09/22/2026
Summer Recap Part 2
One of the most rewarding things Michael and I have experienced while turning this 100 acre farm from annual row crops, crops like corn, soybeans, and hay which are planted, harvested, tilled each year, to perennial pastures and prairie, a diverse mix of plants and grass with deep roots, is watching the native grassland songbirds come back.
It is all the other benefits, not quite as flashy, that make it possible, starting with the soil. The deep roots improve soil structure which holds water. The soil improves, the plants improve. The plants improve the bugs improve, yes better bugs! Better bugs and the songbirds come and get 'em!
When you start at our barns you'll hear lots of House Sparrows. They are an invasive, nest stealing bird. They eat spilled grain, roost in the barn rafters and p**p on everything.
As you walk out to the pasture you begin to see and hear the tree and barn swallows swooping to catch bugs above the sheep. Near our old oak you can our resident Meadowlark.
Walk up to the prairie and the sound changes again. Only it's not just birds it's the bugs too. A chorus of crickets other other insects make the prairie hum. And it smells different too - herbal almost.
Here we have new birds too, Dickcissels, Savanna Sparrows, Grasshopper Sparrows, Indigo Buntings and Kingbirds.
I even saw a pair of Bobolinks once this summer!
The Audubon Society has come out and done a bird survey the last three years. They see more numbers and more diversity every year.
We try to avoid mowing any of our pastures we aren't grazing until after July, when all these grassland birds are done hatching our their young.
I once heard someone say, your livestock can't jump the fence and find better habitat, but wildlife can. So where there is wildlife, that's where the better environment is.
