22 Nebraskaland • March 2020
Our Family
Prairie
A simple quarter section of land contains a
legacy of family memories and conservation
Story and Photos by Chris Helzer
B
ack in 1960, my grandpa bought
160 acres of farm land near
Stockham – a couple miles north
of the farmstead where he and my
grandma were raising my dad and his
two sisters. Most of the parcel was in
cultivation, except for several small
draws (totaling about 26 acres) where
isolated patches of native prairie
persisted. According to family lore,
much of the land was in pretty tough
shape, with a lot of topsoil erosion
from the hilly ground, and most of
it probably shouldn't ever have been
farmed. Grandpa bought it because
he needed grass for his cow herd and
immediately enrolled it in the Soil
Conservation Service's Great Plains
Conservation Program. Using that
cost-share money, Grandpa reseeded
all but 49 acres to grass and installed a
dam for a livestock pond.
My grandma kept meticulous
records, so we still have the 1962
receipts for grass seed, and I can tell
you that the seed mix consisted of big
bluestem, indiangrass, switchgrass,
little bluestem, sideoats grama,
western wheatgrass and a little blue
grama. I even have a newspaper
clipping about the project, including
a photo of my grandpa standing in
his newly established pasture. My dad
used the northwestern corner of the
land for a 4-H project, planting rows of
redcedar, Russian olive and multiflora
rose behind the dam, which he insisted
was considered good wildlife habitat
restoration at the time. Grandpa and
Paul Helzer (the author's Grandfather) stands in the newly established
grassland in 1964.
G.
P.
REMMENGA,
USDA-SOIL
CONSERVATION
SERVICE
