Prairie Winds Nature Farm
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Christa Hein: Hey there, welcome to the Farm Educator’s Roadmap. I'm Christa Hein, former nonprofit girl turned farm education entrepreneur. I've spent the last 30 years creating hands-on programs that connect people to the land animals, and the traditions that nourish our daily lives.
If you're listening, you probably believe what I do - that farm education is needed now more than ever - not just on rural farms, but in suburbs, cities, and everywhere in between. In this podcast, you'll hear real stories and practical advice from farm educators all across the country, people who are creating change through their programs in creative and inspiring ways.
Whether you're dreaming about starting your first program, are already knee deep in your own farm education work or are just curious about how others are impacting their communities through farm education, you're in the right place. [00:01:00] Let's dig in.
Christa Hein: Hi, welcome back to the Farm Educator’s Roadmap. Today I'm talking with Dr. Charlotte Wolfe, founder of Prairie Winds Nature Farm in Indiana. Charlotte is a PhD environmental scientist and certified wetland specialist who, along with her husband and family, has spent decades transforming former corn and soybean land into 85 acres of restored prairie, wetlands, woods, pasture and hands-on learning spaces.
Prairie Winds is part working farm, part restoration project and part outdoor classroom helping people connect to food, nature, animals, climate, and the living systems all around them. Charlotte, thanks so much for joining us.
Charlotte Wolfe: Oh, I'm happy to be here.
Christa Hein: So, I'd love to start with both you and the land, because your background brings such a unique lens to this work.
Can you take us back [00:02:00] to the beginning? What first drew you into environmental science and restoration work?
Charlotte Wolfe: Well, ever since I was a kid, I have always been very interested in nature and animals as a lot of children are. And I can remember way back when I was a kid having a nature collection. And my mother was very nurturing of that passion. She also appreciated nature, and she was a horse lover, and she shared those passions with all of us kids.
But yeah, I had a nature collection, and she encouraged that and we would pick up things and put them on the little shelves.
Christa Hein: Nice. So, what has your work looked like beyond the farm? What kinds of roles or projects have you been involved in as a scientist and wetlands specialist?
Charlotte Wolfe: I was interested in science from early on, because science is how the natural world works. And ecology, specifically, is the meeting of the living world with [00:03:00] the non-living. And different habitats of different animals and things like that have always fascinated me. We went for nature walks at parks and, not a whole lot of camping when I was a kid, but when I got into community college, I really met others who enjoyed the outdoors just as much as I do. And they were going places and visiting parks and things.
So, I signed up for a couple of courses and met these wonderful young people. And we went to the Okefenokee Swamp. That was the best field trip. It was for a weeklong camping, and you camp on platforms. And from that point on, I was hooked on wetlands. And being from the Midwest, that's a dream, because the Midwest has much less wetlands than does the south, like Florida and Georgia.
So, all through college I was trying to figure out, okay, how can I study this and become a [00:04:00] professional in this field? And even though my undergrad degree is in geology, ecology, or environmental science I should say, as a field was just getting started. So, a lot of the programs in college were not, you know, meeting those course requirements.
So, after I got my degree, I explored different universities and I said, I want to go to grad school and study wetlands. So, I landed on the University of Florida and at the time had a very good wetlands program. I was introduced to the Society of Wetlands Scientists and joined, and of course, you're expected to write up research and visit other graduate students research sites.
So, fast forward to Indiana. My professor recommended a program at Indiana University and a professor that he loved. And that was Dan Willard. Dan Willard passed away, but he left me a legacy of an appreciation for research and science [00:05:00] And the Indiana Dunes National Park now, used to be Indiana Dunes National Lake Shore, has a lot of wetlands that needed restoring. So, I put my schooling to use out there for a decade working on projects to restore wetlands out at the dunes.
Christa Hein: Nice. So, when you and your husband first started working with your land in the early 1990s, what was it like at that point and what did you start to see as the possibility of transforming it into something that was more than a farm?
Charlotte Wolfe: Well, he had gotten a job at a consulting firm as a wetland scientist, and he was doing a lot of wetland restoration for clients who were either trying to restore land or were being required to restore land because they were impacting wetland areas through development. So, he had some tools in his toolkit for doing restoration. And we also investigated federal grants, including the Fish and Wildlife Service, [00:06:00] and the USDA who has a wetlands set aside program.
