One could think of the significant differences between individual environmental organizations interested in protecting natural resources and those who from the very beginning turned forests and savannas into equal conditions into productive farms. However, in the Saginaw Valley of Michigan, farmers, urban volunteers, and conservation organizations represented by the US Fish and Wildlife Service have teamed up to protect and restore wetlands and native grasslands, creating an important refuge for nearly three hundred species of wildlife, many of which appear on lists Endangered Species in Michigan. In addition, ten thousand acres of the former swamp became rich agricultural land with non-parallel productivity, which were devoted to many crops, including maize, soybeans and sugar beets, and by 1935 became the largest single farm east of the Mississippi River.
This was not always the case. There was a time, 130 years ago, when the swamps of the Saginaw valley gave birth to the stigma of the desert. The idea of turning the filth, which was a lowland swamp, seven miles south of the city of Michigan timber, into productive farms that seem strange to everyone but one person. He was Harlan P. Smith, a visionary lawyer.
It was a complicated idea that aroused great interest, since in the 1880s the land was cheap. The US government showed great interest in the population of lands secured by the Saginaw Treaty in 1819, when one third of the lower peninsula of the state passed forever from the hands of Chippeva to the federal government. Unallocated land, as a rule, attracts heads of government. The United States experienced the flags of France, England and Spain, flew over its territory in Michigan, and no longer needed the costly wars necessary to disrupt the aspirations of the European expansionists. To encourage settlement, the federal government transferred land grants of 160 acres to veterans of the war of independence, the war of 1812, and the war with Mexico. The 1820 Land Act allowed others to buy eighty hectares from the government for $ 1.25 per acre, which means that for $ 100 (about $ 1,500 in this era) a family can own a 80-acre farm on a hill.
Harlan P. Smith understood the descriptive swamp, was obliged to the wet and opposing nature of the swamp area of 28 square miles, not only erroneous, but also derogatory. Spring thaws overwhelmed the swamps to a depth of fifteen feet and left behind dirt and debris that prevented agriculture. From spring to autumn, the hanging miasm of mosquitoes rose from the foliage to inflict merciless attacks on those who dared to invade their area. Those who boldly went outside usually developed a form of malaria with the inscription “ague”, which was marked by alternating periods of fever, chills, and sweating. The vicious marauders caused the rejection of the military fort in Saginaw in 1823 only a year after its construction, after which its commander, Major Daniel Baker, said in his last report: “Only Indians, muskrats and frogs can live on the Saginaw River.
The huge swamp is located in the south and west of the city of Saginaw, a hundred miles north of Detroit. These are the consequences of a glacial lake formed during the glacial period, which ended 10,000 years ago. The glacier left behind a flat terrain, located a few feet above the adjacent levels of the lake, shelter for wildlife and migratory birds: bald eagles, coastal and marsh birds, song birds, waterfowl and people. Sea canoes, Native Americans enjoyed game, fish, wild fruit and nuts, and wild rice. Sugar-maple trees brought stocks of sweets and corn in abundance along the lower lands. In addition to food, the swamp provided materials for shelter, canoes, weapons, and dishes. According to some estimates, before the European settlement, few people wanted Native Americans to live among prairie grasses for almost five thousand years.
US Recognizes the Need to Protect Fish and Wildlife
Today, under the protection of the US Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Protection since 1953, 9,620 acres, or about half of the swamps that the early settlers avoided, are under the supervision of the National Wildlife Rescue System. Its legal design is the Shiawasse National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), home to deer, beavers, muskrats, turtles, rattlesnakes, and flocks of Canadian geese, often numbering 25,000 people, many of whom remain around for years.
