(soft music) - [Roger] I was two and a half in 1952.

It was kind of the end of the what they call the polio epidemic.

Got it the third week of August.

And I was in the hospital for about four and a half months.

- [Megan] In Minnesota, many of our very, very special prairies like this one, occur on private land.

And this is a stunning prairie.

- [Kristi] Photography for me is a meditation, I enjoy being out in nature.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, SafeBasements of Minnesota, your basement waterproofing and foundation repair specialist since 1990.

Peace of mind is a safe basement.

Live Wide Open, the more people know about West Central Minnesota, the more reasons they have to live here.

More at livewideopen.com.

Western Minnesota Prairie Waters, where peace, relaxation, and opportunities await.

(soft music) - [Bret] Roger Strand spends a lot of time looking at deer.

And he can thank himself for that.

(gentle music) How much fun is it to be able to take a piece of property and design it, construct it?

I wanna put trees here, I wanna put a food plot here, I'm gonna put a stand here, I'm gonna put a camera there.

And just construct a wildlife kingdom out here.

- I'm a firm believer that we've been given a lot of opportunity.

And so it's my ability to give back and make that habitat.

So they've got places to hide in the winter, shelter, they've got food sources with these food plots.

- [Bret] Roger grew up in Western Minnesota and took a piece of ground that once held rows of corn and created a little slice of heaven.

- Like you said, I designed some things, yes.

But the good Lord takes and does some things that changes the way it actually turned out, and got way better.

(Bret laughing) - Sometimes you get lucky.

- Yes, yes.

In 1976, my dad shot a real life nice buck about a mile from here.

It scored 198 and seven eighths in Boone and Crockett scoring.

At that time, I registered in 1980, four years later it was 57th in the world.

Right now it's 4,000 and something.

That has to do with lot of deer management, there's a lot of people that have land that do farm or game management on it, Food plots, mineral, we've got 19 food plots and we've got probably 16 mineral locations.

And the mineral stuff that I've seen, yeah, we probably get some benefit on antler size, that was the whole purpose of doing it.

But what I really see is the does are so much healthier, they are the ones that spend the most time at the mineral licks.

- So when you look at this spot right here, Roger, obviously, you got to stand here.

But everything that you can see from this stand is here for a reason.

- Yes, it is.

In 2001 in October, I collected all kinds of seeds, black walnuts, green ash, plus we purchased some acorns, and we just spread them out with a fertilizer spreader and packed 'em down, and let them just come up naturally.

We tried to get a 10,000 tree per acre stand, we ended up with 7,800.

We actually had... DNR came out and counted.

- [Bret] Wow.

- So we had 7,700 trees.

And the purpose of that is just to get them to grow fast.

- Okay.

- And it's really turned out quite well.

It got probably too well in the fact that it got so thick.

There's 13 different hardwoods in here.

- [Bret] Okay.

- [Roger] There's some hickory, there's three other kinds of oak trees, there's green ash.

Actually, we have some Ohio buckeyes, a friend of mine had a tree, and collected the chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

And I put a pail of those in there, just ice cream pail, and they've come up really well.

The deer really like those nuts.

- [Bret] So this is just a random pattern of trees.

Would you do any varieties different?

Or would you add or subtract any of the species that you use?

- I found out that red oaks don't grow well in this soil.

We have high pH soil and not the acid soils that they're more accustomed to.

The baroque and white oak are the ones that have grown the most.

The trouble with those, the deer just love them.

And so I've had to build wire cages around little small ones, just so they can get up big enough to grow up.

- Now you've got a lot of tree plantings here.

You've got a lot of the like the thermal cover in rows, which has some benefits, but you like this random patch of hardwoods.

- I really enjoyed the natural evolution of how it's grown versus rows.

Rows are fine, but then you've always got that opening in between, I like it where it's just natural.

We've ended up planting about 70,000 trees between this farm and another one that I have, so.

- [Bret] Those rows, a lot of times will be travel corridors or well, maybe offer protection from the wind or snow.

Have you found that a combination of those and these hardwoods giving them a travel corridor to get here, and then they like to just kind of move freely through here?

- You hit the nail right on the head.

You need both, I think.

I prefer this for just a natural habitat.

And so I believe that the food plots giving them the protein and the carbohydrates that they need at different times of the year, is very important for a healthy management.

And I enjoy it, this is what I live for.

- Yeah, why did you start this in the first place?

- Just because, I mean, I bought this place just for hunting.

And you got to develop it.

You've just got to take it and do it.

I mean, this wasn't a program when it was first put in.

And now it's no longer an NRCS program, and so there's no funding, this is just idle woods, but I wouldn't trade it for anything, so.

(soft music) - [Bret] All right, so we're at another spot here.