And so, we enrolled in these programs and tried to figure out how we could restore this particular property. And the reason we picked this property is because it had the potential for restoration by having a bowl. The water wouldn't be impacting anybody else's land adjacent. So, we knew we were going to have some wetlands. And we had an area that had been a stone pile. So, we dug all that out and made a little fishpond and used the fill material to create a berm that we could walk on to get to the other areas of the property that were not accessible because it was too wet.
So, we started restoring various habitats. We planted prairie, because the prairie, even though in northwest Indiana here, it's not that common of an ecosystem. Except over at the Dunes, there are prairie patches, but we felt like we weren't going to be able to restore the [00:07:00] exact vegetation that was here before. And I also was interested in having a homestead type farm to maybe do some educational projects. So, the front 20 acres was restored to pasture or was planted to pasture grasses. So, the whole area was corn and soybeans. And now the whole area is covered by some sort of vegetation. And we call it our carbon farm.
Christa Hein: So, I was going to ask, and you just kind of led perfectly into it, if education was a part of your vision from the beginning, or if that naturally grew? So, when you first were looking at that land, thinking about education, what were you hoping that it would become?
Charlotte Wolfe: Well, I had just had my daughter, and she was four, and I said, “Let's walk around a whole bunch.” We were in the process of constructing a home. So, our home was constructed and I was busy with her and teaching her about nature. [00:08:00] And I thought what if we got some of her little friends to come over here and do it, too with us?
And there was a lot of interest. A lot of my friends that I'd made in the area were very interested in bringing their kids over and even dumping their kids with me. And I was all too eager to do that, because I've always loved kids. And so, it just seemed like a natural beginning.
Then I was dabbling in homeschool and I was introduced by one of my homeschool moms to a parent who had a child at a new school called Good Shepherd Montessori School. And I started investigating Good Shepherd. And Good Shepherd was very instrumental in helping me focus on education, because they already had a mandate for their first through sixth grade, to explore nature and farming.
And they had a farm that they were visiting locally. And so, I just went along with my daughter's class and [00:09:00] visited that farm and talked to the owner and was very inspired by what she was doing. So, I had some inspiration and some education of my own, and it just all came together.
Christa Hein: Nice. So, I'm curious what it actually looks like over time to restore something like a prairie or a wetland on land that used to be corn and soybeans like that.
Charlotte Wolfe: Well, you do have to be knowledgeable about the exotic species, because invasive and exotic species can definitely doom your project. So, we were on the lookout for those.
And then you have to use the tools of restoration, including fire, to burn off the prairie and keep shrubs from coming in. Mostly invasive shrubs like autumn olive, and multiflora rose and some other shrubs. But also just the process of succession naturally have the land becoming a forest without the tool of fire.
Then we also had to think about the wetlands. We had some water level [00:10:00] controls established by the Fish and Wildlife service. And they showed us how to use those to adjust the water levels. And we entered a period of drought that lasted probably about the last 10 to 15 years. And that kind of made us think about gosh, you know, the water is such a precious resource that when we established this as a wetland, we thought we had plenty of it, but it turns out that we need the water and the trapping of the water by the wetlands, so that was a really good thing.
Christa Hein: So, are there ways that the land changes that still surprise you even after all these years? You mentioned the water, are there other things that stick out in your mind that are just a surprise when they happen? Where you have this background and your husband, it sounds like does, too, and you know science, but then the land just throws this curve ball at you?
Charlotte Wolfe: Well, I have an expression that I tell all the kids that come through our programs, that nature never disappoints. And I'll have [00:11:00] teachers from the Good Shepherd School, that I told you about, they started coming and bringing students here. And they're always wanting to plan what's going to happen during the class.
And they've got their curriculum back at school. And I tell them we have to take advantage of the beautiful things that nature presents to us every day. And so, I would just basically tell them, oh, you know what, the birds are coming back. The migratory birds are back today and this week we should look at birds. We should study birds. And so, nature's always giving us surprises.
