Minnesota River Interviews - Art and Barb Straub

"We have 200 acres, and that’s totally prairie and trees.  Our prairie is tall grass prairie ... we take kids from schools and they can pretend they are Laura Ingalls Wilder."

Over the years, the Straubs have carefully restored over 200 acres of land that has been in Art’s family for over 150 years. The land encompasses flat upland areas and lush wooded valley that runs down to the banks of the Minnesota River near Le Sueur, Minnesota. They noted major landscape changes in the area over time from small fields planted to diverse crops like oats and pasture into large fields of corn or soybeans. “The Straub land is the last undeveloped ridge line between Le Sueur and Henderson and we want to keep it that way.”

Video Text:“There are 73 acres of prairie right here.  This is 20 acres of these marvelous trees right here, and then Barb and I are going to have 200 acres, and that’s totally prairie and trees.  And our prairie is tall grass prairie, where we take kids from the churches and kids from the schools, because we are retired teachers, and we take them through the tall grass prairie, its way above their heads, and they can pretend they are Laura Ingalls Wilder and get a taste for what it must have been like not to be able to see through the grasses.  This is a short grass, it has 16 forbs in it, 16 kinds of flowers that flower starting early in the spring, and the Asters just finished flowering out there, so that’s kind of pretty, but they weren’t recommending forbs when we planted so we’ve got this Blue Stem.

Well, the first that happened is that the land is totally put into one field of one kind of crop. This year it happens to be soybeans, and that’s happening, as you know, all over the country side. That’s one of the reasons for the problems in the river.  When 120 acres get heavy rains, like the recent 12-14 inches of rain, your gonna see what it does to one little peoples area."

This page was last updated 8/08