“You say Iowa is severe and blight-bare, a dead cornfield in winter.
I say it is the red-tailed hawk, gliding in widening circles above frozen ground.
It is the bald eagle on the branches of a slumbering bur oak.
It is Orion’s Belt and Ursa Major, brilliant in the cold night sky, jewels among countless stars like sea foam on a dark ocean.
It is the icy hoofprint of deer in the pine wood, and it is the blue and red jays and cardinals, cheerful flashes of color in the somber late-winter palette.
It is the belly track of unseen mammals, dragging along their brown-grass paths between pond and cozy den.
It is a modest beauty, a world masked in subtlety.”
-Sidra Schkerke
Sidra began working at Prairie Oaks earlier this month. She has been working at farms across the Midwest for a few years and has brought a multitude of skills, insight, and knowledge along with her.
Prairie Oaks 