Pulling up to these two “empty” fields after crossing Highway 55, I think that everyone in our group immediately felt let down by what seemed to be a run-down patch of farmland split by an equally run-down gravel road. It took about 5 minutes of investigation which, aided by our Visors, encouraged us to paint ourselves’ a picture. What jumped out to me initially was that the West side of the plot housed significantly shorter plants as a whole compared to the East. With a little bit of prompting from our Visors, this led us to the conclusion that the West field had been through a burn in the recent past. We did end up finding a few Echinacea plants, as well as other plants we were introduced to earlier in the day, namely; Panic Grass, Lead Plant, Brome Grass, and Golden Alexander. (Our unknown plant was an orange flower we found on both sides of the plot)
After completing our Visor document and map (pictured below) for the West plot, we turned to the East. The East plot clearly hadn’t seen fire in a long time. It was overgrown and we quickly were able to identify many of the same plants we found on the West corner. Echinacea, Big Blue Stem, Lead plant, Hawkweed, and a bunch of Army Worms. I thought this was a better test of our skill to pick out the plants in an environment with more competition between producers. After finishing the other section of the map, we walked up and down the gravel road to explore the farthest reaches of the fields. Overall I think we all enjoyed working in a new place, and got the chance to flex our foraging skills.
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