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Today, Team Echinacea was the smallest it’s been so far this summer! With Stuart in Chicago for the week, and Abby and Matt starting off the school year over in Barrett, only Danny, Amy, Ali and I will be holding down the fort for the next few days. This morning, we headed to KJs to do seedling refinds. Despite the fact that it’s one of our smallest sites, KJs has far more focal plants for seedling searches than any other site, so we had our work cut out for us. Trying to find the seedlings we’re supposed to track among the hundreds of other seedlings present was pretty frustrating at times, but we persevered, and almost finished the site before lunchtime! After a quick lunch, we visited the remnants and Hegg Lake to harvest Echinacea heads. The good news is that the harvest at Staffanson was finished today! But the bad news is that all of East Riley and about half of Riley has been mowed. Tags are strewn all over the roadside, and many of the plants are gone. Luckily, only one of the plants we were planning to harvest was lost. At the end of the day, the four of us met up at Hegg to take demography data for two of the recruitment plots. We tagged quite a few new flowering plants!
 A sad and lonely lunch table 🙁
Happy Labor Day from Team Echinacea! We made the most of the long weekend by doing lots of traveling. Danny went to Evanston to move things in before he moves there in a few weeks. He brought lots of the heads we harvested last week in an effort to keep up with the volunteer’s fast-paced processing of our harvest thus far! Meanwhile, Katherine, Ali, and I went up to Ely, MN to visit a friend of mine who works at a camp up there. The camp was hosting a music festival this weekend with artists like Lucy Michelle, Jeremy Messersmith, and The Pines. We were very excited to see the rocks, trees, and varied topography of the region which were all very different from what we’ve been experiencing in Douglas County. On Saturday morning we went mushroom hunting with Jeremy Messersmith, who happens to be a big mushroom enthusiast. Who knew! Later that day we went paddle-boarding and kayaking on the lake, which was really fun. Then we watched the concert! Super good. We capped off the day with some square-dancing with our fellow concert-goers. A great day. Sunday was similar, with more awesome music in the afternoon. We drove back today taking a scenic route through some good Minnesota towns I hadn’t been to before like Hibbing, Grand Rapids, and Akeley, which is the birthplace of Paul Bunyan. Danny is still on his way back from Chicago now. Stuart will be working at the Garden for the week, so it’s just us kids here in charge of getting everything done this week. There’ll be lots of harvesting to do in the experimental plots as well as plenty of refinding the seedlings that Team Echinacea has kept track of over the past 6 years in the remnants.
Us and Paul
This morning we split into 2 groups. Amy and Danny headed over to KJs. They staked points and are now ready for seedling refinds sometime next week. Ali, Katherine and I harvested Q3 heads. We got 40 in all! It sprinkled a little this morning, so the heads were a little damp. We set up a drying station for them.
 Ali and Katherine with the beautiful Q3 heads!
Lots of colors! After everyone finished up that, Stuart taught Ali and Katherine how to dissect the harvested heads.
 Stuart demonstrates proper dissection methods. Ali and Katherine practice dissection while Danny does absolutely nothing productive. It sprinkled a little after lunch, so we waited until about 2:00 to head out to P2 to harvest. Although we started a little later than we would have liked, we still finished up in about 2 hours! A lot faster than yesterdays P1 harvest!
To celebrate a week full of hard work and fun, we had root beer floats! Unfortunately, today was my last day with Team Echinacea. I start my senior year at West Central Area High School on Tuesday. I had a great summer and I learned so much! 🙂
This morning, the team spent some time catching up on smaller activities. Matt and Katherine worked on their website which we all eagerly anticipate, Danny and Amy planned for the rest of their year with the Echinacea Project, and Abby and I worked on the aphid project. I tried to channel Gina as I took her place as Abby’s partner, but must admit defeat- that girl is irreplaceable and very missed!
We spent the rest of the morning at East Elk Lake Road doing seedling refinds. We’re getting the hang of this new protocol, and it’s exciting to try to see maps that 2011 team members have made, and follow their tracks to find the tiny echinacea plants.
After lunch, we had a lot of harvesting to do! We teamed up and powered through the afternoon, motivated by visions of puppies in our future. Sure enough, as we approached town hall we saw the bundle of white puppies that our neighbors have outside their house! We have all agreed that they are the most wonderful thing to have ever existed ever ever. We stopped for a quick snuggle before going home to make pizza!
We started out the day learning about seedling refinds. We aren’t looking for any more new seedlings this year but trying to find plants that were seedlings between 2007 and 2013. It was difficult at first but we all go the hang of it pretty quickly.
 Stuart helps Katherine and Abby with a tricky bunch of seedlings At lunch, we heard Abby and Matt give us previews of talks that they’re going to give during the year. After lunch we went to a new site and it was an adventure and a half! Or at least it was new for most of this summer’s team. First we walked along the road and enjoyed the sunny day. Next, we trekked across a soybean field that looks like it’s going to have a good crop this year but it was really hard for us to get through. Finally we walked through some trees to discover a small paradise hidden between fields. We did demography on and surveyed all the flowering plants that we could find. We found 20 plants this year which, according to Stuart, is a lot less than they’ve seen in previous years. We ended the day with a delicious refrigerated watermelon that was pulled from the garden yesterday.
Up the road Across the field The lush hillside
September 1 was a day full of harvesting heads, and collecting data. Now that doesn’t sound so exciting until you are put into a small pick-up truck with a driver who is new to a manual transmission! I had the pleasure of yet again defying death while instructing two team members (you know who you are!) on how to work the clutch and make the truck go. There was a few body shaking jerks to the system and an attempt to make a new road, but I made it back alive each time, and so did all the harvested echinacea! All kidding aside though, both will be proficient gear jammers by summers end! Who knew that studying echinacea would be exciting in so many different ways!
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