The nicest thing in the last couple years has been a Sandhill Crane nest that has been established down behind the pond. And my husband has a spotting scope and he has it pointed on the Sandhill Crane nest. So that's really neat to see them last year and the year before. And I think the year before they hatched one or two chicks, and then we would watch the chick grow and that sort of thing. So, that's been a neat surprise.
The other surprise is a lot of woodpeckers. [00:12:00] So, when you have a wetland that's created and you have some forested area down in there, when you bring the water level up, the trees die. So, there's a lot of dead standing wood, and that's what woodpeckers really like. So, we have had an explosion of woodpeckers. And we also do bird feeders, and the woodpeckers like to come to the suet.
Another thing that we've been doing since our windbreak, which we planted the year that we bought the property in 1993, we planted these trees. And the windbreak is what's called a conservation practice. There's probably about 15 or 20 conservation practices under the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service, NRCS. And those are partially funded projects that the USDA encourages farmers to put out on the land to conserve soil.
Well, the windbreak was…the wind just came across the property like you wouldn't believe. That's why we called it prairie [00:13:00] winds, because we're planting a prairie and it’s so windy. But it was really practical, because we had a lot of wind. So, the wind break was planted by the trees along the driveway. And they have now gotten large enough in the 25, 30 years that they've been here, that we have a lot of shade under there and a lot of leaf litter.
And so, a few years ago we decided to take from our small woods some little chunks of soil and place them underneath the trees and see do we have a good enough habitat to start restoring woodland? And those spring ephemeral flowers have been taking root. And this is, like I said, this is the third year, and they have just started taking off.
We even have some Trillium blooming, which takes about seven years to bloom, and we've got probably eight different spring ephemeral wildflowers that have established themselves. So, we're hoping to move our planting, our nucleus so to speak, of wildflowers [00:14:00] down the windbreak. So that's something exciting.
Another exciting thing is that we planted our pastures and we didn't really have that good of a plan to fence the pastures. We just put up a little bit of fence and had some sheep. And I said why don't we talk to the NRCS, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and see what help there could be for putting up fences.
And the other thing that happened at the same time was we had a geologist friend, work contact that my husband had, and they were doing a survey of all the geological layers basically under the ground in our county. And they were going county by county in Indiana. And so, our county was on the list and this friend called up my husband and he said, “Hey, do you want to dig a well out there on your place?” And we're like, “Sure!”
So, we picked a spot that would be the highest spot on the property where the pastures were, and they came out with their drilling [00:15:00] rig and they drilled us a big hole for free. They did their study on the geology of the site and the borehole is there, and all we had to do was get a well casing. And so, then we had a well on a high spot. What can you do with a well on a high spot in the middle of your pastures? You can pump water to your different pastures.
So, we ended up getting a windmill. That ended up being our logo. And we have this windmill and we can pump water. We have underground pipes that can pump water to four different locations and each of those locations is surrounded by a fence so we can rotate our livestock. Whatever livestock this farm happens to be supporting. Right now, it's horses, but we used to have cows and sheep and goats and some other livestock. So yeah, we were able to have water in the pastures [00:16:00] and then move the animals from one place to another so they didn't eat up all the grass in one spot. And that's called rotational grazing.
And then since then, we've put in intensive grazing, which is where you take each one of those four squares in our case, and you divide it up into smaller portions and you let your livestock graze there for a couple days, and then you move a temporary electric fence, and then you let them graze another strip and then you move your fence.
And that way the grass gets fertilized by the manure. And it continues to grow grass for a larger portion of the year. So we don't have to buy as much hay. We weren't buying any hay; we just harvested it off of our grassland of our 20 acres. So, it's more self-sustaining that way.
Christa Hein: What a win-win that they got to study the geology of your land, and you got this wonderful source of water to develop your animal program. That's awesome.
So, one of the things that stands out in your work is how much you focus on the [00:17:00] parts of nature that people don't always notice right away. The soil roots, water, carbon, habitat. How do you bring big concepts like carbon farming down to a level that kids and adults can really understand?
Charlotte Wolfe: Well, I try not to dwell on things like global warming and climate change. Those things are things that people don't feel that they have control over. So, if you can give children, and adults, too, a small piece of what you're doing that they might be able to direct, control, understand, what have you.
