The Accidental Meadow

In December of 2021 Hobbitstee was able to purchase this amazing property. 47 Acres with 30 acres of woods and wetland and 17 acres workable farmland. In July of 2021 the farmer who rented the 17 workable acres took a wheat crop of the land and nothing was planted due to the pending change of ownership. We didn't do much with the land during the winter other than planning for the upcoming year. Busy with getting a temporary wildlife hospital (in the form of a 40' seacan) set up and made functional occupied a lot of my time as well as the planning and permit application process for the brand new state of the art wildlife hospital to be build as soon as the afore mentioned permits get issued.

As soon as the weather got a bit nicer I lay awake at night planning the necessary outdoor wildlife enclosures that needed to be build and needed to decide on where on the 17 acres they would go. I am very visual person, so I endlessly walked that 17 acres all the while planning in my head. The farmer in me had long since decided that the portion that would not get enclosures on it would be put in hay so that we could use the resulting crop for the animals in our care.

During this time I spotted the large number of vernal pools and became obsessed with the large number of frogs who started calling from these pools. I had never heard Western Chorus Frogs before. I made an effort to learn more about the Western Chorus Frogs life cycle and learned that the vernal pools are vital to their survival, so in my head I excluded the vernal pools from my enclosure building and hay crop plans.

The minute vegetation started sprouting I changed my mind again. It started really subtle with flowering Blue Eyed Grass springing up all over.I had never seen this before and was facinated by the tiny purply flowers. From there I was sold and it was done. Nature changed my mind completely. It was clear that seed had been laying dormant just waiting to explode into bloom when given the chance bringing with it the most divine collection of colours, scents, colourful buzzing insects and birds galore. No amount of hay crop could compete with this. This 17 acres was never intended to be farmed. It always needed to be a meadow and when given the smallest of chances nature made it happen. That is where the name comes from. The meadow that was never really planned, but just happened.

The whole spring, summer and fall the accidental meadow bloomed with species of flowers. One species would die down and an other bunch would explode into bloom. It was enchanting. I spent a lot of my free time lost in the meadow looking at plants, observing insects and learning new things daily. it was around that time I accidentally learned that the wetlands dotting the accidental meadow are in fact classified as 'Provincially Significant Wetlands’ and that the ‘managed’ forrest we bought didn’t have an active management plan in place. Cash-cropping PSW's is not allowed because they are protected, but unfortunately that is what had been done for many years simply because the tenant farmer didnt know he was farming PSW.
learning about all these things, observing the invasive species of vegetation and seeing the damage done to the wetlands and the vernal pools started the idea for restoration of it all. After consultations with friends who have expertise in these areas we made a plan and now we are ready to move forward with the plan starting in feb/march of the coming year with amphibian surveys of the various types of habitat we have. We are now working hard on learning as much as possible about the history of the property and trying to convince the MNRF to unearth the expired forrest management plan so that we can use it to build a new one based around conservation, but also to see how things have changed over the years.
We have years of observing and habitat enhancement ahead of us and I can't wait to learn as much as possible about this property and the inhabitants.

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