The Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance was lucky to attend the Shawano County Conservation Partners – Soil & Water Conservation Tour on August 2nd, 2018. A dreary morning, with some light rain, followed the group through the day but it did not take away from the uniqueness of each area visited. The tour group was made up of individuals from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR), Shawano County, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, and local farmers.
The first site visited was a shoreline restoration and rain garden project completed on a property along Lower Red Lake in the Town of Gresham. As you turn the corner to get to the shoreline previously owned by Art and Mary, you pass a baseball field with a view of the lake. The site was in full bloom with black-eye Susans, cone flowers, and butterfly weed and covers 105 feet of the 135-foot shoreline. The area previously contained muskrat damage as well as lawn to the edge of the shore. While there is only a slight slope in the landscape, the previous lack of vegetation near the water’s edge had the potential to cause run-off related problems.
Art and Mary, also, decided to continue to help water infiltrate the ground before it makes it way to Lower Red Lake. They installed two rain gardens around their deck for downspout water collection. The two basins each receive one downspout and, during a storm event, may only have standing water for upwards of two hours. That’s a heck of a lot better than the standing water, and the potential mosquitoes, you may see in other spots on the landscape after a rain storm.
Both the shoreline and rain garden projects have a beautiful rock border, giving the effect of a manageable flower garden while being very functional pieces of the landscape.
The shoreline restoration and rain garden project are switching hands during August. When asked how this will affect the longevity of the projects, Scott Frank explained that any new owner cannot remove the projects until 2026. By then, we all hope they will enjoy the work that Art and Mary put in.
Our tour then continued to a large wetland restoration project by the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. This 40-acre site was once a farm field that used drainage tile to assist with water infiltration. Stockbridge-Munsee, along with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI), helped with funding for the design of the project, the removing of the drain tiles, and the building of the wetland.
Constuction was started on the site during 2010 but had to be finished in 2011 due to the finding of a second set of drain tiles that were unbeknownst to the group, after their first exploratory trench. Since then, the site has been flourishing. There are a couple ponds throughout the site and the community has worked to establish wild rice within said ponds. Trumpeter swans have even stopped to use the site during their migration.
The bergamot, a nice plant to make tea out of when sick, was blooming throughout as we walked across the berms created during construction of the site. The site’s
overseers explained that thistle has been a big problem for the site, but they have tried their best to manage it with hand-cutting and herbicides. They currently use mowing to manage and maintain the site but would like to move towards periodic burns to help with plant regeneration, nutrient recycling, as well as control of that pesky thistle.
This area of the state has high levels of nitrate within the water, due to over fertilization in the past. The hope is that this wetland restoration will promote water infiltration to eventually help decrease the nitrates within the groundwater.
From there, our tour shifted gears to the totally different world of CAFOs. We visited Matsche Farms, Inc., in the Town of Almon, to learn about their new, as of 2016, rotary milker as well as their efforts to recycle as much water as possible. What started as a family farm in 1956, the Matsche Farm started expanding in the 1980s and has continued to expand ever since. Their ability to pamper their cows as well as efficiently milk and reuse water has made them one of the largest farms within the state of Wisconsin.
Still very focused on family, the Matsche Farm currently has two owners as they wait for the next generation of family farmers to grow-up. The space that allows for an aerial view of the rotating milking robot doubles as a play area for our tour guide’s children. The 80-cow rotary was fascinating to watch while Jamie Patton (UW-Extension) explained to me that some of the cows get back on the machine just to take another ride around after they are milked.
The Matsche Farm is currently using high capacity wells to get their water, so they do their best to reuse as much of it as possible. Their next step is to incorporate water recycling, to allow them to decrease the amount they are pulling as much out of the ground. Carrie Matsche discussed they have looked at many options but they haven’t found one yet that can withstand the Wisconsin winters.
Steve, the farm’s agronomist, explained their use of alfalfa as cover crop as well as their use of two-mile-long hose to decrease dust on the gravel roads. They have also made sure they are OSHA compliant.
It could be seen that Matsche Farm is doing everything they can be help protect environment they are farming as well as the people within the farm and the surrounding community.
The next stop on our tour of Shawano County was a 300-acre area that was willed to the WDNR to be converted from cropland to forest.
The area was designated a public statewide habitat area in 2011 and an interim forestry management plan was put into place, allowing restoration work to commence. The site is near the Embarrass River, which contains brook trout. The section of old growth forest near the river, never being converted to cropland, contains great diversity. To maintain the diversity already present, hardwood trees have been planted as well as spruce and white pine, creating a multiple layer forest.