So, I started a community supported agriculture, which I'm sure many of your listeners are familiar with this concept, the sales concept. And it's a subscription agriculture. The family that wants to get vegetables from you pays upfront and they pay the full price of a big basket of vegetables every week for about 20 weeks.
And in so doing, they pay upfront, they [00:18:00] take on some of the risk. And also some of the control because they can ask for certain vegetables to be planted, and fruit and what have you. And so, they have an investment, a financial investment, and then they have also the choice of what they would like to have in their baskets.
And they're also welcome to come out and harvest with us, which I'm sure a lot of farms do. And that creates a connection to food, which is something everybody can understand and relate to. And then we talk about how was this food grown? This food was grown in a sustainable way. We didn't use chemicals on the fruit and vegetables, so that might be a value that your customers have.
And we also limited it to about 10 families for us. The thing about the garden is it not only provides vegetables for those families who pay, but it also provides a garden for kids when they're [00:19:00] visiting here to see these are the vegetables that are growing. And there's a little bit of extra vegetables so they can taste some and take a few home. But that's how we have used the garden, really, to have a big connection with the families.
And then the other thing is taking walks with the kids, especially with the Montessori school visits. They visit eight times in the spring and eight times in the fall. So, that gives the children a chance to see the progression of the habitat as it changes over the spring, which is very quick to change. And then the fall, too, where the leaves are falling and there's all kinds of natural processes happening during those seasons. And since the children come repeatedly through the season, that makes it pretty easy to explain it.
Christa Hein: So, how do your animals, you mentioned the pastures. How do your animals fit into the bigger picture for you? Are they a point of connection for visitors, or do they actually play a part [00:20:00] in your restoration efforts?
Charlotte Wolfe: I think both. The horses especially have very good manure. The carbon nitrogen ratio of horse manure is perfect for gardens. Now, that doesn't mean you put raw horse manure on your garden, because it's going to have seeds, so you need to heat up your manure in a compost pile so that the seeds will die.
But in general, the horses are the main fertility of the farm. Or when I had cows, the same thing, we would collect the manure into a big pile called Mount Manure and then let it compost some before we spread it on the fields. And we used to spread the manure with our horse. I had a team of haflinger horses and I investigated driving and working horses, and that was really fun.
And I would encourage anybody who has a small operation to use horses because they're cheaper than a tractor. Even though, yeah, there's vet bills and yeah, there's a learning curve. [00:21:00] But it's just so cool to be able to stand behind a team of horses and plow, or even just pull their own manure around the pastures and fertilize them. Even if you're not doing tillage agriculture it's super fun to spread the manure with them.
And so that's the main source of fertility of the farm, is the manure of the livestock. And that enriches the soil. You have to understand when you're taking ground in Northern Indiana, Northern Illinois, Northern Ohio - all of those places have been completely changed by the industrial agriculture model. The soil has been drained by drainage pipes that are called tiles, and those are under the ground. And then the soil has been treated with ammonia and other chemical fertilizers that kill the organisms that are in the soil.
So, to restore the soil organisms and the organic matter, you have to put on organic matter because [00:22:00] the plants themselves are not necessarily going to trap the nitrogen. Unless you're planting cover crops, which we do in the garden, but in a pasture setting you'd have to plant the whole pasture to get nitrogen from the air. So, you could do both. I mean, you could plant those plants and get nitrogen from the air, but you could also do what we're doing and just spread the manure.
And that compost and manure then is going to enrich the soil and inoculate the soil with microorganisms. Just like I talked about with our little forest establishment, we inoculated that area with those plants. And associated with those plant roots are fungal symbiance that that feed the soil organisms. And then you're restoring the health of the soil.
And soil health is a big topic in the farm agency, they want the farmers to restore their soil health. This is a very good way to do it is to have livestock on the ground and also to plant legumes and other nitrogen fixing cover [00:23:00] crops.
Christa Hein: Well, it is very obvious that you're a natural teacher. I could listen to you all day. And so, I want to move into your education programs. So now that we have a little bit of an understanding about your land, I'd love to talk about what people actually experience when they come to Prairie Winds. Can you walk us through the main kinds of programs that you're currently offering and who they're typically designed for?
