Photo used with permission from Don Kirchoff
Photo used with permission from Don Kirchoff (Front left to right) Don, Susan, Elise and Scott Kirchoff. (Back/top) Brenda Kirchoff. The Kirchoff kids chomp the watermelon they grew on Kirchoff Family Farm (1958). Today, that farm is called Kirchoff Prairie. TWA Member Don Kirchoff said, “Those watermelons were the sweetest I ever ate.”
(Left to right) Don, Brenda, Scott and Susan Kirchoff. Together, the Kirchoffs own and are restoring the 200-acre prairie that used to house their family farm.
BIOBLITZ Article by MARY O. PARKER
P
icture it: five siblings dressed in 1958 garb, footlong watermelon slices placed across the real smiles underneath. Joy emanates from the image picturing the brothers and sisters relishing a reprieve from the hard work of farming and the heat of a Texas summer day. The Kirchoff kids, Scott, Susan, Brenda, Don and Elise, helped grow that sweet summer treat they savored so much. They also did the back-breaking work of row cropping, pig raising and cotton picking on the 200 acres that their parents Leroy and Brunhilde Kirchoff, bought in Wilson County near Floresville in 1954. The farmhouse where the photo was taken still stands, but much else has changed since those days. Leroy and Brunhilde passed away in 2008 and left the land to the children. And, in 2016 they lost Elise, too. But the family stopped growing watermelons, raising livestock and doing everything else that made the place a farm long before that. Today, this slice of tallgrass Blackland prairie no longer goes by the name Kirchoff Family Farm. Instead, it uses the moniker Kirchoff Prairie and has been under conservation easement with the Native Prairies Association of Texas since 2013. The goal now, as Don put it, “is to restore the property, as much as possible, to the condition it was before the Europeans first arrived.”
36 T E X A S W I L D L I F E
JUNE 2021
In that context, the Kirchoffs are planning their first BioBlitz. “They’re planning a what?” you might ask. Consider that “bio” means “life” and blitz “a swift barrage.” Put those together and a BioBlitz amounts to a snapshot of all organisms on your land taken in a quick and intense manner. Typically, a BioBlitz lasts for one 24-hour period which includes nighttime if the landowner has the means to collect data in the dark. You want to blitz on the same date, during the same hours each year. Many landowners hold BioBlitzes more than once a year, depending upon their land management goals. The National Park Service (NPS) held the first known BioBlitz in 1996 at Kenilworth Gardens in Washington, D.C. Since then, especially with the introduction of citizen-science driven smartphone apps such as eBird and iNaturalist, their popularity has grown. It’s early-spring when TWA member, Don Kirchoff shows me around the family’s grasslands to talk about the upcoming BioBlitz. Thanks to Snowmageddon 2021, not much spring has sprung yet, but I do see a hint of prairie verbena, and its pastel purples and the bright yellow of cowpen daisies color the fields. Today the wind blows hard and makes me glad I’ve worn my hair up. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to spot the monarch