There's a stand right in front of us here.

And then this is a food plot here, Roger?

- This is a food plot.

It's about, I'd say an acre and a half to two acres in here.

As you can see, it's really low right now, a month ago it was standing this tall with clovers.

It's got a lot of clovers and there's some grass mixture in here.

The clovers provide protein.

The deer need protein all year long.

But when it gets to be like the last week or so of August, first part of September, their diet likes to go more towards carbohydrates to get some weight on.

- [Bret] And you put in different plots for different times of the year.

- Yep, they have a real need for protein in the summer, especially for antler growth and all that, they need that.

- [Bret] And some of this is done with pheasants that mine too, I bet.

- Absolutely.

in fact, actually, some turkeys.

We are gonna go see the next food plot.

I experimented with something that I read about called chuffa, C-H-U-F-F-A.

And it's a plant that grows like this in a clump.

And when you pull it up, it's just loaded with little seeds, they call them nuts.

And the turkeys will grab those and dig them up with their feet and chew them.

And it's a really great food source for turkeys.

- [Bret] While Roger's hard work on the landscape means he doesn't have to travel far to hunt, he has ventured far and wide in pursuit of big game.

(soft music) - [Roger] I have hunted elk in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Canada.

I have hunted moose twice up in Alaska and brown bear up in Alaska.

- [Bret] Not only is Roger enjoyed those adventures, but he did it after surviving an epidemic at an early age.

- I was two and a half, 1952, kind of the end of the what they call the polio epidemic.

About the end of August, first parts of September was the end of the epidemic.

And I got it to the third week of August.

And I was in the hospital for about four and a half months.

- [Bret] A hospital who finally opened their doors to Roger's father, after two hours of persistent knocking.

- I didn't learn this til about 10 years after he passed away.

Dad put me in the car, we were down in the cities by midnight.

And Sister Kenny's is where we went to, and they were locked up, they were closed, they were full.

We found out that my dad started banging on the doors, and he still kept banging for two hours.

And they kept telling him, "We're full, we can't take anymore."

And he just kept on pounding.

Finally, at two o'clock in the morning, they opened up.

And said, "we'll put a bed in the hallway, and we'll put you in that."

The two older sisters at the time had... We'd gotten like a flu.

And that's what happens is you get like flu conditions and they got over it and I got sick again about a week later.

And what they say is that polio was rampant in families, but only 2% of the people that were exposed to polio or had the polio virus in them actually got paralysis.

So I was the only one that in our family that had paralysis in my left leg.

And for the most part, I was able to do a lot of things.

I participated in sports.

I was in gymnastics and stuff in college.

And been able to hunter walk pretty much okay till about 15 years ago, when I turned about 55.

Things started changing, they have post-polio syndrome.

And it started to affect the muscles in my leg.

And so now I wear a complete brace all the way up to my hip.

And without it, I can't walk, with it, I can do what I want.

- [Bret] The paralysis may have slowed Roger down, but it didn't stop him from enjoying the outdoors.

- Alaska, if you ever get a chance to go to Alaska, I don't care for what the reason to go, it is something that's completely different than anything around here.

You're completely at the mercy of the weather, the planes and everything just travel and just the actual hunting conditions, you're always at the mercy of the weather.

And...

But the experiences that you have are...

I've just been so blessed to be able to enjoy those hunts.

First one didn't go too well.

It was a horse pack in about 10 miles, and I had not ridden a horse probably for 20 years.

And when I got on a horse, my left leg that was polio afflicted, it pinched a nerve and my leg went numb.

And so, my hunt got cut short real quick.

Three days and I just didn't...

I couldn't do what they needed to do with the horses.

And so, that one got cut short.

The next one we walked.

And that was about the beginning of the post-polio syndrome.

And with me, and we had about a mile and a half to two mile walk every morning.

And five minutes on the last day, we had to wrap up and leave, a moose steps out, and fortunately, we got him, right at the end, yep.

Just a wonderful experience, so.

- [Bret] Quite a feat for anyone who dreams of an Alaskan moose.

But for someone like Roger Strand, it's just more proof that good things come to those who work hard.

- It's just been a very rewarding experience.

The good Lord takes care of things that I don't think of by far, and makes the stuff that I've tried to do and that I've tried to plan for way more than what I ever thought was possible to have.

And because of it, there was just, the experience has just been fantastic, so.

- [Brad] We did a burn, our first burn here that year, the lead plant just exploded.

- [Kristi] I really enjoy going back to the prairie and seeing what's blooming.

I can get a closeup of a prairie onion, which is a tiny plant.

(gentle suspenseful music) - [Bret] Tall grass prairie once covered Southwest Minnesota with native grasses that could reach heights taller than a horse.