According to the US Fisheries and Wildlife Service, the Environmental Planning Division, the main shelter habitat types include approximately 3,800 acres of wetlands, 3,500 acres of forests, 1,200 acres allocated to agriculture, and more than 500 acres allocated to pastures, the Planning Division environmental protection: “This diversity of habitats supports an abundance of plants, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish. These species include the Eastern Fox Snake, the Short-Owl Owl, the Peregrine Falcon, and the Least Burned. Fish found in refugee waters or are expected to inhabit refugee waters include sturgeon lakes listed as endangered species in Michigan, and river darts are endangered species. ”
The Shiawasse National Wildlife Refuge is the place of the year. He is supervised by Steve Kahl, refugee manager and assistant manager Ed De Vries. The US Fish and Wildlife Service reports that “It provides food, nesting and areas for more than 40 coastal and wading birds. Flying waterfowl from the Mississippi and Atlantic spans uses the area every spring and autumn. Peak numbers of waterfowl at the Refuge exceeded from 40,000 to 50,000 ducks, from 20,000 to 30,000 geese and from 700 to 1,200 swans. In the autumn in the fall, in the winter and in the early spring ".
An important addition to Shiawassee is the Green Point Environmental Training Center, a 76-acre site within the city of Saginaw. "Green Dot", managed by Rebecca Gaucher, is replete with wildlife observed by visitors who walk along well-groomed paths. The friendly USA Rangers Wildlife Park, one of which is Tom Horb, retired school principal, group leaders, large and small, along village paths, where they point to animals, birds, foliage species and conservation methods, all items of lively interest. for eco-aware visitors. He spent ten years here as a volunteer before taking a full job in 2007, so he knows all 76 acres, and most of us know our backyards. He has many summer weekends on hand to give tours, pass out fishing rods and answer questions in order to acquaint visitors with the pleasures of the forest.
Early settlers focus on immediate needs.
However, in the 19th century, American settlers showed less interest in conserving wetlands and wilderness than in transforming land into production units. The swamp was considered as a useless swamp because it could not easily be exhausted, as a result of which the water remained on the ground during the planting season. Seven-foot tall grass and deep mud, cultivating the prairie beyond the capabilities of ordinary people and depleting such a large space, will require the skills of organization, capital and management outside the funds of the individual farmer.
To turn a swamp into farmland, you need a visionary. One arrived in the face of Harlan P. Smith. He was born in County Livingston, Michigan, on April 3, 1843, one of eight children. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a law degree in 1867 and then moved to Saginaw to join his brother Irwin, thirteen years older, in the practice of law. Quickly, his interest fell to forestland, a hot growth industry due to the escalation of logging plants through the American Midwest.
A thirst for a nation driven by thousands of men and women into the white pine forests of Michigan, creating for the first time a significant local market for Michigan's average agricultural products. Smith looked at the wetlands south of Saginaw and saw opportunity in fertile filth, where others saw problems. He began to acquire a title for unwanted swamps and encouraged others to join him in this venture. Sometimes he and his partners, advocates, Charles H. Camp and George B. Brooks purchased about 10,000 acres located in Alby and St. Petersburg. Charles Townships, south and east of the Flint and Sheavassi Rivers, then began developing what would become the largest private state farm in the state. Drainage has become an urgent and demanding project. To this end, Smith and company cut a ditch from the northern part of the prairie to the Flint River, a distance of about two miles and thus drained almost 400 acres for immediate farming, a small but important beginning. From the mud and germ of an idea, a great farm was born and was called Prairie Farm from its birth to the present.
Prairie Farm will eventually cover over 10,000 acres. First, it took more drainage, and then roads, farms, and workers. In many places, the boards contained people, horses and equipment. Even then, men had to leave their boots and shovels to get bogged down when they escaped from sucking mud, leaving them behind to die, horses too tired to get out of the mud. Farm employers objected when they were offered jobs on the prairie.
Despite the horrors that depended on those who actually did agricultural work, the work was done economically for the further development of the prairie. Smith and his partners, however, decided to pass it on to others. They sold the farm in their company to Saginaw Realty, which was then formed by the brothers Weeks, Harry T and William J., successful machine manufacturers, who both are well acquainted with the potential of sugar beet. With growing interest, the new owners followed the construction of sugar factories in the nearby city of Bay City and Saginaw. A partnership with them was an integral early promoter of the sugar beet industry, Samuel G. Higgins, a lawyer for Saginaw.
