and moved to Bend, we carpooled to an incredible number of volunteer events. I suspect neither of us wanted to be outdone by the other. Larry is still a very active volunteer for a number of organizations and causes in Bend.

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Larry at work on the prairie, photo by Margaret Allen

Thoughts on weed wars on the South Sound Prairies.

When I first moved to Washington in 1987, I noticed a plant growing near my home in the Seatac area. It bloomed early in the Spring, with pretty yellow and red blossoms. I thought it was quite attractive. As it turned out this was like visiting Nazi Germany in the 1930’s, seeing some SS members and stating they have really nice uniforms. Little did I know, hidden behind those pretty flowers was a devious enemy ready to do battle. It was Scotch Broom!

Flash forward a few years and I was in the trenches fighting these devilish plants on the South Sound prairies. There were battlefields at Mima Mounds, Glacial Heritage and even Fort Lewis. A successful day for me was leaving the field of combat strewn with dead broom and not having a sore back.

When we started working at Glacial Heritage, the broom looked more like a row crop than a weed. But; several years of committed work by an energetic team of volunteers began show progress as more and more of the prairie and the oak woodlands were freed from the broom. In just a few years the camas began to bloom again in great profusion. The reward was seeing a sea of blue where once there had only been broom.

There were times on weed work Saturdays when it was tempting to sleep in, but always there was the pull of work that needed to be done. Also, I would catch a lot of flak from Dennis Plank if I didn’t show up at our carpool meeting spot on I-405. As we drove through Tacoma and Olympia, I often thought of why would one take off half the weekend to drive 70 miles to pull weeds. The answer was clear when we would get to the work site – there were invasive weeds to be pulled and you could see the progress, not just in dead plants but in returning flora and the animals that relied on them.

The other draw was the wonderful group of volunteers and Nature Conservancy staff who did the work. There was a fascinating chemistry between folks and many of us still keep in touch even though some, like me, have moved from the Seattle metro area. We had after-work potlucks and Christmas parties. On several occasions I would be back in the Seattle area on a work day and was able to get to the prairies either to work or to enjoy Prairie Appreciation days.

Looking back on the actual work, it was nice after a week at Boeing dealing with technical matters, to have a somewhat mindless activity that you could do while taking in the sights, sounds and smells of the natural world around you. The biggest success that I experienced was taking down an ‘old-growth’ broom that was well over 12 feet and high and so thick that our biggest weed wrench did not fit around the base of the plant. I hacked and dug and pried and cursed, and I finally got the monster out of the ground. Most of the time our work was a little less stressful and easier on the body.

I look back at the time that I spent working with friends on the South Sound Prairies as a wonderful part of my life. A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a group of friends and a dead broom, oh were paradise enow.

Larry at play at a Nature conservancy Volunteer Picnic, photo by Dennis Plank

Larry at play at a Nature conservancy Volunteer Picnic, photo by Dennis Plank

Fayette Krause

Fayette was Washington Land Steward for the Nature Conservancy for 30 years. In that role he was instrumental in the acquisition of Rocky Prairie by TNC which held it until the DNR could acquire the funds to buy it. As the location of the last remnant population of Golden Paintbrush in the South Sound and one of only 13 in existence, it was crucial to the reintroduction of this plant that we see blooming so prolifically at places like the Glacial Heritage Preserve.

Golden Paintbrush on the prairies, photo by Dennis Plank

Golden Paintbrush on the prairies, photo by Dennis Plank

Rocky Prairie

At Rocky we had an annual work party; sometimes two annual parties.  The volunteers who showed up were excellent workers and ultimately made Rocky Prairie a model for volunteerism.  Barry Bidwell is correct.  Initially I (very foolishly, in retrospect) brought lunch meats and cheese from DeLaurenti’s (not so foolish) and designer beers for the end of the day (foolish).  It was NOT foolish to ply volunteers with good beer.  They deserved every last drop.  What was foolish is the liability assumed.  In the end I wised up to the liability and canceled the beer.  A number of volunteers were not happy with that arrangement.

TNC leased Rocky Prairie from the Nelson family, who owned the tract.  The lease expired when DNR bought Rocky Prairie, or traded DNR land to the Nelson’s.  With the expiration of the lease, TNC’s connection to the property ended.  There may have been one or two TNC work parties after DNR secured ownership to Rocky Prairie, but ultimately DNR assumed management responsibilities for the land.

Rocky was a good example of what can be accomplished without using herbicides.  The volunteers removed Scot’s broom from the preserve, by pulling and with a weed wrench.  In the south end, where the broom was the largest, occasionally it was necessary to use loppers.  Generally, when “old-growth” broom is cut, it does not resprout.  Alas, this is not the case with young to “middle-aged” plants.  If cut, even at or below the soil line, the plant frequently resprouts.  The “fan” created by the resprouted plant covers even more territory, and, unless removed the following year, has an increasingly deleterious effect on adjacent vegetation.  The lack of herbicidal use presupposes that volunteers or paid managers will be at Rocky on at least an annual basis to remove the resprouted or new broom.  Without this diligence, much can be lost to the recurrent broom — especially since the seeds retain viability for up to 50 years or more in the soil.

The entire reason for interest in Rocky Prairie is the Golden Paintbrush (Castilleja levisecta) found there.  To my knowledge Rocky Prairie had the largest and most robust population of this Federally Endangered species in the world — so volunteers were engaged in saving a globally rare plant.  At the time, there were no more than a dozen separate populations known from the Puget Trough — the only place in the world where C. levisecta grows.  More populations may have been discovered than were initially known, but a number of them are of 25 or fewer plants and could easily disappear over time.

The Rocky Prairie and Yellow Island work parties were among my favorite activities in my 30 year career with TNC.  I want to specifically call out Barry and Darlene Bidwell for their consistent work on the Prairie.  Their work, and that of other steadfast volunteers, made a huge difference in what was accomplished.

Fayette Krause

Fayette and other board members of the Olympic Forest Coalition. Fayette is in the green hat. Photo taken from the web.