The meadow
Today we call Mom’s meadow a native prairie, just over 28 acres, surveyed by The Nature Conservancy, deemed to have international importance, and protected legally, in perpetuity, by a conservation easement. But in her 1940s childhood, it was a wildflower meadow, her place to go on the farm where she grew up in a 19th-century setting, without running water, electricity or a telephone, though her parents were college-educated teachers. They had a farm—the full family farm, with dairy cattle and chickens and other animals, crops and a vegetable garden.
When her parents were searching for a place, they looked at many, but this one had a special hay meadow. “This is a native prairie,” my grandmother told my grandfather. “This will sustain us forever.” The meadow was my mother’s place to walk and observe and learn, a place where she never knew loneliness or boredom, a place she fell in love with.
This place, I have since realized, became the indirect source, the inspiration, for my own work with flowers. I grew up believing everyone learned about flowers and birds from their mother. She loved these things, and I caught her enthusiasm and, in the suburban setting of my childhood, directed it toward the large flower garden I kept from age 11.
I learned about native plants as an adult, and in time I went through a refining process of deciding what I wanted to draw from my experience with the international floral trade and from the native flowers I recognized on the ground. The international trade and the experience of beholding a wildflower in its native setting stand in opposition to each other; I think most of the population sees large, imported roses and knows nothing of the wild shooting star. This is another topic for another time.
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An older cousin of mine, Debbie, who is like a sister to my mother, loves the meadow, too. (She was married on this meadow, and nine years ago she and my mother went and gathered flowers together there the day before my wedding for my sister to work into my bouquet.) She was raised and influenced by my grandmother in the way my own mother was. This grandmother, who recognized the prairie and its value, died when my mother was 25 and my sister and I were not quite 4. For more than 20 years, I have looked for ways to know my grandmother, and I catch them partly through what my mother talks about on our drives down to check the meadow. We went again yesterday and saw the great spring mix of Indian paintbrush, wild hyacinth and wood betony—the orange, lavender and pale yellow all mixed in a sea of short green grass. And the white shooting star.
Mom gave me a folder (she always has something for me) with a list of species identified in the inventory for the conservation easement, along with the one-page history she wrote in 2010 for the application for the easement. It was part of a five-year legal process she went through with the Missouri Department of Conservation (the farm is just over the Missouri line not far from Pittsburg, Kansas; my grandparents were both from north central Kansas). Even before my grandfather died and left the part of the farm with the meadow to Mom, she expressed concern about protecting it, and I was the one who brought up the idea of an easement. She did all the work, though.
For now I just want to share Mom’s historical summary. Though the writing is in the third person and straightforward, there is no hiding her feeling for the meadow itself as a living thing to be kept safe. In parts of the summary, it is as if we are reading about a human being whose fate rests in the mercy of others, or the lack thereof. Reading this document, I imagine an enslaved person. We almost lost this remnant prairie, as so many others have been lost, but something in me has the sense that my grandmother’s influence would not let it happen.
What is missing in this history is a land acknowledgment, a recognition that the land was occupied by humans before France ever laid claim to it, though Mom is deeply conscious of this. I think we could add it now.
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From Mom’s history:
Present-day Missouri was part of the territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase by the United States from France in 1803. The first specific legal mention that would include our Barton County, Missouri, property is under an Act of Congress entitled “An Act to Enable the State of Arkansas and other States to reclaim the Swamplands within their limits,” approved September 28, 1850, under President Millard Fillmore. The Legislature of the State of Missouri granted said land to the counties in which it was situated by an “Act Donating the Swamp and Overflowed Lands,” approved March 3, 1851. The first private owner, John M. Richardson, purchased the parcel from Barton County on December 3, 1859, for 75 cents per acre. The property passed through many hands over the years. On one occasion, August 9, 1897, it was auctioned in foreclosure at the west door of the county courthouse in Lamar, information regarding the sale having been published thirty days earlier in the Lamar Democrat newspaper.
The native prairie area covered by the conservation easement is currently titled under the Laura L. Bosnak Trust, Dated November 4, 2003, Laura L. Bosnak and John S. Bosnak, trustees. Laura received the parcel from her father, the late J. Wade Morey, who was the previous owner. Laura recalls as a small child during World War II going with her parents, Henrietta J. and J. Wade Morey, to inspect farms for sale in the Lamar area. This particular farm was selected because it contained this tract of native prairie, and the Moreys purchased it November 25, 1944. Because gasoline and rubber for tires were rationed for the war effort during World War II, Mr. Morey began farming with an iron-wheeled tractor and teams of horses and mules. The primary use of the native prairie was annual hay production for Mr. Morey’s livestock operation and continues to this day to provide an annual hay crop. Mr. Morey taught modern agricultural practices to military service veterans for many years and later was an agriculture instructor for Lamar High School, and he used the prairie as a teaching tool for his students. Mr. Morey’s grandson, Karl Morey, has assumed operation of the land owned by the Bosnak Trust in addition to being owner and operator of the balance of the original farm. The prairie was never intentionally burned in the last sixty-five years, but a couple of wildfires swept through part of it during the fifties. Efforts have been made to prevent erosion in the slough area.
Doug Ladd, Director of Conservation Science for the Missouri Field Office of The Nature Conservancy, and Mike Skinner, a Regional Biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation, conducted a plant inventory of the tract September 12, 2006. They identified 154 taxa, of which 132 were native. Ladd declared this prairie “a significant tract of rare habitat, of considerable conservation value.”
Twice in the past sixty-five years of family ownership the prairie might have been lost. After retirement, J. Wade Morey considered moving into town and placed the farm on the market. A sales contract was signed, but the prospective buyer could not qualify for a loan, and the sale fell through. Later, Mr. Morey considered leaving the land to others, with the strong possibility that the prairie would have been developed. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and the prairie prevails, much as it has for thousands of years. In addition to hay, it has provided a wealth of wildflowers, a habitat for wildlife, and a place of peace for family members. It has been the subject of a family history essay for a high school writing assignment for a great-grandson of Mr. Morey’s, and it was the setting for the wedding of one of Mr. Morey’s granddaughters, Karl’s sister Debbie. It can now continue to instill in each generation an appreciation for the connection of nature and family, both past and future.