Deer herbivory has been the biggest problem, so far, faced by the site managers. While completing their initial management of trees throughout the site, trees that may have otherwise been removed were marked to be cut into 10-foot-high fence posts. This allowed for a permanent fence to be put into place using existing lumber. This fence has worked wonders for keeping deer out and allowing the trees to grow tall enough that they will survive a winter full of hungry deer.
Overall, Shawano County has an average of approximately 50 deer per square mile during the winter. The eastern side of the state usually contains less, while the western side can have up to as many as 75 deer per square mile. Due to deer’s voracious nature, the site managers had to put up another, more temporary fence, around a different section on their site. It was previously assumed that the trees and other plants, in the section, were tall enough to make it through the winter without the deer eating everything. The snowstorm in April 2018 may have caused some frenzied eating, hopefully the temporary fence can indeed stay temporary.
After a jam-packed morning, it was finally time for lunch. The tour stopped at Voelz Park, which is alongside Wilson Lake. The group was provided a lunch of subs and cookies, amicably called prison food by many of the county employees. During lunch, the pavilion was explored as well as the lake. My group discussed trapping, hunting, and delicious recipes for snapping turtle soup and sturgeon caviar.
After lunch, Scott Frank (Shawano County) showed our group around the site and explained the forest management techniques being used. Voelz Park is a 60-acre site that was previously logged and was acquired by the county about 15 years ago. This site is special because, unlike the previously visited forest management site, there has been little deer herbivory allowing for all three ages of tree regeneration to be present. The county has been working with a private forester to use uneven aged select harvest as a management tool for the site. The private forester has only used chainsaws to log the area and have created canopy gaps to allow for younger trees to get light.
To make managing the site efficient, the county has used previously established logging roads to bring equipment and logs in and out. These roads also double as hiking trails throughout the site. Some trails were also added/improved for ease of hiking. This is one of 14 sites like it throughout the county and the main goals are increased and improved wildlife and recreation. A small ephemeral pond was empty while our group was there, but I am planning a return trip to check out the site in spring.
Only 30 minutes behind schedule we made our way to our second to last stop for the day. This was, again, another different and interesting site. Wilson Creek Orchard has been working hard, in recent years, to restore a portion of productive trout stream. Wilson Creek starts about 4 miles north of Wilson Creek Orchard and feeds the Middle Branch of the Embarrass River. This particular section of the creek was previously altered to allow farm equipment to cross for hay harvest. The site would flood every year due to a backup of the creek during large percipitation events.
After ap
plying for the appropriate funds, the site was renovated on September 5th, a mere 10 days before the work could no longer be completed for the season. Backhoes were used to remove the previously placed debris and replace it with a variety of sizes of ro
cks to establish a strong path for farm equipment to cross but also allow the river to resume running its natural course.
The Wilson Creek Orchard has also completed 12 acres of prairie restoration to increase pollinators in the area. Operating as an orchard, many pollinators are needed to maintain the crop and due to their prairie restoration work, the orchard does not need to keep bees on their land. They also have started growing spruce to act as a wind break. As the area continues to mature, the landscape will only become more beautiful and natural while remaining a functioning farm.,
The final stop of the day was Middle Branch Rd, LLC in the Town of Morris. While probably the least aesthetically diverse site along the tour, it was a very interesting stop. In 2009, the WDNR was called to this site to issue a notice of discharge. The site was previously bare dirt and rocks that was grazed by heifers. The manure and top-soil run-off created a pollution problem for the Embarrass River. The farm started working the WDNR and Shawano County, in the fall of 2009, to implement grass waterways and buffer strips along the river. In the summer of 2014, a waste storage area and two waste transfers were added, an earthen lot was abandoned, and a new barn was added to continue to decrease the run-off into the Embarrass River.
A concrete path was created to move the heifers from barn to barn that doubles as a way to make manure run-off a point source to the large manure pit on site. There are currently about 650 cows, aged 12 months to 23 months, at the farm. There are tubing and pumps throughout the property that transfer the manure, below ground, to the manure pit. Due to the topography of the farm, it was hard to turn the earthen lots into seeded areas but through perseverance, the water quality in the Embarrass River, along the farm, has improved. The site, previously a dairy farm, has become a custom heifer raising farm.
The young cows definitely looked happy and as much as California likes to say that they are the only owners of happy cows, I would have to say Wisconsin has the happiest cows I have seen.
The tour concluded at this point and we all traveled back to Shawano County Courthouse as the day finally started to warm up. I am already looking forward to next year’s tour and am hoping that a project that Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance assists with could be included.
Questions? Contact Emily Henrigillis, Watershed Coordinator for Shawano and Menominee Counties, at (920) 851-6472 or emily@fwwa.org.
The Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance is an independent nonprofit organization that identifies and advocates effective policies and actions that protect, restore, and sustain water resources in the Fox-Wolf River Basin.