Charlotte Wolfe: Well, I have about four or five regular classes every week. I have a homeschool class, and those are elementary school kids. And then we also have a preschool class that kind of tags along and does their own thing during our homeschool classes. Then the Good Shepherd Montessori School brings their first through third graders, and that's two afternoons a week.
And then I usually have at least one school group coming every week, and those are more of one-off visits. And they typically will fill up a [00:24:00] bus, which is 60 kids. And they'll come with teachers and we split them into groups. And the groups then go around and visit. They rotate through four or five different activities, the garden being one activity. So, they get to go in and our gardener, who works the vegetables and supplies the CSA customers with their baskets. So, she's always in there working on growing the vegetables and she explains to the kids and lets them taste.
And then of course the barnyard is a very popular place. We ended up moving a historic barn that was on an adjacent property. We moved it over to our farmyard. And it's the focus for a lot of activities of having small animals like turkeys and chickens and rabbits and different little animals that come and go. And we have those down at the barn, which is a historic barn. It's got a hay loft, and the kids can visit the hay [00:25:00] loft and jump around on the hay bales. And that's a very popular activity.
And then we have ponies. Right now, we have four or five small ponies, and we tie them up on hitching posts and the kids can pet them and brush them. And sometimes they get a pony ride depending on the group. And then I also have a little classroom that I store my nature collection. My grownup girl nature collection. And I have some snakes in there. My husband loves reptiles, so he has these snakes and others, you know, like aquariums and lizards and things like that, that are in the classroom.
And I have a little library down there so they can look and check out books if they want. And then a model honeybee hive that is explaining how the bees pollinate. And then I also have a map [00:26:00] created for the property that's the wildlife restoration and it has trails through it, so they can take the map and just do a self-guided walk through the wild area with the little bit of forest. And then the prairie and the marsh. And depending on the season, if it's warm out, we can do a wetland walk, which is a quite popular activity. And then we just walk around in the prairie.
And a lot of school groups and teachers want to look at insects, and we have a lot of insects out there. But we definitely have a lot to see. And school groups come out and they can ask me if they want to fill some of the state standards of education standards. Then I have probably five or six different field trips that are worked out to meet those standards.
But most groups are bringing kindergartners, first graders, second graders, and [00:27:00] they're not as expecting the Indiana standards to be met during the field trip as they are wanting just to give the kids a taste of nature and exploration and some close up contact with animals.
Christa Hein: Yeah, so you have those school programs, and then I saw you also have camps. I was looking online at the descriptions of the camps, and it looks like you have this whole wide range of activities: animal care, gardening, building shelters, I saw blacksmithing, exploring the woods. How do you decide what belongs in a Prairie Winds Camp experience?
Charlotte Wolfe: I talk to the kids. That's how I decide. And over the years different kids have shown me what we should have going. And do they like playing in the hay loft? So, I make sure we have some time to do that.
And one of the things that we really emphasize at our day camps is that we are going to be a community. We are going to try to sit [00:28:00] in a circle and learn each other's names and find out a little bit about each other. And then we're going to play, and then we're going to come back and talk about what did we do? How did we enjoy it? Who did we play with? Why do you like that person? Things like that.
We get in smaller groups and talk about things with the younger kids, but ages eight and up, we get in a pretty large group of 20 kids and they all have a connection to the farm by the end of the week. And some of them are exchanging phone numbers. I don't know if you've ever done any community building activities, but it's the forming, storming, and norming idea. And children are so amazing because they do it within a couple days. They're not afraid to express their frustration with each other and hammer things out. Whereas adults would just kind of put up with things, oh, it's only four days, I'll just put up with that annoying person. No, kids don't let each other get away with that stuff. They get it out [00:29:00] there. And that's a great opportunity to practice conflict resolution and relationship building. Because that's the only way you can build relationships is by getting to know people and accepting them for who they are.
Christa Hein: Well, it sounds like your camps have a lot of real-world experience and really play that kids used to experience it where we were given freedom. And so, for those kids to have that experience sounds pretty incredible to be given that trust and exposure to all those natural elements that you can play with.