However, new owners found the drainage costly, which made the land unattractive for farmers, especially when more suitable land was in abundance. A few square miles of swamp lay just over three feet above the level of Saginaw Bay, where for half a million years it was a sedimentary basin for rich alluvium, carried by rivers 600 to 800 feet high, flowing hundreds of miles or more through fertile areas of mid-Michigan. Rich, as it were, farmers did not want to fight floods, remoteness and harsh farming conditions when the best opportunities were available.
Sugar company begins mass prairie development
Investments languished, and wildlife flourished. Residents of the area used it as a hunting reserve, and sometimes a source of wild hay, and probably looked at their managers with surprise at urban investors who flooded good money into the development of the land when nearby land cost some of this amount needed to drain the prairie. The lure, however, was the superior performance of the land and the knowledge that land reclamation was a one-time cost for which an invaluable prize could be won. Carmen Smith, unrelated to Harlan P. Smith, executive director of Owosso Sugar Company, a subsidiary of the Michigan Chemical Company, owned by Pittsburgh Plate Glass, founded and controlled by John Pitcairn, was looking for a large area where you can set up a demonstration farm made of sugar beet and sufficient area to insure the factory that she will have all the beets she wants. He quickly set his sights on the Prairie farm and its disappointed hosts.
Smith completed the deal with Saginaw Realty on February 22, 1903, and soon the steamboat excavator, a monster destined for digging into the muddy ground, soon went down the Saginaw to the prairie. He crashed into the ground from the front, forming a 20-foot dam and creating a channel that he used to transport to an acre-acre, he demanded land that had waited half a million years for the mechanical hippo to arrive,
Occasionally, Owosso Sugar created thirty-six miles of dams, some of which are eighty feet wide at the bottom, forty at the height and twenty feet in height. Others were smaller, but all were designed for the same purpose — drainage, and then maintaining drying on land. The roads are crowned with dikes tops, and the sides are turned into grass for use as sheep-breeding pasture. The sugar company laid out the land just like a giant chessboard in twelve lines of sixteen forty acres with additional land intended for growing peppermint and sheep. Almost overnight, with a capital expenditure of $ 400,000, Smith turned the Prairie farm from a loss making offer into the largest sugar estate in Michigan and probably in the United States, if not in the world - ten thousand acres. A new factory can now be distracted from worrying about a sufficient stock of beets.
Alicia - Farm Town on Prairie
Since Prairie Farm lay seven miles south of Saginaw at the nearest point and seventeen to the most distant point, it would be important for the farm to achieve the same independence as it was practically. For this reason, Carmen Smith founded the village of Alicia as an organizational center for the farm and soon added two more, Pitcairney and Klauzaledale. Pitcairn, smaller than Alicia, was founded in the center of the prairie area. Its main activity was the operation of peppermint distillery and housing for workers committed to this operation. Clausdale serviced the needs of the farm in a sheep operation.
Alicia served as a hub for employees and their craftsmen. Prairie Farm will not only become one of the world's largest beet varieties, but at the same time it will become one of the most modern. The generator and the water plant provided electricity and water to the residents of the farm. Telephones were available, as they had been, since 1904, by the US Postal Service.
Homes for workers and their families were put on posts and survived on a half-mile long stretch of road. Nearby were two large dormitories for lonely workers and barns for equipment, fodder and horses. Oval handles surrounded by a blacksmith shop, a grain elevator, fuel tanks and a public store completed the picture. Six-mile long rail siding made it easy to remove sugar beet and an economical method of importing supplies to a mass enterprise.
In 1900, horses and mules served as a driving force for a wide variety of agricultural implements, including plows, discs, harrows, planters, cultivators, mowers, and reapers. On the prairie, horses shied away in the mud. In addition, since the greatest amount of power needed was for plowing, horse plows required keeping a large number of plow horses throughout the year, which would have taken only a few weeks. Only three years after Chauncey U. Penoyar spoke about Saginaw in the first horseless carriage seen on the streets of Saginaw (and soon after that became involved in the first deadly catastrophe of the city), Prairie farm introduced steam tractors and twelve bladed plows to overcome sensual soil. . Plow horses, lifeless, would take place on the Prairie farm for the next quarter of a century, as it would be through American agriculture. In 1910, there were more than 24 million horses and mules on American farms. Moreover, horse carriages attracted more attention at the national and international levels to the Prairie farm than the cultivation of sugar beet.