Less than 2% of Minnesota's native prairie remains.

While much of it is on public lands, some fragments have been restored by landowners or were never cultivated, including native prairie on Brad and Kristi Fernholz's Western Minnesota farm.

There, life unfolds in a theater of seasons.

(suspenseful music) (upbeat music) - [Kristi] We were looking for a property with a lot of open space around it, along the river, along the Minnesota river.

And so when we got here, the fact that there was native prairie was a huge bonus.

We have 52 acres.

We have 10 acres that are tillable.

The rest of it is...

So we have about 40 acres in prairie, native prairie.

It needed to be burned when we first moved here, it hadn't been burned in...

I guess we don't know how long.

And when we burned, it just came to life, I mean, the flowers.

And everything was pretty choked out by just years and years of grasses.

And so cleaning that all off really allowed the seeds to sprout and to really bloom.

- [Bret] Brad and Kristi have maintained their prairie with periodic burns and cattle grazing.

Last spring, a DNR crew conducted a prescribed burn on their property.

And three months later, DNR prairie ecologists, Megan Benage, stopped by to check it out.

- [Megan] This prairie is on private land.

It's right adjacent to the public land in Lac Oui Parle Wildlife Management Area.

And I just love it because this is great interplay between private and public lands, connecting with each other, working together, and that's something special that you're getting right here on the Fernholz farm.

- [Brad] When we first moved here in 2000, this had been grazed, overgrazed for years.

And...

But then it had because of how everything worked out, it had been left dormant for a few years right before we bought the place.

It was rested, we did a burn, our first burn here.

And that year, the lead plant just exploded.

It's like it got the lead plant and pasque flowers.

- [Megan] They were happy.

- They finally had their opening and they just flourished.

- They were released basically.

Lead plant is a sign of an undisturbed remnant prairie.

We put it in all of our prairie reconstructions where we're trying to build prairie back.

And sometimes we'll plant lead plant and we won't see it for 10 years or 15 years.

And so it's amazing to me that it's almost like magic.

All of a sudden, you're like, (snapping fingers) "Hey, my plant's here."

- [Brad] Yeap - We see this above ground expression of the prairie, but there's equally and more happening right below our feet in this intricate underground ecosystem.

There are literally billions of organisms under my feet, connecting with each other in food webs with each other and making it possible for us to have this structure that we see above ground.

We see this kind of bright green lushness in spring, where we get the first pasque flowers.

If you're a bird person, you can't wait for the first red-winged blackbirds, meadowlarks to come, and then you know spring is here on the prairie, it's arrived.

And then that quickly goes into the phase that people most often think of when they think of prairie, which is summer.

Because you get these beautiful tall grasses that are out here.

You also have spikes of liatris like this little guy right next to me.

And then you start heading into fall when you start seeing things like sunflower and the prairie start shifting from these greens and these blue colors to more of a bronzy hue.

And all the smells, right?

That come out of a prairie, and I mean, the good smells, the rich, spicy aroma of soil that took thousands of years to be built.

And all of the different smells of different seeds in the prairie.

Some smell like licorice, other ones smell just sweet and good and it's a sign that the prairie is gonna return next year.

And then we have long winters in Minnesota where the prairie grass is lodged, patiently waiting for the spring.

There's so many things happening underneath that snow.

There's (indistinct) scurrying around underneath there.

There's still hawks that are coming to eat.

And it's just, life is always present on the prairie.

(upbeat music) The prairie teaches us all the time that it's adapting, it's flexible, it's resilient.

It can absorb a six inch rainfall for goodness sakes.

It can handle 50 mile per hour winds coming across it.

It can handle 10 feet of snow lodged on top of prairie grasses.

And all the while, it's living in Minnesota.

Many of our very, very special prairies like this one, occur on private land.

And this is a stunning prairie.

- [Kristi] Brad and I feel really strongly about managing this land for the prairie first.

So we want the prairie to thrive as much as it can.

- We are lucky to be in a state where we have just under 2% of our prairie left.

So make no mistake, our prairie isn't trouble, and we need to connect it as much as possible so that it can persist.

But to be able to have 235,000 acres of remnant prairie that we can turn to and see how resilient and incredible and diverse and connected in this fabulous community, that's a gift.

(upbeat music) (soft music) - [Kristi] Photography for me is a meditation.

I enjoy being out in nature and I love art.

And I love making art.

- [Bret] Kristi Fernholz is a fine art photographer who draws from the splendor around her.

She lives on a farm near Lac Oui Parle lake with an undisturbed prairie and captures the life of changing natural habitats with her lens.

(soft music) - I really enjoy going back to the prairie and seeing what's blooming.

I can get a close up of a prairie onion, which is a tiny plant.

