(bright music) - I have a lot of pride in being able to take care of these animals and to show others how to take care of them, and I'm training the next generation, 'cause when I'm gone, they're it.

- [John] This is kind of like an insect apocalypse that is going on and numbers of everything are declining.

- [Shawn] These particular goats seem to really prefer the buckthorn actually.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program was provided by, the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund.

SafeBasements of Minnesota, your basement waterproofing and foundation repair specialist since 1990.

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(acoustic music) - Drill team, I find is an excellent sport for both the rider and the horse.

It allows that rider to really gain their horsemanship and become very diverse in their riding skills.

Learning how to ride with the horse, how to turn the horse, working in that group, in following that lead of other horses, it just provides a great experience, both for that horse and the rider.

(bright music) Drill team came out of cavalry riding and so it was used to practice the drill maneuvers on ground and horseback and used during war time.

It moved into being more competition riding over the years.

Although our team is really just set up in terms of being more for entertainment.

We have seven rider on our drill team this season, and we have a wonderful mom and daughter team.

Our youngest rider, I believe she's in sixth grade and our oldest rider is her sixties, the owner of the ranch.

That's one reason I love Drill Team.

We don't have many multi generational activities nowadays and so it just brings a lot to the experience.

- Anne is an exceptional teacher in this, she breaks it down, so you understand it and I'm a slow learner and so that really helps me.

I'm 65 years old and I can still learn new things.

- We call Pam are walking jukebox, because she loves loves music from all eras and that's one unique thing about our Drill Team.

Drill Team usually uses Western and country music and we honestly, we rode to Abba to James Brown, so the kids are getting this little music lesson as well.

The only thing we have is that we all have to like it and it all has to make us happy and have a good beat.

A lot of times I'll just see the pattern in my mind and then I'll start drawing those patterns out.

So, there's a pretty intricate way that you draw the patterns, so that it's almost like the kids all have a map.

How we practice the formations is usually we'll learn up to three or four formations at a time and then move on from that.

- She knows what she's doing and she like, it's fun, yeah and it's entertaining to know what, like you're doing.

I like to do pinwheel it's where one side turns one way and then the other side turns the other way, so it's just going in a circle and a line.

- My second favorite would be X marks the spot and that's where we go to the back of the arena and then it's just like every other we're coming across and we're making xs as we go across.

- I like it when we do the crack, the whip it's called, so you have the horses lined up and it kind of looks like a spiral, 'cause they're all turning in a circle at the same time, the outside horses are moving faster, that looks really cool from the ground.

(acoustic music) - One of the horses in our Drill Team, we've named Zorro and he was rescued, by the Minnesota Hooved Animal Rescue Foundation, MHARF for short.

Several years ago from a farm that had several deceased horses on it and he was so weak, he couldn't stand up for two weeks.

My vet said I was going to euthanize him, he was that bad and he's got more energy than 10 horses right now.

And he can go all day and he's very open minded to learn all kinds of new things and what can I say, he's part of the family here now.

(acoustic music) I have a lot of pride in being able to take care of these animals and to show others how to take of them.

With my very first horse, nobody taught me how to take care of him and when he meets me up in heaven, he's gonna say, "so what's with the box of cornflakes you gave me one day."

I didn't know how to feed them, I fed them hay and grain, but then sometimes I'd run out of food.

I didn't have much money and now I'm very strict on, we eat a balanced diet, we have nice clean hay, we make sure they have extra hay if it's cold out.

And I'm training the next generation, 'cause when I'm gone there it, God planted the horse seed in me from infancy and I've spent my whole life watering that seed and I went from wishing I had a horse to managing 23 horses.

My first job in horse barn, which I was totally thrilled to get, was taking care of 40 horses by myself and I was so tickled because I was making, a hundred dollars every two weeks, that's $50 a week for 10 hour days.

Doesn't matter, when you love what you do, you just do it.

I ventured out west of Piedmont, South Dakota and found a trainer named Roy Gates, who was an extraordinary trainer.

After a while I got introduced to the Arabian circuit and found my home.

I spent 30 years on the Arabian circuit and found lifelong friends there.

And we just loved the Arabian horses for their intelligence and went on to win dozens and dozens of regional champions.

And then the last big show was the US nationals and I was third.

(acoustic music) Then in 1997, I decided to open up my own boarding barn and my kids had a horse named Rick Showdown and he passed away and he was 34 and he was a pretty, pretty darn good old horse and so a friend of mine called me up and she said, "I've got a name for your new barn, call it RICK A SHAY."

For Foshay with being my last name and to honor Rick, what I love most about the lessons that I do, is to watch the development of the rider, because when you can handle a thousand pounds of animal underneath you and communicate to this animal in something other than English and the confidence that they can do that goes far beyond this ranch, 'cause I've have parents that come back to me and say, "my child had insecurities in school and was bullied."

And there's a saying out there that says, "I can handle 50 pound bales of hay pitchforks, be riding a thousand pound animal that could kick me and bite me, you will not be a problem."

- Pam is such an excellent teacher that there's no other place I would go.

I used to be scared of horses until my daughter, just start loving them and now I love them too, they don't scare me anymore.

- [Sofi] She can be like low pressure, which then she can like get kind of aggressive because she knows that she can push us and we can do it.

(soft music) - I started riding horses actually from my mom's passion of wanting to learn to ride, but never got a chance when she was younger.

So, it was when I was 10 and my sister was four that she found a ranch near where we live, Windy Ridge Ranch out in Afton.

My mom was a single mom, we lived in the inner city and east St. Paul and so it really gave us this wonderful opportunity to just get out into the outdoors.

