a driftless weekend

Steve has an assignment to write an article about hazelnuts so we have been scouting hazelnut farms in Minnesota and Wisconsin. This past weekend, we drove to The Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin to check out two farms (as a bonus for me, we also got to visit Frank LLoyd Wright’s Taliesen East in Spring Green WI). As upper midwestern natives, we already knew about the beauty of the Driftless Area, but this weekend felt different: We were gobsmacked by the tree-covered rolling hills, the tidy farms, the fertile valleys and the general beauty of the place. I think we logged over 300 miles. We saw a lot. And it never stopped impressing us. This collection of wildflowers was beside the driveway of one of the farms we scouted. The whole region was in bloom, and every single roadside was awash in wildflowers. It was a magical weekend.

For the curious, this is from Wiki:
“The Driftless Area was never covered by ice during the Last Glacial Period, so the area lacks the characteristic glacial deposits known as drift. Its landscape is characterized by steep hills, forested ridges, deeply carved river valleys, and karst geology with spring-fed waterfalls and cold-water trout streams. Ecologically, the Driftless Area’s flora and fauna are more closely related to those of the Great Lakes region and New England than those of the broader Midwest and central Plains regions.”

July 26th wildflowers from Pam Saunders and Tom Lukens’ farm called Nature Nooks Retreat in Viroqua, WI