No two days are alike

Post by Clemson Prairie Ecology Fellow Annie Carew

This past week has been busy for us. No two days are alike, so there’s no chance of us growing bored any time soon. This week we have done yardwork, invasive plant mapping, pine tree thinning, grass clipping, forage weighing, fence repair, and horseback riding. The day we tried to thin pines was in the mid-80s, so it was hot and miserable, but we still got most of one plot cleared.

Early in the week, we met the Weed Coordinator for Musselshell County, Meriel Beck. She spoke to us about how to correctly spray weeds—long sleeves and pants, walk backwards—and how to identify species we haven’t yet seen. Ms. Beck and Terry, the ranch manager, showed us a clump of leafy spurge which had just begun to flower. Some of the species that we’re mapping are pictured below.

Several of these invasive species, like leafy spurge, are rhizotamous: they can sprout and spread through their sprawling root systems. When spraying rhizotamous species, you should spray in a four-foot radius around the actual sprouts; the plant could still grow up from its subterranean roots. Others, like houndstongue, have burrs which cling stubbornly to anything that passes them. Cows, dogs, and horses can carry houndstongue seeds, as can humans. The burrs still clung to my socks even after I did laundry.

We worked with Terry and LaVonne to fix some fencing on lands across the highway from us. Terry taught us how to use the fence stretchers to tighten strands of barbed wire which have begun to sag. Before you can tighten the wires, however, you have to loosen them from the posts. One of the fences near the Segars’s house rusted and broke apart, so we strung a new wire between two of the posts. Most of the posts are steel, but wooden posts are also spaced evenly along the line. Today, we rode up onto the state lands with Goz himself to examine fence lines. I haven’t spent much time on a horse before, so I was well out of my comfort zone riding up and down such steep slopes. There’s a lot of fence that needs fixing on that part of the ranch, and it has to be done before Terry can graze cattle there. On our four-hour ride we saw elk, turkeys, and a bald eagle. The scenery was breathtaking, but I was very glad to be back on my own two feet.

Our pine thinning project is going slowly but surely. We’ve begun clearing small pines off the north slope of a ridge on the Segars’s land, after having collected forage samples from plots of varying pine densities. A few days ago, I began sorting our forage samples and weighing them. They’ve been drying in the garage for several weeks now, so all the water weight is gone. I sort the sample bags by type of plant: shrub, forb, or grass. I weigh each category for each quadrat on each transect on each plot—five quadrats per transect, five transects per plot, three plots on the north slope alone. It’s slow, tedious work, picking apart bits of dried plant in a hot garage. However, this is the data that will allow us to gauge changes in grass growth as we thin pine thickets. We anticipate an increase in forage as we clear out the pine trees, which should allow more light to reach the grasses on the ground.

Between our studies and the various chores that Terry and LaVonne need from us, we are kept very busy. We have found time to go into Billings several times. It’s an eclectic city, with a more diverse population than I anticipated—which just means that there are people there who aren’t cowboys. We went to the Strawberry Festival yesterday and browsed the booths, but I never actually saw a strawberry.