Getting Back to Nature

PAGE: LOCAL NEWS from Jackson County Pilot
Getting back to nature
By Ryan Brinks (December 04, 2008)
When Jackson County resident Dan Ruby looks out from the porch of his house just off Highway 4 near Spirit Lake, he overlooks the farm equipment lying about. He glances past the outbuildings and looks beyond the debris of silos, feed floors and grain bins that are no more.

To say that what Ruby sees of the open field stretching out to the horizon is what it could become is only half right. He sees what it used to be.

“It would be nice to step out the back door and step back in time,” he said.

Back before he started farming 20 years ago; back before his father got the farm half a century ago; back before even the first settlers crossed that very land.

“It’s going to be remarkable to turn it back,” he said.

His turning back of 60 acres of farmland in order to recreate a wetland that was once there has been a risky dream that has consumed 2.5 years of contemplation, planning and blueprinting — all out of his own pocket.

Ruby said he fell in love with a lifestyle of hunting and fishing while taking his father, a boat and a trailer all over the outdoors.

The dream of bringing the outdoors to his back door first took shape during a conversation over estate planning, and in less than a year afterwards, Ruby was in contact with people ready to make it happen.

“But there were people all along the way that could have shut me down too,” he said.

The plan underwent a feasibility study and passed through the scrutiny of seven groups whose approvals were essential, he said, receiving among them the stamps of Minnesota’s Board of Water Soil Resources, Jackson Soil and Water Conservation District and Jackson County.

The engineering work has had six revisions.

“I could have paved it all in far less time,” he said. “People are always doing things for the money and not necessarily what’s best for the environment.”

Ruby doesn’t deny that money plays a role in his project, too, though he notes that few others are willing to go to the lengths he has to make wetland restoration a reality.

“In the state of Minnesota, it’s valuable to have this sort of thing,” he said, referring to the state government’s Private Wetland Bank program that certifies preserved land for credits that corporations can purchase to offset their development somewhere else.

Corporate America destroys acres of land, he explained, and the wetland banking system makes them restore some of that.

Now all that stands between Ruby and those credits is construction of earthen berms and opening of the county tile system, slated to begin next October shortly after the soybean harvest.

From there, a regimented prescription of seeding will plant approximately 100 different kinds of grasses, sedges and rushes, including plants like wild rye, goldenrod and milkweed, all around the water.

“They want this to look as if it was never touched,” Ruby said. “When settlers first came, there were probably 50 types of native species. It was very diverse.”

Nestled in with the native plants will be food plots of corn, sorghum and sudacs for the wildlife his preserve will be managed to attract — specifically pheasants, together with some waterfowl.

“My goal is to see 100 birds in a day,” he said. “I think I could get 10 to 15 mating pairs.”

Then nature will take its course, sort of.

Ruby is responsible for the frequent weeding, occasional mowing and controlled burning every other year to ensure the wetland is properly established.

Within the first year, its transformation will be evident, but the government bodies who signed off on the project will continue to conduct intensive inspections for five years and then annual checks thereafter, he said.

The return on the 60 acres being restored next fall will determine when Ruby can expand the project to the rest of his 120 acres, he noted.

Already penciled into designs are eight locations for duck blinds, one easily accessible.

“I’d like it to be handicapped accessible, and there’s no reason it couldn’t be,” he said.

On the maybe list is a four-season gazebo for observation atop a hill.

That will all take time, though. Ruby expects some areas of his land will continue to be farmed until at least 2014.

“It’s fun. I look forward to having a contractor come in and build this thing,” he said.

In the meantime, there’s more to be rid of than the 140 tons of steel and dozens of old cars that once littered the acreage but have been removed so far.

“It’s more than a wetland restoration,” Ruby said. “It’s a farm cleanup project, like on steroids.”

And he vows to get it done, even if it takes him decades.