We have been named one of three finalists this year for the Leopold Conservation Award. The Leopold Award recognizes “extraordinary achievement in voluntary conservation on the land of exemplary private landowners.” It is given by the Sand County Foundation, in conjunction with the California Farm Bureau Federation and Sustainable Conservation. In choosing us, they cited our efforts at water quality enhancement, cover cropping, conservation tillage, native hedgerows, planting a vegetative filter strip to prevent run-off from reaching the slough, and our native grassland restoration project.
When we were notified that we were being considered for this award, I was prompted to pick up the copy of Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac that I still have on my bookshelf from a college Environmental Studies class back in 1986. Leopold’s early 20th century musings would be a hard read for our current generation barraged by quick and to-the-point information, but Leopold was an advocate of the value of wild things, and was a philosopher to rival Thoreau. Discussing cultural values, he describes the value “in any experience that reminds us of our distinctive national origins and evolution”—he’s talking about the natural history of the land. “Such awareness is ‘nationalism’ in its best sense,” he opines. At a time when nationalism seems to be a simple claim of superiority based on where one lives, I’m willing to accept a nationalism that comes from developing a deep understanding of where you’re from, the natural and human history that has created the place.
Leopold laments that the diverse wildernesses of America have mostly already gone, therefore many conservation efforts necessarily must focus on preserving areas that “vary greatly in size and in degree of wildness… No living man will see again the long-grass prairie, where a sea of prairie flowers lapped at the stirrups of the pioneer. We shall do well to find a forty here and there on which the prairie plants can be kept alive as species.” This strikes a chord, as we work with our 40-acre home farm to achieve a balance of farming and living with the wild. Restoring our few acres of grassland may be a small achievement in light of the vast expanses that have been lost, but at least we will have created a haven for the endangered Santa Cruz Sunflower and other species that may otherwise disappear.
We’ve been on our property for a relatively short time – twelve years — but we expect to be here for the rest of our lives. We feel lucky to have access to some of the wild area that is left, and see the farm and surrounding habitat as our life’s work. Leopold said that “the landscape of any farm is the owner’s portrait of himself.” We hope that the picture we leave behind will be one of care and stewardship that Leopold would approve of.
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