Prairie Preserve

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Mechanical hog eats brush

Our neighbor, Dave Alburty, helped us find a used John Deere and a brush hog-style rotary mower. My husband, though brilliant at resolving complex software issues, hadn’t operated machinery any larger than our lawn mower for at least 20 years.

On a blistering day in July, Dave instructed David on the finer points of tractor operation and brush hogging. Then he sent David out onto an overgrown field to practice his new skills. I stood shading my eyes with one hand, sweat trickling down my face, watching as David made his first attempt at moving the mower evenly over the ground while keeping the tractor on course.

He was slow at first, but picked up speed and soon was going at a rapid pace. The mower made a terrible grinding sound whenever it met with rocky terrain. David adjusted the height to clear rocks and kept going. I winced as he moved the tractor towards a line of trees at the field’s edge.

“He’ll have to be careful when he does that,” Dave said. “Farmers sometimes get knocked right off the tractor when they think they have room to go under low-hanging branches. That’s if they’re lucky”

“What if they’re unlucky?” I asked. Dave, unsmiling, made a quick slashing motion across his throat. Fortunately, David finished mowing the field without injury and after years of practice, he now hops on the tractor as if he’d been doing this sort of thing all his life. 

Creature comforts

For now, a tent is our only shelter when we stay at South Fork, though David did construct an outhouse. “Mandatory,” I told him. “I’m willing to rough it, but some things are not negotiable.”

I thought of myself as pretty outdoorsy even before we acquired the land, but a snake that made its way into our campsite one day made me realize my appreciation for nature had its limits. I saw David pointing and then heard him call out, “Kathy, do you think that’s a copperhead?”

I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw the snake, probably 18 inches long. It was stretched out on a path in front of our tent, head raised and body motionless. Sunlight glinted off coppery splotches on its skin. It seemed to know it had been spotted and stayed perfectly still as we tried to decide what to do.

David looked at me. “Shall I kill it?”

I hesitated. The snake was still frozen, unmoving. Until that moment, I had embraced our land with complete enthusiasm, willing to respect even the lowliest creatures that inhabited the prairie. But, we walked that path dozens of times a day. What if the next time we encountered the snake, it decided to strike?

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