Charlotte Wolfe: Those of us of a certain age, we had a very free childhood. I mean, I grew up in the sixties and the seventies. And every day I'm reminded how lucky I was to be without digital devices and just free to roam around. Even we had kids that lived in an apartment building and they would come out and there would still be some woods and some ditches and things that we would play in when we lived in town.
And then [00:30:00] my family moved out to the country when I was in seventh grade. And then I got a rural experience of what it was like to live rurally. And I just really want to recreate that even at a very small timescale for some of the kids because they are so impacted by being indoors all the time. And the digital devices just aggravate the whole thing. So yeah, digital devices are strictly prohibited at most camps, and mine included.
Christa Hein: So, I want to ask specifically about your horse and pony team. I saw that you do riding and vaulting. So, we talked about how the horses give back to the soil of the farm. How do you feel like they enrich your programs by including those horses and the skills?
Charlotte Wolfe: I always tell the kids, if you are interested in the farm at all, if you can handle an 800, 900, 1200-pound horse, you can handle just about [00:31:00] any kind of livestock. And I mentioned that my mother liked horses, and I grew up with the privilege of having exposure to horses. And so, I was fearless. I was able to just jump right in on the cattle and the sheep and all that, and raising these farm animals because I had wrestled with horses.
And so that I think is, it's a confidence builder, but it's also an empathy builder. Because horses, and I think other animals probably too, but horses have been studied to really be able to read your emotions. We know now that horses can hear your heartbeat, and they can understand if you're afraid. As a herd animal, that's really important because if one herd member is afraid, especially the leader, then we better get out of here.
So, it is essential for kids to be able to tone down their anxiety and their heartbeat to be able to work [00:32:00] successfully with horses. So that's a therapy in and of itself. And then of course, riding is a sport that has many different dimensions compared to most ball sports because you're sitting on top of a living animal that, I've already said, weighs a thousand pounds. So that animal can hurt you if you don't do it correctly. And so, there's a mandate there for the child or adult to learn how to do this thing correctly so that they can keep their horse happy.
And there's a sense of accomplishment when you can get those skills. So that's what our horse team is about, is repeated exposure and lessons to get to a point where we could actually take the horses off the farm to a park and do a trail ride, which we did last weekend. And then just caring for the manure, shoveling the manure, and giving them their hay or taking them out to graze. It teaches responsibility so that the kids can have a [00:33:00] connection to something meaningful that is not their comfort, it's the comfort of this other being.
So, it takes kids out of themselves to say, “What can I do to help the horse that I'm riding? How do I make life better for this horse? So, I think there's a lot of that compassion and self-confidence that kids gain when working with horses.
Christa Hein: So, are the horse programs for an older age group? You had mentioned the groups that you work with through the school programs. Do you also then work with older students as well?
Charlotte Wolfe: I am open to any age group visiting as far as school groups come. And we just had a high school group here actually collecting insects today. But the horse program, it's more limited in terms of outreach, but I think there's a higher level of impact.
And I will start at age eight. They can be dropped off and they [00:34:00] can have lessons and spend a morning taking care of horses. If they're under age eight, I ask that a parent stay, help them through any behavior issues they might have. And then for our day camps, we start at age four, and we have age four through seven gets a pony ride. So, that gives them an introduction and a taste of that, “Oh, would you, do you like the pony ride? Maybe you'd like to take some lessons?”
So, they can start taking lessons at age six and then ages eight and up, which is usually eight to 12 or 13, they can sign up for a horse add-on to the camp. And those students who are doing the horse part, they spend every morning of the camp doing horse stuff. And that includes caring for the horses, and taking rides, taking trail rides and that sort of thing.
So, there's several levels of involvement, but the horse team we recruit kids out of the camps to be [00:35:00] on the horse team. So, any kids that want to carry it further, they can then come back throughout the year and do the lessons and things. And three years ago, we ended up putting up a riding arena so that we would not have to always be canceling our lessons because it was pouring rain or sleeting or whatever.
