Nebraskaland

38 NEBRASKAland • MARCH 2015 I have always wanted a prairie of my own to care for and manage. Lo and behold, five years ago I was fortunate enough to marry Grace Kostel, a fellow botanist, prairie enthusiast and owner of a 43-acre tallgrass prairie on her family farm in Charles Mix County, South Dakota – a short three-hour drive north from our home in Aurora. Like most tallgrass remnants, our prairie had suffered its share of hard use since the land was settled and was in rather poor condition when Grace purchased the farm a few years earlier from her mother Lucille. Grace had long wished to restore the wildflower-laced grassland of her youth and together we decided to undertake the task. The Prairie's History The prairie has been in Grace's family since 1895 when her great-grandparents, Anna and Ferdinand Wagner, homesteaded the land. The young Czech couple began their marriage in a sod house placed on the prairie above a small creek. Anna described the soddy to her granddaughter Lucille as "cramped, dirty and at times mouse- and snake- infested." It was their home for three years, until Anna convinced Ferdinand to build a more livable wood frame house on a rise across the creek. Like all homesteaders, early on they labored at breaking sod on their 160-acre plot of grass using a horse-drawn plow. They grew mainly corn, but also pumpkins, to feed their livestock and themselves. Our prairie survived as a pasture near the house for the work horses and a few milk cows and beef cattle. Anna and Ferdinand worked the farm until after WWII when their middle son Henry took over. In 1961, after her husband was killed in a farm accident, Lucille, along with Grace and her younger sister, moved onto the farm with their bachelor Uncle Henry. The prairie became Grace's playground where she rode horses, chased butterflies amid the tall grass and caught tadpoles from old, rain-soaked buffalo wallows. On walks in the prairie, Henry would pick young buffalo bean pods or dig wild onion bulbs for Grace to eat. He taught her the names of prairie plants and, most importantly, instilled in her his love of prairie. In the late 1970s, following the advice of the county extension agent, Henry seeded several grazing-stressed areas of the prairie to smooth brome, a popular European forage grass. "He thought he was just adding another grass to his prairie," said Grace. "Uncle Henry had no idea how aggressive brome was." In a few years he was regretting his decision and helplessly watched the as the brome spread Restoring a Family Prairie Returning wildfl owers and wildlife to the land Text and photos by Gerry Steinauer, Botanist A diversity of seeded native wildflowers and grasses now grow in a former smooth brome stand near where the sod house once stood.

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