A big thank you to Ed, Mary Ann, Mary, Kim, Diane, Lynn, Ken, Jim, Dave, Lois and anyone I may have missed that showed up at our workday today.  Even with the rain shortened day we accomplished quite a bit.  Also a big thank you to Eric, Ana and the volunteers from Holiday Home Camp that donated five hours in the rain this afternoon and raked and hauled all the logs up along the west bank of Southwick Creek. 
 
It is our voulunteers that make this such a special place.
 
Thank you agian.
 

Just this past week, we had a very successful controlled burn and managed to burn the main prairie, a wet meadow south of the prairie that has a lot of invasive grasses in it, as well as the woodlands and north prairie. Today we plan to burn the two sedge meadows and perhaps some of the areas along Harris Rd. In the future we will not burn the entire prairie at all at once, but we were advised to at this time because of the amount of invasive plants that were showing up. We really want to be more sensitive to the animals, insects, etc., when we do our burns.

Some of the first signs of Spring bring a great reminder of all the hard work that we have done. These photos show sedges that we planted along the creek last summer as well as first sign of one of my favorites - Skunk Cabbage!

It looks like we can go ahead and have our workday tomorrow.  They are not calling for pm snow and as most a few flurries in the am.  Great weather for cutting and hauling trees and of course eating chili at the Chili Cook-Off after our workday. 
 
Dress warm and I'll be sure to bring some hot water for hot chocolate and plenty of doughnuts.  We have opened a new entrance quite a bit to the north so if you don't see the truck it will be pulled in to the site.  You can still park where you were parking but again, we have worked quite a distance north.
 
Hope to have a good turnout for our regular March Volunteer workday.  After this it will be pulling garlic mustard so please come out for one of our last big tree removal days.
 

We had another very good workday today clearing more box elder trees along Southwick Creek.  A special thank you to the following people that came out to help today; Ed, Jim, Dick, Lynn, Barbara, Kim, Eric and Don who came out yesterday and spent a couple of hours getting the brush pile ready for burning today.  We found the weather more cooperative than last week when it was around 6 degrees most of the morning. Our next workday will be on February 14th and we hope for a good turnout as we want to split up and have some volunteers continue on the creek and others go down to the lakefront an work on the dogwood that is taking over large sections of the sedge meadow. 
 
If anyone can recruit new volunteers that would be great as we have a lot of work to do the spring.  We have additional sections of boardwalk to construct, more clearing around the ponds when the snow melts and of course, garlic musturd will return with a vengance. 
 
Thanks again to everyone that helps as time allows.  We have accomplished a great deal through the years with a great volunteer force and would not have accomplished what we have without you.

Since we unable to have our Volunteer workday in December because of the weather and we only had eight this past weekend because of the cold temperatures we are giving everyone the opportunity to come up this Saturday, January 31st and enjoy the balmy 31 degree temperatures.  We will be working on the creek project once again and coninuting to cut down box elder and buckthorn trees.  We are going to go out a little early and get the fire going so it is easier to do the brush burning.  As usual we will be working from 8:30-11:30 and will have water and refreshments available.  Hope to see many of you this Saturday. Remember, President Obama says we all have to work together to make this country a better place to live, work and play.

We had a good turnout today and got a lot of work done.  Several large box elder trees were downed, cut up, the logs piled and branches burned.   Thank you to Ed, Don, Jim, John, Andy, Barbara, Rick, Alek for showing up on the zero degree day.  It was actually very nice weather with the sun out, low wind and we worked hard enough to keep warm. 

The day everyone has been waiting for, no not he Inauguration but the announcement of our first Volunteer Workday of 2009.  We will be meeting at the main entrance at 8:30 on Saturday morning and will continue our work of clearing box elder and buckthorn along Southwich Creek.  We have to move forward on this clearing so we can plant more frobes and sedges in the spring in our effort to stabalize the stream bank to stop erosion and improve the future fish habitat. 
 
We will work from 8:30 - 11:30 and will be starting a nice big brush fire to keep everyone warm.  It is going to be a bit cool on Saturday but we have plenty of work to keep everyone warm.  Over the next few months we will be working between the creek project and pond clearing depending on the amount of snow on the ground. 
 
We will have refreshments available, hot chocolate to keep everyone warm and plenty of good fellowship.  We had 23 volunteers at our last workday, let's see if we can beat that number!
 
Looking forward to seeing everyone on Saturday, January 24th.

Check our Event Calendar for future volunteer days and upcoming events.