So, we really appreciate that building because I've been able to use it for a lot of different things. Revenue building activities such as weddings, we've had three weddings out here. And you wouldn't think that people would want to have their wedding inside of a sand floor arena, but they did, they just covered it up with plastic sheets and put their tables on there, and we had a good old time.
So yeah. The pole building has been a revenue generator, and it is also used for riding.
Christa Hein: Nice. Yeah. I was going to ask how you approach sustaining a farm like this. You have lots of things going on, but you're also trying to balance the ecological goals with the practical realities of [00:36:00] running it day to day. So, do you have any thoughts to share about that balance for you?
Charlotte Wolfe: Sure, if I had more labor, if I had three of me, we could bring in a whole lot more revenue. I think that it's a balance between how much labor you have to give or to hire and what you want to produce out of your land. Because 20 acres, even if we didn't think about the other wildlife area acreage, which is about 65 acres on our property, the 20 acres could absolutely provide a whole bunch of food for a lot of people.
There's a lot of interest in local food now. And we're seeing that all the transportation cost of fuel and everything else to produce food and truck it all around the country, it's totally inefficient and it burns carbon. In fact, I've told [00:37:00] young people if they want to grow a whole bunch of chickens or whatever they want to produce out here, I will let them come out here and do that. So, it's an opportunity for revenue building, but the farm products themselves are not really going to pay for the farm unless you have that input of labor.
So, the camp experiences, on the other hand, those fill a different need in our community for working parents to have a place that their kids can be during the day right when they're working. And so our farm's location close enough to an urban center, South Bend, Indiana, is vital for having that revenue source. So, to build those connections between town and country I think is also really important. And that's the other piece of the revenue. Yeah.
Christa Hein: So, I always love to bring the interview together at the end by thinking about the listeners who are maybe building or dreaming about their own farms [00:38:00] or farm education programs. So, for someone listening who has land, but it doesn't look quite like they want it yet, maybe it's overgrown, tired, or just not ready, what would you want them to know?
Charlotte Wolfe: Well, I would suggest that you keep your day job until your farm can be productive in some way. And the other thing you can do is just to hang out, volunteer, whatever it takes to build the skills. I think a lot of people just go from dreaming to purchasing land and there's really a lot to know in between.
And I had been doing that unconsciously throughout my life. I mean, we only came to the farm in our thirties and I had been at home growing up. And then even in college, I had been building a lot of working with my hand skills and a lot of playing in the dirt skills and in the mud. And those are the sort of skills that you need to have when you're starting a farm.
So, if you're dreaming, [00:39:00] just go help out at a community garden even, or at a nonprofit garden. And that way you can get those skills because if you don't, you're going to be having a piece of land that you are going to have to learn on the job and that might not reap the harvest that you wish for.
Christa Hein: So, I'm curious for any educators who might be interested in weaving conservation or restoration into their programs, where would you suggest they start?
Charlotte Wolfe: You know, there's a lot of opportunity in urban land. There really is. School grounds. If you think about most schools that have huge lawns, the kids aren't even playing on most of that lawn. All the schools around here have these huge lawns and those could be turned into farm gardens. They could be turned into wildlife areas even. But there's a lack of funding for that sort of thing.
So, it's going to take a grassroots effort. It's going to [00:40:00] take calling our legislators to encourage them to support these efforts because even if you can create a wild area at a school grounds, it's not necessarily going to be visited by the teachers and students at the school unless there's some provision being made for the Indiana standards or whatever it is that your school is emphasizing.
And I think that our schools are not really understanding that the hands-on learning is where a lot of, especially young children I would say fourth grade and under, is the only way that they learn. And if you don't have hands-on programs, especially hands-on in nature, you're not going to get kids appreciating the values of earth and the value of species, because they just don't have any experience with that and they don't have a heart connection to that.
So that would be one way is to get involved with school programs, urban land [00:41:00] possibly. And also, just calling your legislators and asking them to support farmers and young farmers trying to get access to land because that's a very important issue that we need to be paying attention to. So that's kind of one of the biggest barriers to getting young farmers started is getting hold of the land, having the skills to work the land, and also for the education piece, having the education to teach about the land.
