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Today marked our third day without Stuart. But our arrival to a Stuart-less Hjelm house was made brighter by the appearance of a tiger salamander! (In Roxy’s absence, we’ve noticed quite a bounty of wildlife roaming the area.) Katherine, who has known since the age of 8 that the majestic and bafflingly cute creature is her favorite animal, was especially excited. After an extended photo op and cuddling session, the team finally managed to set the salamander back down and get on with the day’s work. We all agreed that he was an upgrade from Ricky.
 Katherine holds her first tiger salamander! Obvious soulmates. We spent most of the morning doing demography at the Rileys. Despite some grief and hardship caused by the abundance of mowed plants, we finished strong and well before lunch. Back at the Hjelm house we set to work cleaning and organizing, dealing with clutter that had been neglected for too long. Things got really exciting when Amy dug out the label maker. We spent lunch dreaming up big plans to label everything in the Hjelm house–in between fighting off the hornets.
 The Hjelm house is looking pretty good. After lunch, Will and I collected tissue samples from the Cirsium hillii at Hegg (that will be used to determine if the plants are distinct or actually one large plant) while Abby and Danny collected tissue from the angustifolia plants nearby the pallida restoration. Meanwhile, Katherine, Ali, and Amy stayed back to touch up the paint jobs on the heads for q3.
Our work done at Hegg, we headed back to Hjelm and packed away the tissue samples to dry out. We printed labels for the samples, but unfortunately the label maker ran out of paper before we could get on with the rest of our big labeling plans. Oh well. We’ll have to continue to do our best navigating the house with its very average level of labeling.
 Heads for q3 wait in p1 to be harvested.
Today was my last day of work for this summer. It was also Hattie and Per’s last days. They go back to school next week! It’s crazy how much this summer has flown by! To inaugurate my last day we started with rechecking demography records. We then had our last lunch with the Wagenius’ as a whole. They are headed off towards Chicago where Gretel, Hattie, and Per will be staying for the fall (Gretel will be back and forth). The afternoon became warmer and the sky cleared up. The rest of the team got trained in on how to harvest Echinacea heads in P1. I stayed behind to finish up some work on my independent project. At the end of the day Abby and Will left without saying goodbye (I wish you both good luck in the new school year and hope that excellent times come your way). But out biggest trouble was figuring out what to do with Ricarda/Ricardo/Erica/Rica/Ric/Rick/Richard/Ricky. We debated whether to let him go on the grape vine outside the Hjelm house or to bring him back to town hall. We ultimately decided to let Ricarda/Ricardo/Erica/Rica/Ric/Rick/Richard/Ricky go on the grape vine outside of the Hjelm house.
We then headed home for our usual Friday night pizza making session! We made wonderful veggie, sausage and green pepper, and pineapple pizzas! We then went outside to watch the sunset through the smoke from the wildfires in Montana and Washington. The sun was a beautiful orb of orange as it set over the soybean fields to the west of K-town. Then someone put Kent in the shower.
 Well hello there Kent!
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On Tuesday we harvested 3 bags of heads from P1, 1 bag and 2 full egg cartons from P2
Today we trekked or “stalk whacked” through a corn field behind P1 to visit the site Kruzmarks
Where we found a sad looking Echinacea just peeking out from between blades of brome grass
where there was an interesting amalgamation of “ecosystems”… native prairie remnants, a pot hole, non-native conifer forest, and a monoculture of corn
Finally, we were able to finish out the day (Stuart’s last this season) at Staffenson. It was beautiful. White aster is blooming along with showy goldenrod and helianthus. Purple asters and gentians have maintained the purple hue as liatris is finishing blossoming.
As summer draws to a close, this past weekend was spent doing what anyone does at the end of growing seasons, canning and harvesting Echinacea heads.
We’ve been a part of a CSA during the end of the summer, and have been delighted by the abundance and deliciousness of the produce we have received so far. The farm, Lakeside Prairie farm (http://www.lakesideprairiefarm.com), believes in sharing the abundance of the harvest. We have been able to come out a couple times over the season and harvest whatever they have extra of as part of our CSA. This is where I got beets and green beans to can, as well as cucumbers to pickle and lots of cabbage for sauerkraut.
Pictured below, Maureen and Elizabeth enjoying the plentiful harvest at the farm.
To bring the Wagenius’s canning pot back home I retrieve it via bike, which earned me some puzzled stares from drivers on the road.
Along with canning, we’re also occupied with Echinacea head harvesting. So far we’ve done a first round of harvesting at Staffanson Prairie Preserve and a third round at P1 and P2. We see more canning and head harvesting in our near future.
-Claire
While gazing up from measuring Dichanthelium today I spotted a large patch of fruiting sumac. The past summer I had been itching to make some sumac lemonade, and the abundant stand of smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) presented an irresistible opportunity!
After a quick and easy harvest of the fruits (called drupes) that are found in compound clusters at the end of branches, some team members and I returned for brewing.
There are many methods for making sumac-ade on the world wide web. The variables are sumac berries on or off the stem, the temperature of the water, and the duration of the soaking time. I decided to try out two at first, both leaving the fruits on the stem, one adding cold water and a longer wait time, and one where hot water is added and steeping only lasts 30 minutes. (Sumac is pictured below, jars thanks to Gretel and Stuart)
After many test rounds, two taste testers and I agree that the colder, longer brew time results in a more palatable, tart, and less bitter final product. The hotter, shorter method heats up the stems and causes them to release bitter sap. (In the picture below the sumac in the jar on the right was submerged in boiling water, and it is actively releasing sap).
