04/15/2026
Six teens stand in front of a large pile of cut brush. All of them have hard hats, headphones, and canvas pants on. One teen kneeling in the front is holding a chainsaw.

Operation Fresh Start’s Conservation Academy at Westport Prairie | Photo by Mario Quintana

Every year, we hire Operation Fresh Start’s Conservation Academy to help with our restoration work. OFS is a job training and mentorship program that prepares young people for careers in conservation and construction. It’s always a pleasure to meet new faces and hear where the trainees are headed.

This year, we brought the Conservation Academy to Westport Prairie. We got started the morning after the 11-inch snowfall in March. We hauled equipment sleds through a half mile of snow drifts, leaving us breathless as we reached the site. OFS got to work—two-stroke engines buzzing—and within two weeks, they’d cleared a full half mile of tree line.

Thank you to Stefanie Moritz, Vince Jenkins, and the Bock Foundation for their support of this program!

At Patrick Marsh, we burned a 25-acre prairie for the first time. This prairie was planted in 2021 with the help of nearly every Patrick Marsh Middle School student, acre by acre. Since then, we’ve relied on the City of Sun Prairie to keep the young prairie mowed while it put roots down. Now entering its fifth growing season, this tract is hitting its stride as a tallgrass prairie. This first fire felt like a rite of passage.

Going into this burn, we were unsure if the plant matter would carry a fire. This prairie is densely populated with forbs, or wildflowers, and sparsely populated with grasses. Typically, the presence of grasses in a prairie helps a fire move across the landscape. Despite this, we saw a nearly complete burn of the prairie, thanks to the Pheasants Forever crew.

Patrick Marsh is now a City of Sun Prairie Conservancy Park, a permanent protection decades in the making.

A large group of middle school students fan out across a brown field. Each student holds a brown paper bag in one hand and sprinkles seeds with the other as they walk.

Patrick Marsh Middle School students seeding a new prairie in 2021 | Photo by Ben Lam

Finally, we burned the phoenix sculpture at Patrick Marsh on the spring equinox. It’s a small ritual that felt right at the turn of the season.

I’ll leave you with this photo of Jeanne Behrend, beaming, at our annual Patrick Marsh phoenix burn. Without Jeanne’s advocacy, Patrick Marsh would not be this place we can all enjoy. Thank you, Jeanne!

A smiling older woman wearing black clothing and a red hat stands in front of a large metal sculpture of a fire with a phoenix above it. Smoke from the fire is visible. Brown prairie and trees in the background.

Jeanne Behrend in front of the smoldering phoenix at Patrick Marsh | Photo by Roberta Herschleb

Sam Douglass
Farm & Land Manager

P.S. If this work inspires you, please consider making a gift to Groundswell to keep the momentum going.