Skip to main content

Let's Make It One hundred Years, Ma.

 

A portion of the White Spruce trees we planted in 1974.

   Fifty years ago this month, with the help of a friend, I started hand-planting trees in a fifteen acre poplar woods in Roseau County bordered on the west by Mikinaak Creek (the Ojibwe spelling for snapping turtle and not what is written in English on the maps), and a neighbor’s fenced quarter section on its east, where just the summer before, the farmer had bulldozed all the trees and windrowed their debris like a hay field prior to baling. 

I was thunderstruck by their destruction, for that dense woodland lent the creek bottom and my quaint homestead the beauty and privacy I desired, having lived in a city all my life to that point. Its horrific loss underscored to me that I could do nothing about what my neighbors did on their land, and if I wanted such an environment, I would have to plant it myself.

And so I have with the help of family and friends, as planting trees became the best decision I have ever made concerning the farm. Slowly transitioning 160-acres of sandy loam farmland back into trees and wetland, as it was before somewhat, took all of the years between. Thanks to C.R.P. (Conservation Reserve Program), Roseau County S.W.C.D., and my own driving initiative, I tried to recreate the woodland my mother used to walk through on her way to Palmville District 44 West, one-room school (which still stands) on the SW corner of our land, from her family’s homestead a half mile north, (which doesn’t).

One-room school Palmville District 44 West, lower left corner, was built in 1904. My mother walked through the woods to attend school there in the early 1900s.
 

 Every morning our family gazes across the creek at the beautiful towering white spruce that we planted in 1974, and the large old poplar trees and bur oaks among them, where the eagles sometimes sit overlooking the creek; the Great Blue Herons glide silently past, as often do skeins of ducks and flocks of geese; occasionally Tundra swans, and pelicans stop to visit. 

Tundra swans sometimes visit.

The offspring of the spruce and poplar almost block the view of the neighbor’s woodland that grew back up eventually; I can see the still-evident windrows in places east of the fence. Sadly the parent trees were never used; just left to rot back into the ground.

Since '74, we’ve planted roughly 100,000 trees of many varieties; and very few in straight lines, preferring to echo land contours and create islands; or leaving openings and meadows; their hundreds of thousands wild seedlings cast by winds or passed on by animals. 

We machine-planted 16, 500 trees in rows 12-feet apart that echoed one another across the landscape in 2011 and 2012 as well as a half mile strip of Blue Grama (Bouteloua gracilis) Native Grass.
 
We planted 8 different varieties: Red Dosier Dogwood; Hybrid Poplar, Bur Oak, Paper Birch, Norway Pine, White Spruce, Tamarack and White Cedar.

Despite recent weather forecasts for rain, 2024 is beginning to act a lot like 2023 as systems go around us.

We have walking trails through some of our woodland.

Our trees add drama to a landscape.
 

Firebreaks separate areas.

A meadow among the trees

An 'island' of Norway Pine, an island of White Spruce, an island of Tamarack planted a quarter mile apart with paper birch and willows in between look like they've been there forever.

A firebreak freshened this spring offers perspective and beauty one evening.

A wet wetland crossing. You should maybe wear knee boots.

My mother, Violet Palm Reynolds, loved her wild home place, this township. There isn’t a day, I don’t think of her here. She would love the trees, as I do. Recently, through a Minnesota Sustainable Forest Incentive Act covenant attached to the farm, no matter who owns it, I secured the farm’s forested future for another fifty years. 

Happy Mothers Day, Mom.

 

Here's a similar blog post from 2018

https://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2018/08/wannaskan-alamanac-for-thursday-august.html 



Comments

I used the sunlit clouds picture in one of my FB posts. Beautiful!

Popular posts from this blog

Winter Returns Along Mikinaak Creek February 8-9th, 2024

  This is the first channel wide moving water I've seen since the spring of 2023 --and it's in February!       On maps, the creek (or ‘crick' depending on your dialect) is spelled ‘Mickinock’ for the Anishinaabe man who lived at the Indian camp at Ross, but had seasonal camps around Wannaska and other places. The Euro-American immigrants who homesteaded here in Roseau County called him ‘Chief,’ but he may have been just a spokesperson who knew enough English to get things done peacefully and simultaneously meet the needs of his people; the word, ‘chief' was often used in derision of any Indigenous male adult.      I spell Mikinaak the Ojibwe way, in a gesture of respect; what the Dakota, who were here before the Anishinaabeg/Chippewa, called this place, this body of moving water I don’t know; just as I don’t know who came before them exactly.  I was told that one of Mikinaak's camps were here on our place in Palmville Township. Its location was pointed out to me exc

Friends to the End: Delmer Roseen and Curtis Johnson

  Delmer and Curtis: Friends to the End      From where he was buried on Saturday April 11th, 1992, the tin roofs of his buildings could be seen through the trees. Across the fence, at the foot of his grave, were the fields he farmed. Between them, Mikinaak Creek--so much a part of Delmer Roseen’s life and sadly, his death--still winds through willow slough, over beaver dams below the Palmville Cemetery, and past his door to the South Fork of the Roseau River, only a few yards to the southeast.         Delmer lived northeast of us in Palmville Township. If I looked just right, I could see his yard light through the woods between his place and mine. Either of us could hear the soft ‘clung’ of the rope and pulley against the flag pole in the cemetery at the corner of our two farms. Red willows, popple islands, and slough grass; green mossy fence posts; the often submerged patchwork of woven wire, and the depth of water in the creek vaguely separated us.      Delmer had live

August 6th, 2020 Tired of Writing

                    Comment on Parental Rights 1869-1940     I finished the second installment of my grandfathers biography I wrote in the Wannaskan Almanac for today, late yesterday evening. http://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2020/08/thursday-august-6th-2020-parental.html       I had worked on it for a good day, by Wednesday, including a few hours on Tuesday too, and in my waning energy for it decided just to wrap it up, rather than keep slogging through dozens of transcribed interviews, page after page, searching for some item that would fit my story, chronologically. In truth, I wanted to be writing something fun.     It wasn't like I wasn't interested in what I was mired in; I enjoy a good slog once in awhile myself, but my dilemma was how do I keep it interesting to others and not get bogged down? I could've just copied pages to be sure, but I needed it to flow somewhat smoothly, and not become just a repetitive list of names, dates and places. Argh. But t