Good Energy in Action:
The Coon Creek Community Watershed Council
CCCWC October meeting. Photo Credit Sydney
Jeans and ball caps, dress shoes, and university sweatshirts are arranged in a rough circle as dusk falls in the valley. We’re standing in Matthew’s field, discussing his cover crops, the state of the watershed and the state of the world. Neighbors from all over the social and political spectrum have come together on this crisp evening, connected by a reverence for the land we all call home and a motivation to do our part to serve it well.
This was the October meeting of the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council, an organization dedicated to “Making Running Water Walk”. Working in our woods, we measure our efforts not by fiscal quarter, but by the multi-generational lives of our trees. We identify our place in the world less by political boundaries and more by the contours of the land, and the connections made by the flowing water.
Timber Coulee Creek
A watershed, in most basic terms, is where water falling on the landscape goes. Rain falling on our farm flows downhill to the Timber Coulee Creek, which feeds into Coon Creek just a few miles west of the farm. From there it joins other streams and creeks, flowing into the Mississippi, and eventually the ocean. The way we manage our farm has a direct impact on the land and lives downstream of us. When neighbors work together, implementing practices that conserve the land and water, those positive impacts grow, and can be felt all the way to the gulf of Mexico.
Bree and Sylvan at the CCCWC Meeting. Photo Sydney
Neighbors have been meeting in these very fields, sharing ideas and finding solutions since the 1930s. Our watershed was the site of the nation’s first large scale land and water conservation project, a collaboration between farmers, researchers and government. When erosion degraded the landscape and threatened the livelihoods of the community, people came together, listening, sharing and learning, and made real, lasting change that we feel now, over 90 years later.
After devastating floods in 2018, a new incarnation of this legacy developed, and the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council (CCCWC) was born. We are facing new challenges, with new tools, but at the heart of it all, we are the same as those who came before, joined by a love of this beautiful place and a deep sense of responsibility to our farms, our neighbors, and generations to come.
So the next time things feel too big and overwhelming, follow a raindrop. Watch where it goes. Strike up a conversation with a neighbor whose raindrops joined yours. You share a watershed. You are part of the same place in the world, and when you come together the impact you have grows, like the tiny creeks that form the Mississippi, and flow to the ocean.