And a lot of farmers would like to add that to their revenue stream, but they themselves, all they know is the farm piece. They don't really understand the ecology piece. They may have been farming with chemicals and [00:42:00] industrial farm equipment. And that is somewhat dangerous sometimes if you're not a farmer and you've got all that equipment there that can be dangerous to have visitors. They don't want to have visitors, because that's a liability.
So, that revenue stream isn't open to those types of operations. But perhaps if they could set aside maybe 20 acres of their 200 acres or 800 acres, to have that be an educational farm and an organic farm, that might encourage them to convert more of their land to nonchemical types of practices instead of continuing the soil degradation that's involved with chemical use on farms.
Christa Hein: Yeah, it really is that farm education is so needed, like you were saying, to build that connection as you mentioned. Like, you were so inspired in your own childhood by visiting a camp in a natural area, and that really, that can exist anywhere.
So, I'm curious, [00:43:00] where are you going with Prairie Winds? Are there any big dreams or goals that you're excited to explore next?
Charlotte Wolfe: Sure. I would greatly like to export this model. And I’ve been attending online courses that talk about different curriculums and get people together that are doing farm education.
I want to put a plugin for the program at Shelburne Farms. Vera over at Shelburn Farms is one of my heroes. She has been presenting these, you know, Zoom calls for farm educators for at least a decade, maybe more…
Christa Hein: Yeah, I interviewed Vera on episode two of our podcast and the Farm-based Education Network.
Charlotte Wolfe: I have greatly appreciated her getting all those folks together because they have a lot to share. And we share curriculum; I have curriculum I'm happy to share.
I partnered with a couple of other farmers, and we developed a modular curriculum [00:44:00] for college students, or even advanced high school students. And that was funded by a USDA Sustainable Agriculture and Research Education grant, SARE, and that is available online. It was an internship program.
I also go and speak at county meetings where natural land is being discussed. We just had a presentation today about a 116-acre property that's in the city of South Bend. And some people want to develop it, some people want it as a park. And I said why don't you have it as an “agri-hood”? You know, and just kind of putting some of these things that I've done here in place in the city. Wouldn't that be cool? On 116 acres, you could do a lot with that.
There's significant portion of it that's natural area, and so that could have value and there could be a school there. And these sorts of unique ideas that they're doing those things on the east and west coasts, and here in the Midwest we're sometimes [00:45:00] slower to adopt. We have more land than they do, but we have the opportunity to do those things here that they're doing in other areas of the country. So, I would love to see more learning farms.
Christa Hein: Absolutely. Well, Charlotte, how can people learn more about Prairie Winds Nature Farm online, or stay connected and follow your work?
Charlotte Wolfe: It's PrairieWindsNatureFarm.com. And then you can always email me if you want to visit or call me. My phone number is on there. I make myself available.
Christa Hein: That's great, Charlotte. What I love so much about your story is that Prairie Winds shows us that farm education doesn't have to be only about crops, animals, or food production - it can also be about restoring what was lost, helping [00:46:00] people see the life under their feet, and giving children and adults a real relationship with the land.
Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today.
Charlotte Wolfe: You are so welcome and thank you for your program and all you're doing to educate people about this topic. I just really applaud your efforts to reach out to farm educators and get some listeners interested, because I know a lot of people are interested.
Christa Hein: Well, thank you. To our listeners, if this conversation made you think differently about the land you already have or the land you hope to work with someday, I hope you'll take this as encouragement. You don't have to have a perfect farm to begin. Sometimes the work is simply noticing what's possible and letting the land become a part of the teaching.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the Farm Educator’s Roadmap Podcast. Leave a review and share it with someone else who believes farms can be a place of learning, restoration, and connection. Until next time, keep teaching, keep growing and keep noticing the life all around [00:47:00] you.
Christa Hein: Hey farm educators, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Before you go, I've got something special for you. If you're ready to build a farm education program that people are excited to book, grab my free guide, Five Simple Steps to Growing an In Demand Farm Education Program. It's packed with the same steps I used to grow my own farm education business.
It'll help you get noticed, attract clients, and make an impact. Just head over to www.farmeducatorsroadmap.com/fivesimplesteps to get your free copy. It's quick, easy, and will make your programs irresistible. I can't wait to see what you create. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