But most people aren't gonna get down on their knees in the ticks and poison Ivy and really look at the plant, so it's kind of fun to document that and bring it to them.

What the prairie looks like is how I can tell the different times of year.

So right away, it's really green and there's just a few little plants that are blooming.

Golden Alexanders and you can find some pasque flowers and prairie smoke.

And then all of a sudden the prairie will turn kind of a purple with the lead plant, some purple echinacea.

And then the prairie clover will come, prairie rose, and it'll just be kind of purple and pink, kind of in the middle of the summer.

And then at this time a year, you've got all the Maximillian sunflowers and their big, blue stem starts to gets gold.

So it's, you know what time of year it is by just looking around at the prairie and it just changes colors.

And that's really fun to see.

(soft music) People really enjoy pasque flowers.

And a lot of the prairie flowers too, are things that people remember growing up.

They went out into the prairie and they picked pasque flowers and they have really good memories about that, or they remember their mom talking about it.

So, people really love those old prairie flowers.

And I think that's one of the things that I love about being out in the prairie too, is these plants, grasses and flowers have been here forever longer than me, and it's just a joy to be around them and to sort of take it in.

(acoustic guitar music) So I've been doing photography since I was little.

My mom always had a nice SLR camera.

Growing up, we had a dark room in the high school.

And so I learned with the dark room and just kept doing it.

- [Bret] Kristi holds a bachelor of fine arts in photography from the University of Minnesota Duluth.

In 2007, she left the dark room for digital photography, which freed up time for her art.

As Kristi's full-time job is planning director for the Upper Minnesota Valley Regional Development Commission.

As part of her job, she's been a lead coordinator for the Meander Art Crawl since 2008.

- The Meander Art Crawl is the first weekend in October each year.

It's all local artists in the five county region.

And I've been in the Meander since it started in 2004.

It's great for marketing the local artists.

It's also a really great way for people to see our region.

People come from all over; the Twin Cities, South Dakota, Wisconsin, all over the United States.

I set up in Milan, my hometown.

I bring out all of my inventory and sell prints; wood prints, canvas, cards, sell some few tiles and just really enjoy talking to people about prairie and about what they're seeing in my photographs.

And yeah, it's a really fun weekend.

This is a new milkweed that I found this year.

- Oh, its really white.

- So it was really fun.

I mean, the prairie burn allowed for a lot of new things to emerge.

But then we also had a few people come out they wanted to look at the prairie.

So I had somebody from the nature conservancy, we found this, it's called whorled milkweed.

That's tiny, I mean, it's just little.

(soft music) It's funny, 'cause some photos, I don't necessarily love right away, but the longer I look at them, I love.

So I, There's something about this one that I've loved.

And I like it more and more that I see it.

And I think it's just so simple, that's one of my favorites.

- [Bret] While, Kristi is known for her prairie photography, her eyes are always open to seeing striking imagery in ordinary settings.

Like her backyard clothesline.

- [Kristi] These things are not straight, not very good, but it's just like the light hit it, so I went and took a photo of it and I started selling it and people (Kristi chuckling) I mean, it's just so bright and vibrant.

I have some of my daughter, she was walking down the driveway.

I didn't stage the photograph, but it's four and a two, two, and she's just walking her bike.

And right here, there's a big cloud, kind of an impending cloud coming.

And that's been kind of an image that's one of my favorites of all time.

A couple of years ago, I had a smart grant from the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council.

That's when I started to do the, In caustic.

And so I was going around to all the small towns.

So that's why I've got some of the elevator shot.

I just went to all the small towns and tried to do some different things.

'Cause I take a lot of prairie shots and I was just trying to do some different.

Yeah, just have some different subject matter.

So, yeah.

- [Jo] Yeah, and you do (indistinct).

- [Kristi] You would probably appreciate this too, because this is our flooring when we did our house remodel, and then instead I had Brad cut up our flooring that there was leftover.

- [Jo] Oh, that's funny.

(soft music) - [Bret] For Kristi, the joy of photography is bringing people in to see the splendor of rural life and prairie habitats.

- [Kristi] I'm looking for something that catches my eye.

I'm recording a little bit of the beauty.

I'm wanting to tell a story to other people who maybe aren't out here of what it looks like.

(soft music) Conveying a message would be that this, the prairie is worthwhile, that it's worth saving, that there's things here that were here long before we were.

And we wanna keep it that way.

(soft music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, SafeBasements of Minnesota; your basement, waterproofing and foundation repair specialist since 1990.

Peace of mind is a safe basement.

Live Wide Open.

The more people know about West Central Minnesota, the more reasons they have to live here.

More at livewideopen.com.

Western Minnesota Prairie Waters, where peace, relaxation and opportunities await.