[gate clangs, dog barks]
Angela: On a bend in the Buffalo River...
- Heather Mishefske: We started with this vision of restoring the prairies.
- ...Heather Mishefske and Chad Rykal
envisioned a new kind of farm.
- Heather: The land here has been
in, like, an ag rotation for decades.
Like, soybeans and corn.
- Chad Rykal: We have roughly 20 acres that we've turned into prairie.
- Angela: Restoring this century farm
means making the land sustainable
for another 100 years.
- Heather: I noticed the first year that we were here,
there were no birds.
And it's crazy how just in one year, you know,
you walk out on the prairie,
and the pollinators are everywhere,
and the birds are everywhere.
We have a lot of trail cams,
and I love just watching to see what kind of critters
are kind of milling around here at night.
It's kind of amazing to see how the nature
just kind of takes over.
[grasses rustling]
You build it, and they will come [laughs] kind of a thing.
- Chad and Heather are building a lifestyle for every season.
- Chad: It's a good mix for me
because we've got the water and the woods,
and just being able to walk out my back door
and have access to that
is just one of the most amazing things ever for me.
- Heather: We knew we wanted to just live out in a place
where we could just walk the dogs
and be in a rural setting.
It really was our ultimate goal.
Our southern boundary is the entire river.
River really ebbs and flows through the land.
The dogs love it.
[gentle guitar]
There is something to love here in every season,
as fall gives way to winter.
- Chad: I will make ski trails and fat biking trails.
I love mountain biking in the woods.
[bike chain rolling]
- Heather: We have about three miles of trails.
Whoo!
They go through the prairies.
They go through a lot of the woods. [skis scritching]
- Chad: When people come here,
and they get to experience what we experience,
I think they just end up having such a good time.
We enjoy having people come hang out.
It's a really cool thing.
[dog barks]
- This is a hot fire, Chad. - Chad: I know.
Feels good, doesn't it? - Mm-hmm.
I like to see people get outside and enjoy the outdoors.
[warm laughter]
- What they also want this farm to be...
...is organic.
- I tell people she's interested in the flower side of things,
and I'm interested in the vegetable side of things.
My focus is on the garden and growing organic food.
- Chad is definitely the grower of the two of us.
I like the prairie part of it and like the woods.
- We can't go on a hike without Heather
walking out into the prairie and pulling some invasive
out of the field [Heather laughs] so it's...
Between the garden and that,
we're pretty darn good at pulling weeds.
- Restoring this land hasn't always been pretty.
- Chad: We filled five 20-yard dumpsters with garbage
and that was just over a year ago.
We essentially had a dump on our property,
and we had tires, TVs.
Almost anything you can think of was in there.
We like to be outside, and we like to be working,
and using our hands, so... - Heather: Yeah.
- In the end, it felt great just to remove all that garbage.
- Angela: Healing the land while exercising their mind and body
is the ultimate goal.
- Every year is going to be a new project.
It's going to be project after project,
and I think we'll probably do it until we die.
[laughs]
- Angela: The winds of environmental change
are blowing on this Buffalo County farm.
- Chad: My hope is that we can create this amazing thing
that hundred years from now, when I'm dead and gone,
that the people are living here
can still take that and continue to live that way.
- Heather: How cool to think about that!
Every time the monarchs come through,
like this is a spot that they stop.
Kinda giving back to the Earth
what maybe was taken away before.
- Chad: It's a lot of gratitude just to be able to live here
and own it and do the things that we do.
I feel very fortunate in that regard.
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