Future projects include sumac-ade popsicles, as well as fruit drying for winter use and spice grinding.
Shelby, one of the PhD students working with Ruth, departed for St. Paul today. So only Katherine and I are left in the big town hall. I guess we poured ourselves into fieldwork as we got a lot done today. In the morning we finished demo rechecks at KJs, then flagged seedling refind plants at East of Town Hall. We returned to Hjelm House for lunch, then set out for Nessman, finished seedling refinds there (total 6 plants). We also finished seedling refinds at East of Town Hall (5 plants). From there we headed to Aanenson for demo rechecks, and got almost halfway done! We also had fun taking photos of prairie, ourselves and cows at Aanenson.
Hey folks, it’s Maria. Sorry for late reporting – the post I had written earlier was lost due to internet fuss, and I didn’t have the heart to rewrite everything again. So, unfortunately, you’ll have to settle for a concise report.
And yes this time I’m writing in a text editor first before copying and pasting onto the flog.
Friday was Kelly and Jill’s last day.
In the morning we finished demo rechecks with 2 teams at Staffanson, while Kelly finished harvesting her heads.
After lunch Stuart went to K-town to pay rent and utilities, while the rest of us did our projects/ cleanup. When Stuart returned we went to Staffanson for seedling refinds. Stuart used the GPS to find and flag focal plants, and did a few sling refinds. Katherine and Kelly resolved a particularly complex circle – the plant by the road. Jill and I worked on a few simpler circles.
We celebrated the end of the day with rootbeer floats. Dinner was pizza and supper was black bean brownies, sending off Kelly and Jill with a flourish.
Photo courtesy of Katherine.
p/s 31 August is Malaysia’s National Day! Selamat Hari Kebangsaan to all fellow Malaysians 🙂
Maria here.
Woke up this morning to some rumbling thunder in the distance.
The skies looked grey, but nothing too bad. We discussed how to do all the things we had to do at Staffanson: demo rechecks, harvesting Kelly’s Echinacea heads, removing twist-ties and flags from heads/plants that Kelly won’t harvest, figuring out 6 nearest neighboring Echinacea plants to each of Kelly’s plants that was going to be harvested, and pulling up ant traps. Whew!
We did some individual project stuff from 9 to 11am. Jill finished up sorting ants. Katherine and Kelly went to NWLF and NNWLF to pull ant traps and remove twist-ties from heads. I was in CG 99 South, measuring Dichanthelium from my maternal lines experiment, and got 4 rows done before 11am.
We set off for Staffanson, all 5 of us cozy in the truck. The corn and perennial weeds greeted us happily on the dirt road leading into Staffanson. Jill went to pull up her ant traps and then helped Kelly to remove twist-ties and flags. Stuart, Katherine and I brought out Sulu (the GPS), R2D2 (the netbook), and paper datasheets, and tried to figure out how to determine the 6 nearest neighbors to Kelly’s harvest heads. We concluded that the most efficient way was to use R to determine the 6 mapped nearest neighbors, obtain the distance to the 6th neighbor, then use a reel tape to measure out the distance and search to see if there are any other nearest neighbors closer than the mapped one. We would have to do it another day.
Here’s a fancy spider Stuart found on his knee today. Photo courtesy of Katherine.
On the way back for lunch, Stuart and Kelly belabored the pros and cons of color coding the top and bottom GPS poles.
After lunch we set out for Staffanson again. Kelly worked solo to harvest heads, while the four of us split into 2 teams (1 GPS + 1 clipboard) to do demo rechecks. After a little while, it started sprinkling and we heard some distant portentous thunder, so we turned back and left Staffanson.
Back at Hjelm House, Jill and Katherine cleaned up the ant traps and went to pull ant traps at Nessman. Stuart demonstrated dissecting achenes from Echinacea heads for Kelly, so she can dissect the heads she harvested when she’s at Carleton.
Lastly, as requested by Stuart, the “Sync Your Visor” song I came up with as an alternative to “Sync, Sync, Visor Sync”:
(To the tune of “Oh My Darling Clementine”)
Sync your visor, sync your visor,
Sync your visor everytime;
Data lost and gone forever
Don’t be sorry – sync it now!
Any suggestions for improvement are much welcome.
Hey folks, Maria here.
This is our 3rd day without Stuart, and I must say we have been quite productive.
We continued seedling refinds at EELR this morning. Then we discovered that we had not yet flagged many focal plants, probably because they had not been flagged during demo/Katherine’s aphid survey. So we returned to Hjelm House, and decided to do demo rechecks at Railroad Crossing and North Railroad Crossing instead. We finished in time for lunch!
In the afternoon, we used the GPS to stake and flagged focal plants for seedling refinds, and did seedling refinds. Jill and Kelly got quite a perplexing circle, where seedlings didn’t match up with maps. They found that the measurements were useful, but the map as a visual aid was not.
Around 3.15 we went back to Hjelm House to work on individual projects. I measured 3 rows of Dichanthelium plants that were planted in 99 South Common Garden. There was one super-tall plant – ~15cm, as compared to most other plants that were 1-3cm tall. Katherine and Jill sorted ants.
Karen did her crossing experiment at Hegg Lake all day. Some Helianthus heads are done flowering, and she is quite pleased about that.
Oh, and the tick eggs hatched today! Almost everyone was quite flabbergasted at the sight of baby ticks splashed on the walls of the plastic jar that we kept them in. Ughh…
Here’s an unrelated picture from July, the day Lydia and Shona GPSed/helped measure my Dichanthelium plants at Hegg Lake. I was taking a picture of Lydia taking a picture of Shona taking a picture of a plant 😀 Pic-ception!
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