Prairie Farm - Champion Breeds Horse Project
By the time it became a large beet farm, planting, cultivating and harvesting several crops in addition to sugar beets, Prairie needed three hundred heads of heavy horses. During each summer, about 75 teams were used constantly, sometimes consisting of three horses. The farm was managed by Jacob de Geus. He was born in the Netherlands in 1854 and immigrated to America in 1888. His introduction to the US sugar beet industry took place at Kalamazoo, where he was hired by an agronomist. Later he took the same position for the plant, which is scheduled for Mount Pleasant. However, the Mount Pleasant project disappeared, so he moved to Ovosso, where he established his wife Johanna and their four sons and daughter on the Prairie farm. While beet-raising was his occupation, horses were his passion. He went to Belgium, where he acquired the offspring of champions and mares, and then spent years reproducing champions who earned their living in teams and received awards at state fairs. Один из них, Сан-Пеур-де-Хамал, был чемпионом на Мичиганской государственной ярмарке в 1915 и 1916 годах и был назван великим чемпионом всех пород в 1916 году и снова в 1917 году. Другой, Рубис, был награжден серебряной медалью короля Бельгии в 1913.
Ферма прерий принимает неправильный оборот
К 1928 году неуверенная экономика и неудовлетворенные фермеры потемнели судьбы владельцев сахарной пудры. Завод Owosso Sugar Company был в нафталинах, теперь его собственность теперь находится в руках компании Michigan Sugar Company и фермы Prairie, которая все еще находится в руках Питтсбургского пластинчатого стекла, ожидая новых возможностей, которые шли медленно, когда страна скользнула в Великую депрессию.
В 1933 году, в глубине великой депрессии, надежда на будущее страны достигла низкого уровня. Наследники Джона Питкэрна решили продать прерийскую ферму. Именно тогда на сцену пришел другой провидец, который был приверженцем концепции коллективизма. Его зовут Джозеф Дж. Кон. Он вскочил на возможность построить общество, основанное на добровольном соглашении и взаимном сотрудничестве. Родившийся в России в 1878 году, Кон прибыл в Соединенные Штаты в 1902 году, после чего он отправился в крестовый поход, который проводил его по всей стране, читал лекции в социалистических и трудовых группах. Он, как он провозгласил, земля, средства производства и другие предметы общего пользования должны быть наделены обществом в целом, и все должны работать в соответствии со своими способностями и спускать равную долю вознаграждений труда.
Кон назвал проект The Sunshine Cooperative Farm Community. Он сказал: «Ферма является высокопродуктивной и может легко накормить тысячу семей ... никто не должен слишком много работать, и у сообщества будет множество вещей, необходимых для того, чтобы сделать жизнь привлекательной и полезной». В Sunshine не было бы беспокойства по поводу аренды, счетов за продукты питания и платежей за рассрочку ... «Мы оставим за собой все заботы и заботу о работе и все боязни быть выброшенными на навозную гору заброшенного человечества».
Первая из 150 семей, которые присоединились к нему во сне, вошла в собственность 26 июня 1933 года. Там они обнаружили виртуальный рай, состоящий из 2000 овец, 1000 ягнят, 200 свиней, корову, пять тракторов трех грузовиков, один старый Бьюик и полей мяты, овса, ячменя, сена, люцерны, тимофеевки, клевера, сладкой кукурузы, соевых бобов и 2000 акров сахарной свеклы. Среди них не было фермеров, и все были бедными. Сообщество обладало тысячей долларов и задолжало четыре тысячи немногим покровителям, которые пришли им на помощь.
