Blooming prairie

prairie

PHOTOS BY DIANE LEUKAM Patty and Peter Vogel stand in the restored prairie Aug. 24 on their property south of Little Falls. (top) The prairie is in full bloom and provides a habitat for pollinators throughout its growing season.

Vogels provide pollinator haven

BY DIANE LEUKAM | STAFF WRITER

LITTLE FALLS – Fall is a special time of year for Peter and Patty Vogel on their 80-acre property south of Little Falls. Their many acres of prairie are a sea of mostly yellow and purple as blazing stars and goldenrod come into full bloom.

Each day, they keep an eye on the prairie, watching for tiny fl ashes of orange, signs of the fall migration of monarch butterfl ies. On Aug. 24, they were there.

On that day, the Vogels shared the story of the prairie not only with Country Acres, but a busload of people on a tour with the Morrison County SWCD. As they fi led through the pathways on the prairie, Peter explained the process of an abandoned cornfi eld being transformed into a successful habitat for deer, birds, bees and butterfl ies.

“It’s a great place for natives to come and hang out,” he said. “Right now, the monarchs are coming through on their migration. When the blazing star starts blooming, they are attracted to the prairie.”

With Peter far ahead on the trail, Patty talked about the butterfl ies.

Vogels page 12

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PHOTO BY DIANE LEUKAM Monarchs feast on blazing star, stopping by the Vogels’ prairie as part of the butterfl ies’ migration, Aug. 24 south of Little Falls. Peter is more pragmatic.

“That’s not likely to happen,” he said.

He completely agrees with the sentiment, though.

“[As an attorney], I work with a lot of older people, farmers especially, who say, ‘I don’t want this land to be broken up, I don’t this want this land to be changed,’ and I feel the same way about this,” he said.

To that end, the Vogels have placed the land into a permanent conservation agreement so it cannot be developed into housing.

And, they share a desire for more people to start their own prairies.

“You’ve got these native species, like the monarchs, that are under pressure and, more than anything else, it’s because they don’t have anywhere to live,” Peter said. “They don’t have any habitat. You go out to somebody’s place in the country and they have fi ve acres of manicured lawn and it’s beautiful, I suppose, but as far as butterfl ies and pollinators are concerned, it’s a desert [with] nothing for them to eat, nothing for them to hide on.”

He sees potential in many places.

“If people would take a little corner of that kind of place and plant prairie fl owers, that would really help the pollinators,” he said. “You plant it and, once it’s established, you let it go. In this area, you would have to burn it periodically, otherwise it’s going to grow up in white pines. But, other than that, it will go on forever.”

They are willing to share their experiences with other landowners, to help them get established.

“We have hopes that somebody would be interested in starting a prairie,” Patty said. “We want to inspire people to do this.”

As the Vogels walked along the prairie trail, they watched monarchs land on the blazing stars, bees buzz and birds dart effortlessly in the sky around them. They talked about plants they have watched grow along the way, and they watched their prairie bloom.

The bee yard, just beyond our orchard, is roughly 45 feet in diameter. Three strands of electric wire are suspended on 11 posts surrounding this circular area. One side has three plastic gate handles, on the three wires, to allow access to the enclosure. The wires are charged by a solar-powered battery. The intent is to deter Working out – bears and other large creatures outdoors, that is that might be interested in the by Nancy Packard bee boxes. This came after a Leasman young bear did signifi cant damage a few years ago. Bears do love honey.

The bee presence came with the land when we bought it 40 years ago. I don’t know how long the bee men had used this site before we acquired the land, but two subsequent apiarists have provided us with honey over the last four decades.

The bee men bring the hives in the spring. They tend the bees through the summer. There are six towers, each one made up of layers of four bee boxes each. These towers can grow to six or seven hives in height, making a total of over 160 honey-producing hives.

Occasionally, after being disturbed or maybe for some other cosmic reason, bees will decide to leave their home and swarm. We’ve noticed this a few times over the years. Once, they temporarily occupied the upper branches of a birch tree near our driveway before departing. This spring, we heard a loud buzzing and, when we went to investigate, we realized bees were swarming high above an oak tree and already moving away. Just to be sure, I ventured near enough to the bee yard and saw that one of the hive towers had very little activity.

The bee man is pretty accepting of this wayward nature of his bees. There’s always a new queen waiting in the wings. She and her cohort will repopulate.

I usually stay well away from the bee yard while the bees are in residence. Last fall, after the bee man had loaded the hives up on his fl at-bed truck, I noticed some 8- to 10-foot-tall BT (buckthorn) surrounding the fence. The

The Bee Yard page 15

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