Twain's Feast - Andrew Beahrs [20]
It’s a powerful combination, this willingness to work so hard to bring something from the land while still accepting the earth’s primacy. It’s of a piece with his and Judy’s work here, which requires both constant labor and an acceptance that the prairie will offer what it wants to.
“Prairie is the rarest ecosystem in North America,” Frank says, increasingly animated. “’Cause where it’s good, it’s being eyed for four-dollar corn. Seven-dollar beans. That’ll jeopardize a lot. But for now Missouri has more flat, native prairie than anywhere else in North America. It’s mostly still here for cultural and traditional reasons, kind of an ingrained thing with some English mentality, or Scottish, or Irish. You plow some up, but you never plow it all. That’ll save you in dry years, because you’ll get a hay crop off those fifteen-foot roots. It’s not like Illinois, with the flat land and good drainage. Here you need some insurance to feed your livestock, feed your milk cows. If you keep the prairie, then in drought years you’ll always have something. And I’m afraid we’re going to lose all that.”
He pauses and cups his hands around his mouth; prairie-chicken booms and cackles fill the living room, as though a flock has taken to the rafters. “There are black prairies not far from here that should be a national landmark,” Frank says. “I go out there, hear the booming. But the guy who owns them says it’s too much work to keep it in pasture, and the government will only subsidize row crops—never pasture ground.”
I ask about the Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP, intended to allow the conversion of some cropland back into prairie. Frank shakes his head. “I feel that conservation is the worm put on a hook to get dollars, and only crumbs get to the conservation it’s trying to attract. Look, all Americans have a soft spot in their hearts for conservation. We owe the wildlife, and we owe the landscape for the benefits we’ve had from it. But I believe the bureaucracy feels inconvenienced by the necessity for conservation, so they administer conservation programs without the passion that makes taxpayers willing to be charged in the first place.
“If it was me, I’d have people signing up for programs only on the basis of performance. There shouldn’t be money just for a practice; it should be for the quality of that practice. Some of the landowners we sell seed to because they want money from CRP . . . well, I know for a fact that they just go through the motions. We got guys throwing seeds on the bare ground and coming in with receipts that say they planted it. Some of what the government pays for is just wrongheaded. We got a million and a half acres in fescue and brome. But fescue’s a noxious weed! It inhibits growth. We were better off when we had small farms row cropping.”
Frank sighs, somewhat spent, and drags two fingers along his mustache. “It’s like love and love,” he says after a long moment. “True love is the personality being driven forward by the will. Then there’s the love that’s just a kind of flat emotional response—you know, I looove my four-wheeler. Agencies can’t have the right kind of love. They don’t have the will necessary for it. If we had the will and determination and passion, we could turn the whole thing with prairie chickens around right away. But you know what it is—it’s when you go into a government office, they look at you like there’s a tattoo on your head that says ‘Work.’ Results don’t come into it.”
PRAIRIE-CHICKEN OR GROUSE ROASTED
Epicures think that grouse (in fact, all game) should not be too fresh. Do not wash them. Do not wash any kind of game or meat. If proper care be taken in dressing them they will be quite clean, and one could easily wash out all their blood and flavor. Put plenty of butter inside each chicken: this is necessary to keep it moist. Roast the grouse half an hour and longer, if liked thoroughly done; baste them constantly with butter. When nearly done, sprinkle over a little flour and plenty