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Earth Stewardship 101 - Part Two
by Sheri Dixon Wild turkeys are fickle things. The Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist who was going to do our land assessment had to reschedule our rescheduled (due to inclement weather) appointment because the turkeys that were going to be transplanted arrived early, causing all the TPW biologists to flock to West Texas for the event. (Apparently this is done in the winter, so the turkeys are dormant and can’t peck you while you stuff them into the ground). We finally got to meet Heidi on a sunshiny afternoon, and while Julie had been looking at our place through Agricultural Traditional Farming eyes (and there’s nothing wrong with that), Heidi was seeing it as Wildlife Habitat that would also support a small family farm. I found Heidi by doing an Internet search on establishing native pasture, which steered me to the Texas Upland Game bird Restoration Program. My completely uneducated guess is that every state has Parks and Wildlife biologists who will be eager to talk to you regarding making your homestead a friendly place for wild things to call home.
Starting from the lowest point on our land, we hopped
from marsh mound to marsh mound as she pointed out different types of
ferns and water plants. Heidi explained that as odd as it sounded, the
parks department recommended doing controlled burns on wetlands (?)
because all the mounds that made for such convenient hopping were
actually too old to be very appealing as food for ducks and geese, and
that burning would Surveying the eroding banks of our creek beds, she made notations of plants that would work well holding that precious soil in place - most notably viney things that set down roots every few feet like trumpet vines and passionflowers. Wow. How pretty would THAT be? Peering up at the tall trees lining the creek and spring branch, she said that there were several prime spots for Wood Duck nest boxes and asked if I’d be interested in having her send us a few. WOULD I? WOOD I? You betcha, boy howdy! I’ve only caught brief glimpses of these most beautiful of ducks in the wild, plus the nature documentary showing baby ducks leaping from their nest dozens of feet above the ground (and in almost agonizing slow motion), having the time and air space to execute several acrobatic feats and then land on the leaves and moss once, twice, sometimes bouncing three times before their little webbed tootsies stay in contact with the earth for good and they march with serious intent to the water. In our future orchard and pond area, Heidi picked up one of the spikey balls that do an excellent job of protecting the ground from bare feet (along with the grass stickers) and asked Alec if he knew what it was. Now, Alec’s mother has TOLD him what those are. However, there is a vast, enormous, totally un-spannable difference between your MOM telling you something, and Heidi the uniformed, blond biologist, who drives the new pickup with the seal of Texas on it, telling you something. Alec can now tell you that the spikey ball is the seed of a Sweet Gum tree, can point out a Sweet Gum seedling, and show you the adult parent Sweet Gum tree. Whatever. Moving on to our teensy beginning of a vegetable garden, she noted that the deer have already discovered our two berry bushes (ok, berry twigs) and recommended fencing the garden ASAP. At this point we hadn’t even crossed over the creek to the hay meadow and she asked, “Are you SURE this is only 12 acres?” I assured her that according to the spanking new survey, it IS 12.02 acres. In fact since one of those 12.02 acres includes the county road, two wooden bridges and between two and four feet on the other side of the road, as well as at least another acre encompassing the creek, spring branch and accompanying meandering wooded banks, it’s more like 10 acres, and two of THOSE acres are wetland (or as we refer to it here in East Texas, "bottoms").
We stopped to catch our breath under a giant Sweet Gum tree at the top of the hill (home of Alec's future tree house), our neighbors' 25-acre woods stood behind us, across the tiny county road lay over 400 acres of wild bottoms held by out-of-state owners and a family trust.
Despite being only three miles away from town and
the four-lane highway that runs through it, we heard nothing but the
wind and the birds.
"I go out on a lot of these assessments", Heidi said, looking at me, "and I can tell you this is by far the nicest small acreage I've been on in this area. Little did she realize how dangerously close she was to being hugged by an old hippie chick at that moment.
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encourage new growth and bring in the waterfowl. 
Hiking to the top of
the hill, Heidi pointed out a stand of brambles and wild blackberries,
milkweed (showing Alec the silky seeds in the pods and explaining that
milkweed is the only food eaten by Monarch butterfly caterpillars), and
happily amazed that there was no introduced Bermuda grass. If there had
been, the parks department has a program that will give landowners, for
free, the secret powerful poison to kill the highly invasive Bermuda
grass in readiness to re-establish the natives. I told Heidi that we are
only the third recorded owners of this place and that no one has ever
lived on it, ever.