Lessons From Leopold

Every Farm is a Textbook

BY STEVE NELLE

Photo Courtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation and University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives

Every farm is a textbook; woodsmanship is the translation of the book. ~Aldo Leopold, 1943

This is a classic bit of ecological wisdom. The best wisdom is expressed in crisp, succinct phrases, not paragraphs or pages. Leopold was a master at this and was often able to boil down basic truths into a few concise words.

Here, Leopold states that farms are like a textbook full of raw information. Think of an advanced college level textbook on a complex subject.

Just owning the book or opening the book does not mean that one understands the material. It takes reading, re-reading, digging in, studying, chewing, ruminating, digesting and assimilating the knowledge it contains. Even after all this there will still be only partial understanding until the information is put to practical use.

Like a textbook, farms also contain a great storehouse of raw information available to the serious student, but learning to decipher and understand the information is not easy. It takes a lifetime, and even then, the learning is still incomplete and new chapters continue to be written year after year as conditions change.

The farms of Leopold’s day were different than our presentday concept of a farm. Those farms were often a mix of row crops, forage crops, fruit and nut trees, large gardens, poultry, pigs, livestock, woodlands, wetlands, grasslands and wildlife. The farmer had to be skilled in many forms of agriculture and land management.

The farm textbook is more complex than even the most advanced scientific book ever written. The farm is a text on soils, hydrology, watersheds, botany, zoology, animal husbandry, range management, wildlife management, forestry, economics, marketing, social science, anthropology and many other subjects.

Leopold states that woodsmanship is how the textbook of the farm is translated. Woodsmanship starts with being observant, paying close attention to everything and trying to figure out how it is all connected.

Woodsmanship is often mentioned in the context of hunting where it includes the ability to stalk, track, interpret sign, understanding animal habits and habitats, and knowing the hunting grounds inside out. But woodsmanship is more than just being a skilled hunter. In the context of the farm, it means the whole gamut of practical skills and abilities needed to see the big picture of the farm, how it all fits together and how it fits with the larger landscape outside the farm.

Woodsmanship means knowing the soil by observing the plant life. It means knowing what cows are grazing, what deer are browsing and what quail are eating. It means knowing the wild and domestic species that live there including game, rodents, birds, small mammals, predators, insects, crops, livestock, trees, brush, grasses and wildflowers. It means a basic knowledge of who eats who and the understanding that there must be death for there to be life.

Leopold was an admirer of the famous prairie ecologist J. E. Weaver who spoke of the ability to read the land. Weaver said, “Nature is an open book for those who care to read. Each grass covered hillside is a page on which is written the history of the past, the conditions of the present and the predictions of the future.” Learning to read the land is one important aspect of woodsmanship.

Woodsmanship is a close familiarity with the land learned by decades of curiosity, exploration and getting the hands dirty. It includes joys, disappointments, failures, successes, frustration and satisfaction all wrapped together.

Some landowners never seriously attempt to understand the land. They enjoy it superficially or aesthetically, and they may proclaim a love of the land. But the lessons of the land may remain shrouded and undiscovered, and some may miss out on the greatest joys of owning land. This year, let us make it our ambition to become a more serious student of the land.

No matter what our role—landowner, manager, cowboy, hunter, fisherman, birder or nature enthusiast, we can dig deeper than before and hone our woodsmanship skills and begin to learn new lessons from the land. Let us slow down, look around, ask questions, seek answers and approach the land with newfound hunger, thirst and appreciation.

WRITER’S NOTE: Aldo Leopold (1887—1948) is considered the father of modern wildlife management. More importantly, he developed and described many of the concepts of conservation, ecology and stewardship of natural resources. Leopold was an amazingly astute observer of the land and man’s relationship to the land. His writings have endured the test of time and have proven to be remarkably prophetic and relevant to today’s issues. This bimonthly column will feature thought-provoking philosophies of Aldo Leopold, as well as commentary.