Cone flowers in the prairie at Holy Wisdom Monastery.

Wisdom Prairie Project declared a success!

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We have some exciting news to share with you! The Wisdom Prairie Project is complete! With the help of so many, we have successfully met our goal of raising $1.9 million to cover the acquisition and initial management costs to restore this 53-acre parcel to native prairie and oak savanna. We could not have done this without your support. Thank you to hundreds of families, companies, foundations, and municipalities for supporting our vision of caring for the earth. This project will conserve more land in a rapidly urbanizing location on the north side of Lake Mendota. By restoring this land to native prairie, there …

volunteers gathered by new truck ready for work

Preparing for the prairie burn season

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Volunteers gather before preparing to remove woody invasive species. Special thanks to the Endres Manufacturing Company Foundation for a grant to purchase the pickup truck used to transport supplies. Today, a couple volunteers are going to be cutting woody invasive plants along the fire breaks. The fire breaks are what a burn team will use to stop controlled fires from going beyond the area that we want to burn. Prairie burns are a very effective way to remove invasive plants and allow native plants to thrive. A couple weeks ago, Dane County provided the use of a Fecon mower at the …

Preparing for the prairie burn season

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A group of six gathered today to do some work in the Wisdom Prairie in preparation for the upcoming prairie burn season. The work was made easier with a grant from the Endres Manufacturing Company Foundation to help purchase a used pickup truck at the end of 2014. Having this extra truck available allows us to haul supplies and transport volunteers to remote parts of the property. It complements our other pickup truck so that we can have multiple groups working at the same time on different projects on different parts of the property. Today,a couple volunteers are going to …

Creating an Oak Savanna at Holy Wisdom Monastery

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By Ron Endres and Will Mann As you drive around Lake Mendota on County Highway M and pass in front of the Holy Wisdom Monastery property, you see two primary ecosystems: prairie (or fields that have been recently planted as prairies) and woodland. Prairie and woodland are wonderful ecosystems. If we finished constructing the prairies, cleaned up the weeds and hedgerows, did a bit of maintenance in the woodland, it would be acceptable to call the Wisdom Prairie project complete. But in nature this is not exactly how a prairie transitions to woodland.  In pre-settlement days, the Eastern states were …

volunteers cutting down and burning hedgrerows along snow-covered fields

Winter work activity at Wisdom Prairie–removing hedgerows

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by Friends of Wisdom Prairie Council Members Ron Endres and Will Mann Winter is the ideal time of year to remove the hedgerows in and around Wisdom Prairie. Hedgerows (also called fencerows) are areas that previously separated sections of crop fields or are rough areas that were too hard to till. Weeds and invasive trees and shrubs grow in these areas and their seeds are easily spread into a nearby prairie, often completely overtaking it. Hedgerows at Holy Wisdom contain species like honeysuckle, buckthorn, box elder, wild grape vine and mulberry.  They shade the ground, thereby preventing grasses and ground …

Nature Notes Winter 2014-2015

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What an exciting and eventful year 2014 has been for the land at Holy Wisdom Monastery. The Friends of Wisdom Prairie came into existence to assist the sisters in caring for the earth. And, wow, have they done a great job of doing that. They worked on the land, performing the many land management tasks that are needed to carry out ecological restorations and to sustain them over time. We had a huge prairie seed sowing on nearly 20 acres of what had been agricultural land. 98 volunteers had a wonderful experience of planting about 100 different kinds of prairie …

2014—the year of communities

Car McGinleyBenedictine Bridge, Care for the Earth, Homepage, Hospitality, Monastic Life, Oblates, Retreats, Sunday Assembly Leave a Comment

Members from the various communities at Holy Wisdom Monastery come together to celebrate Sister Joanne Kollasch’s 60 years of monastic profession. Sister Joanne sums up community living, “in community you receive so much more than you give.” (Photo by Kent Sweitzer)   As I reflect on the year 2014, I’m amazed at all that has emerged at Holy Wisdom Monastery in one short year. What rises to the top for me is the sense of community. Community living takes many forms here, from the monastic community to the Sunday Assembly worshipping community, to the oblate community, to the volunteer community, the …

Friends of Wisdom Prairie — a personal profile

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From Benedictine Bridge, November, 2014 – featuring Ron Endres,   a founding member of the Friends of Wisdom Prairie Council Ron Endres (center), Will Mann (left), and Greg Armstrong (right) prepare seed packets for the Wisdom Prairie seeding day. Ron Endres declines to be called a prairie expert, but he truly knows and loves native prairie culture. Ron has spent more hours than he can estimate harvesting, drying, smashing, screening, weighing, bagging and labelling prairie seed which he can provide to non-profit organizations to create new expanses of prairie habitat. ​It was his generous donation of 80-90 species and 240 pounds of prairie seeds …

Teaching us how to live rightly on the earth

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Publishing in the Landscape by Calvin B. DeWitt We had driven through the Cotswold district of England a few days earlier, and now I was standing before an impressive group of scholars in nearby Oxford, ready to present a lecture on Creation stewardship. I had been welcomed to the lectern and was ready to begin with an academic introduction. But I put aside my notes, and announced to my audience, “I have just made what for me is an important discovery I want to share with you! It is a powerful and convicting publication on land stewardship. And yet, while …

Prairie Planting at Holy Wisdom Monastery

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Paraphrased from a document written by Ron Endres and Greg Armstrong for the Wisdom Prairie Planting Day The Friends of Wisdom Prairie had a very successful prairie planting on nearly 20 acres of what was agricultural land. We planted this prairie at this time of year so that the seed can over-winter in the soil and germinate in the spring. In general, this is the most successful time to plant. Fall plantings take advantage of cold moist conditions to break seed dormancy. We spread the seeds by hand so that the frost works the seeds into the soil, instead of …