BWSR pollinator habitat grants

ST. PAUL — The Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) is once again accepting applications for grants for the Lawns to Legumes program. This program aims to increase habitat for at-risk pollinators in residential settings across the state by providing people with cost-share funding, workshops, coaching and gardening resources.

Applications will be accepted through

June 30. Notifications about funding decisions will be sent to project applicants in July.

For more information on Lawns to Legumes, visit https://bwsr.state.mn. us/l2l.

This article was submitted by the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources. v foot—and down I went like a sack of 60-year-old potatoes.

I landed on my neck and shoulder, on the floor below the haymow, in the sheep poop, and with loose hay raining down on top of me. I remembered my legs landing last.

I laid there a minute, trying to figure out what had just occurred. I got up slowly to my knees, brushed the hay off of my shoulders, then crept up (finally feeling my age) and finished brushing the sheep crap off of my jeans.

Looking around, I wondered if anyone had borne witness to that ill-timed misfortune.

With a kink in my neck and a stabbing shoulder now, a guy coming for hay, and no one else there to help him; what was I to do, but get back up there again? So I climbed the ladder up to the haymow and got right back in the saddle again (so to speak).

This time — with nothing around to clear the path to the hay pile — my legs and toes were used like sonar guidance, and extended about five feet ahead of me with every step.

I tossed the bales out the door, feeling a little less invincible.

When the guy arrived, something must have seemed amiss because he carried on a nice conversation, but continued to look at me as if something about me was obviously odd.

I get that look often.

We visited briefly, he paid for his bales and we both got in our vehicles and left.

When I got back to the house and saw myself in the mirror, my hair was a fright, there was hay in it, and I still had sheep poop on my shoulder.

John Denver sang about “Sunshine on My Shoulders.” Of course, you might know that my version would croon about something else on my shoulders.

When my husband got home I told him what happened, and he said he covers the holes in the haymow floor with loose hay before winter so the barn will stay warmer during lambing season — which is a great idea … if the holes are marked for those not privy to that information.

To my surprise (and at my grandmotherly age), my swollen and painful collarbone and shoulder weren’t broken — nor was anything else. Hooray for being raised on the farm where we ate ice cream almost every day after school and drank whole milk at every meal.

My chiropractor said, “You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck.”

I thought to myself, “…my neck might not be broken, but with this secret insulation plan, our home just might be.”

Seems like it’s taking a while for that oil on my face to work.

Karen Schwaller writes from her grain and livestock farm near Milford, Iowa. She can be reached at kschwaller@evertek.net v