Where will you go, when everything you encounter Burns ?

iowa wildflowers - holga 135 & 400 speed color film - developed at bergen photo & scanned with minolta dimage dual iii

Grain elevator by Kyle Wasielewski

"Yes, Dutch, it's still raining." Dutch's lil smile!

Thunderstorm over the Great Plains near Cimarron, New Mexico, Ansel Adams, circa 1961

Haunted by these memories of this place

Storms building over NE New Mexico.

great plains. life on the prairie

All the babies. Of the ~550 trays here, I personally seeded about 240 of them. Only the very early stuff is coming up, mostly the alliums and violets. Every single one of these was seeded by hand from seeds we stratified (unless they don’t require stratification). There are 70,040 cells in here and our germination rate is very high, we usually have just as many finished plants as there are cells started. So around 70,000 native plants will be sold to the public and some local government programs but they’ll all get planted somewhere. 70,000 more links in the chain for the ecosystem. 70,000 more chances a pollinator finds the plant they need to survive. 70,000 more root systems anchoring degraded soils. 70,000 more reminders that the earth is home for all of us, including those who cannot speak and are easily ignored.

This is the 5th season my boss has grown native plants for sale at this scale. So there may be as many as 350,000 plants out there that he ushered along into existence. To do all this work, stratifying and hand seeding, takes about two weeks (not including the 90 days the seeds just sit in the fridge). It’s not impossible, there’s very little mystery, once you find your rhythm it’s all very doable. You take the time to tediously tweezer a little gooey clump of seeds into a seedling cell 128 times and that’s one tray. You do that for 20 trays, that takes about 5 hours. You go to lunch. Repeat for two weeks. Your coworkers come in after you and do the same thing. Three people make enough plants to cover about 1.5 acres of land. It’s not changing the world but it is changing my town.

I am yearning again

This high plains mild winter

Beckons me to dangerous places

iowa corn & iowa beans - holga 135 & 400 speed color film - developed at bergen photo & scanned with minolta dimage dual iii

Aerial view of center-pivot (or circular) irrigation farming just east of the Rockies on the Great Plains… I think I calculated that each circle has a diameter of 1/2 mile (about 1 km)… amazing view from the air!

Your journey isn't over yet...

Photo: Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Meeting of the Minds One day, Hosea will find some normal company to hang out from time to time, just not today.