Whiterock Conservancy Blog

With the amazing amounts of snow lately, I’ve been able to get out on the cross county skis every few days– and it’s been wonderful, albeit cold and windy. Usually I just push off from my back door and wander the hills around my house on the Betts Farm, and I’ve taken a couple loops on the Garst Farm Trail (covered in enough snow to ski on despite having a hard surface!). Yesterday I took a cruise out to the Long Farm yesterday to examine the 100 acres of oak savanna restoration that we labored through December to finish–I needed to check and see how many more days of cutting we’ll need to put in before total completion of the project. It was a beautiful afternoon….

Without foliage on the trees, this is the time of year when you can actually see the Middle Raccoon River Valley in all of its winding, bluff-lined glory. As I tell many of the visitors, there is not one place on Whiterock Conservancy property where you can see the entire river valley during the growing season. As we slowly but surely cut down the invading eastern red cedars from the ridgetops above the river, we expose more and more of the viewshed! I highly saturated this picture so that you could see Redrock, the sandstone outcrop across from 805 River Cabin–in the foreground are cut down cedars that used to hide the view of the valley, behind them are the lone oak trees that we left behind, the savanna, and behind them, the river valley with Redrock peeking out. What a site! Not only has the restoration uncovered the savanna and prairie remnants, but the view too! The view of another 100+ acres of cedars to cut down on the other side of the river!