My Back Yard

On my side of the creek I have most of the ground in garden.  On the other side of the creek is pasture.  I only have 40 acres but between my road and the next road east there is about 80 square miles of tall grass prairie with no roads through it.  I don’t own it but my neighbors are nice enough to let me hike in it. 

   

   To hike the pastures  first I head for the creek to my (I wish it were) lower crossing.

Up out of the creek bed gives  the view of my pasture looking towards the hills.

                           With all the rain we have had this year  the wild flowers are doing quite well.

We are in the tall grass prairie.  On a normal year the grass can get to be 6 to 8 feet tall.  This Big Bluestem is about 6 foot tall now.  It will probably grow a bit more.  I have seen really wet years where the grass grew to almost 12 feet but not very often.

Up the slope leads to our upper pasture.

The first time I was ever here (before I bought the property) I hiked up this hill and found this throne.

The view when sitting on the throne helped me realize that I wanted to live here. 

Looking to the east one can see the outcroppings of rock that preserved this prairie. You can’t farm ground that has shallow soil and big rocks.   That’s why in this area only the creek and river bottoms are farmed.   The rest is the only remaining tall grass prairie left in the USA.  Before white immigrants came the tall grass prairie covered about 100 million acres or more.  Now there is still about 4 million acres.  A narrow band of hills running from Oklahoma almost to Nebraska

I’m lucky enough to get to live in the middle of it.