Stewardship and Restoration in Central Minnesota

Written by Mary Gold, Upstream Care for Place Fellow

Experiencing awe and wonder while in nature is a wonderful gift and a requirement for a life well lived. As I walk through our 100-acre woodland in central Minnesota I am filled with gratitude. I am the 6th owner of our land.

One family owned it in the 1920’s, a time when many folks were unemployed. They cut down every White Pine to sell to the loggers. This gave the family money for their property taxes. When there were no more pines to harvest, they became delinquent in their property taxes and lost the land they loved, to the state of Minnesota.

Years later, a new owner built a small home on the property. When a neighbor needed somewhere to dump construction debris, they volunteered a piece of the land I now own. This was the start of the neighborhood dump which I inherited.

No one set out to desecrate my beautiful garden-scape, but that is what happened. Soon one heap of trash led to another…..to another and another. Someone in the 1940’s drove a car deep into the woods and abandoned it to time. Nature did its best to rust and decay the frame leaving old tires and the battery left to tell its story.

Caring for my land is one way to express gratitude for this beautiful place, my home, Minnesota. Cleaning up 100 years of garbage became an act of love for me. It is a love that has cost me blood, sweat and tears, my time, over $2,000 (so far), 2 trips to the emergency room (don’t ask), and friendship with the neighbors.

I have collected 250 tires and brought them to the Crow Wing County landfill for recycling. Back in the day when they were left in my garden, no one had ever heard of recycling.

Next it was time to haul out the scrap metal. I found car parts, bed springs, furnace parts, old maple syruping metal drums, metal roofing and too much rusty metal to mention. All to the dump it went to be recycled.

I hired an excavator to fill two 8-foot by 20-foot dumpsters with chunks of concrete from an old foundation, and parts of an old mobile home…including toilets and a kitchen sink!

The excavator did a great job, but he still left me with 10 SUV truckloads of 40-pound concrete chunks that I had to dig out with a shovel and haul to the landfill. At the landfill, I put them in a concrete-only area where I am hoping they will be chipped up and recycled into a roadbed.

Once I came to the landfill exhausted and with 1000 pounds of concrete in the back of my SUV that I didn’t have the energy to unload. I offered to pay the attendant $50.00 to unload my truck for me. This young man unloaded the concrete chunks for me and wouldn’t take my tip.

“Just pay it forward.” He said. I promised him that I would.

With a 100-foot by 40-foot area now cleaned up, it was time to till the soil and even things out. Next, we planted a native flower and grass seed mixture. Three years later we have a wildflower garden with Black Eyed Susans, native grasses, native Blue Iris, lots of Stinging Smart Weed, and tall invasive grasses that are trying to take over.

Aldo Leopold, in his classic book “A Sand County Almanac” writes:

“Land is a community that we belong to….it deserves love and respect. Landowners are imbued with responsibilities to the land and to each other.” Good stewardship and restoration of land to its native beginnings are the essence of his ‘land ethic’.

My garden may not be awe-inspiring yet, but it sure isn’t awful anymore! I am doing my best to be a good steward of the land I am blessed to be a part of. Aldo would be proud!

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