Using Land To Its Suitability

By: Mitch Kezar

Darin and Jessica Michalski wade through big bluestem on a pasture just south of their ranch house near Willow Lake in east-central South Dakota. Bees buzz the tops of the bluestem’s signature turkey track seed pods as the couple’s boots punch through the thick grass wall. A whitetail doe bounds ahead, wheezing at their approach. Blue-winged teal lift off from a slough at the pasture’s edge then circle to land again, strafing the cattails, their wing tips whistling like little fighter jets.

BEFORE THE PLOW
Darin scans the ocean of undulating grass. “What inspires me about this prairie is thinking about what it used to be like.” Their land sits on the edge of the tall grass and short grass prairie in South Dakota. “If I could re-create it and see what it was like before the plow when buffalo roamed here, that would be so neat,” he says.

The loss of grasslands impacts humans on a global scale, says Jessica. “It may not make the news as does the loss of the rain forest, for example, but the breaking of lands in the Dakotas alone has skyrocketed in the last couple years due to crop commodity prices. We need to remember that this land was native grassland when we inhabited it, and that it serves a huge purpose in our global ecosystem.”

Darin agrees. “Everybody needs to make a buck to keep the banker happy, but we need to look way down the road to see what’s going to be left here for generations behind us.”

Kicking the soft ground beneath his feet, erosion is the topic. “When we get a 7-inch downpour and I look in my ditch and see there’s no mud flowing, the water is clean and clear, that’s a good thing. When we get a 50-mph wind, I just thank my neighbors for their dirt,” he says, grinning. “That’s as close as I ever want to get to seeing what it must have been like in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. I’m not bragging, but our ground looks like it is supposed to.”