Поскольку поселенцы не имели навыков ведения сельского хозяйства, Кон обратился к бывшим сотрудникам, что привело к созданию платежной ведомости, функции жизни, которую Койн надеялся избежать. Две тысячи гектаров сахарной свеклы потребовали интенсивного труда, до 350 человек в сезоне. Sunrise Farms наняли сотни рабочих. Предполагалось, что прибыль от первого урожая переместится в верхнюю часть отчета о прибылях и убытках. Огромная сеть дренажных канав, Кох училась в еще большем разочаровании, требовала постоянного обслуживания, за исключением того, что она забивалась сорняками и деревьями. Посевы на следующий год выглядели многообещающими, пока клады морских червей, подстрекаемые сильными дождями, и неопытность не уничтожили урожай кукурузы и сои. Сахарная свекла обычно достигала 10 тонн в акре на ферме Prairie, но в 1935 году они составляли в среднем всего пять тонн.
Инакомыслие вскоре заполнило воздух. Расходы коррупции и некомпетентности вспыхнули вместе с гневом, ненавистью и негодованием, которые накапливались вместе с сорняками, которые лишали области производительности. Группы вступали в споры и спорили друг с другом через дни и ночи по поводу больших и малых дел, иногда заканчивающихся обменом физическими ударами. Последовали официальные жалобы, расследования и судебные процессы. Не было мира для Кон или его назначенных менеджеров.
К 1936 году вес долга уговорил Кон продавать «Восходные фермы» Корпорации сельской реабилитации, филиалу федерального правительства. Правительство заплатило 277 630 долларов, большинство из которых было использовано для выхода из долга Sunrise. План «Сельская реабилитационная корпорация», результат идей, рекомендованных Рейксоном Гаем Тугвелл, экономистом, который стал частью администрации Франклина Д. Рузвельта, заключался в создании района переселения для обездоленных фермеров, которые сдавали в аренду участки 40 акров согласно одному плану и 80 акров по другому.
Ферма Prairie, согласно этому плану, больше не существовала бы в качестве одной фермы, а в качестве кооперативного заключения от 125 до 250 фермеров, большая часть которых имела бы ограниченный капитал и мало или вообще не имела бы опыта в сложной природе фермы Prairie. Однако в течение года после покупки собственности правительство изменило курс и отважилось на мысль о поиске кооператива, который во многом отличался бы от неудачного эксперимента Sunrise Farms. Вместо этого правительство арендовало землю для 25 семей, которые остались после того, как жители Санрайза ушли в отставку. Они пробыли два года, прежде чем они отправили свою идею в Самос, штат Вирджиния, где они создали аналогичную общину, которая также продолжалась несколько лет.
Прейри Ферма вернулась к профессиональным фермерам
Следующие восемь лет, под властью правительства, были периодом пренебрежения. Здания упали в негодность, как и дренажные канавы. 1 марта 1945 года группа фермеров приобрела прерию за выгодную цену в 265 000 долларов с пониманием того, что ферма Prairie будет иметь отдельную собственность на участках площадью около 600 акров. Правительство потеряло веру в коллективистскую идею, что привело к тому, что личность Прерийской фермы стала единственной фермой. Однако не было возражений в отношении поддержания кооператива с целью приобретения запасов, поддержания дамб и продажи сельскохозяйственных продуктов. Новые владельцы, тринадцать человек, взяли на себя ответственность за отдельные посылки. Они работали с 1944 года в качестве совладельцев-совладельцев Сагино Прери, входящих в ее состав под руководством своего президента, Пол Альбоста, вице-президента Ричарда Прайса и Джейкоба Шпиндлера, секретаря-казначея. Теперь, находясь в индивидуальном порядке, сельскохозяйственные угодья быстро оправились от периода пренебрежения, став одним из самых продуктивных фермерских регионов Мичигана.
Более чем через столетие после того, как молодой провидец смотрел на болото и мечтал о продуктивных фермах, посетитель мог видеть, что объединенные усилия природоохранных организаций и фермеров ответили в тысячах полезных культур, в том числе сахарной свеклы, кукурузы, соевых бобов и в то же время сохраняя место обитания водно-болотных угодий, которое имеет жизненно важное значение для водоплавающих птиц и других перелетных птиц и для людей на многих уровнях.
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