When I was younger, I wasn't much into competition writing and so I'm at Windy Ridge, they started a Drill Team and I thought, oh, this might be a fun just opportunity to still ride and be with horses and so it started then and that was back in the eighties and that team has gone on, they were riding for 32 years and they just threw in the towel.

When my daughter, my youngest, when she was 10, she showed an interest in horses and so when we were going searching, I really was looking for a ranch that kind of replicated that those same experiences I had as a child, like a sense of community, doing things other than just competition and overall having fun with the horses, so when we found RICK A SHAY, it was just a great match.

And then in talking with Pam Foshay, she's kind of done almost everything, there can be on horseback, but not Drill Team.

And so, when she found out that I had the Drill history and then also rode for the Windy Ridge Riders, she said, "hey, wait, do you wanna start a Drill Team here?"

And so I said, "sure let's give it a shot."

And now we're going on three summers.

(soft music) Growing up and being black and biracial and being in environments, I often wasn't represented.

And so I'm in, especially in the equine world.

So, being able to like set up spaces, where people feel like they belong, is so important to me.

And so doing this Drill Team practice, I just love learning about the individual riders and the individual horses and all of us coming together and feeling like we all belong, that to me, just it's great.

- You can come out here and have had the worst day and by the time you step out the car and already you're like (exhales), and you start to get to the barn and then you get to your horse and you forget everything else, because you get on a 1200 pound animal, you gotta be focused.

- You have a passion like I did with horses, if you go out and follow that passion, it is no longer work.

And when you come out and it's 30 below zero, you're doing it because you love these horses, you'll do it with your heart and soul and God has blessed me, He blessed me every day because I am his favorite.ú - [Angela] I just don't think there's a lot of opportunities for people to see a butterfly like this.

That's right in Hennepin county here.

- [John] The focus is on buckthorn, honeysuckle and other brushy Woody species that have been problematic on this site.

- [Narrator] The Regal fritillary is a Prairie butterfly with a distinctive appearance that has been described as a Monarch dipped in chocolate.

Historically it was found throughout, the east central United States, but like so many grassland insects, its population has plunged.

(soft music) - Most, if not all of the Eastern population has gone.

So east of the Mississippi, there aren't a lot of populations.

There's are still some good sized ones in Wisconsin, but there's one little teeny population in Pennsylvania in most of the butterflies in new England and the Northeast are gone.

The reason is we've moved in and changed all their habitat into cornfields and they don't do well in cornfields.

A lot of what we're using now for chemicals, are having more effect on the butterflies.

The number of butterflies and insects that other people are finding now, has been decreased, there's kind of like an insect apocalypse that is going on and the numbers of everything are declining.

- [Narrator] Pockets of Regal fritillaries, can still be found in Southeast and Western Minnesota, but they disappeared from the twin cities Metro area.

That was until the three rivers park district, introduced them at Crow Hassan Park Reserve in Hennepin county.

- Before the European settlement of this area, this whole park was big, this was all forest, but for 150 years, this was agriculture and that there was 1700 acres of corn field in what is now this part.

So, it's totally created, we planted a new plant.

- [Narrator] Three rivers, has introduced several native species to Crow Hassan including bullsnakes and trumpeter swans.

Some species came on their own like Henslow's sparrows Bobolinks and meadowlarks.

- [John] And they were ones that once we made the Prairie, they could get here.

So, we started working on things that can't move into this area.

- [Narrator] Because Regal fritillaries do not move very far from where they hatch and they are beautiful to behold, they were added to the Crow Hassan ecosystem.

Before 25 were released in August 2016, the park district established habitat for the native pollinator.

- So Pory Violet's are the host plant for the Regal fritillary.

And I think most people can, when they think host plant, they think of the Monarch and the milkweed.

So, that's a common thing for a lot of butterflies.

They have a specific host plant.

Over the span of four years, we planted 10,000 pory Violet's by hand.

So, it's a hard to get seed, it can be expensive to do that, but we knew we had to get, the welcome mat out essentially for these butterflies to make sure their habitat requirements were being met.

But we have about almost a thousand acres of restored Prairie here and yeah, the Prairie, violence, art in every single acreage of that.

But we tried very hard to disperse and spread that out across all the units.

- Oh, there's one comming right past the camera guy.

- So since 2017, we come out here typically starting in July and go all the way through August, doing a couple of different survey techniques to try to monitor this population.

When we do the butterfly surveys, it's our staff coming out here to do it.

We kind of go over the basics, what to look for, they look similar to a monarchs, we show them a picture.

We explain the difference because this is the male and female look different.

So, we kinda cover that very briefly, how to safely handle them and put them in the envelope.

So, we're really making sure, again, this is a special concern species, we want to be gentle, handle them properly, so we make sure there's experienced staff that can be kind of watching and training and making sure these butterflies are handled properly.

You don't want to be touching the wings.

You really want to minimize that, hold them close to the body.

As minimally as possible scales on their wings.

They lose that, it can affect their flight.

So, you want to be as gentle as possible.

You wanna grab all six legs, if you get one or two legs, they'll easily rip them off.

- [Narrator] Regal fritillaries are kept in envelopes until the survey's finished.

So they aren't double counted.

- By putting them in that envelope and holding them, it's keeping the butterfly safe, we make sure their wings are closed and the envelope, it's specifically for insects and close it and yeah, no harm done.

You can tell the sex apart from the male and the female, so there should be two rows on that back hind wing and if it's orange and white, you have a male, if it's white, white, you have a female.

After we've done the survey and kind of compared it to the acreage, we feel pretty confident in saying hundreds, if not thousands of them out here.

- We saw four and caught five, so we had nine butterflies on the five acres, we've caught over 30 butterflies on the same five acres, if the weather is just right.

The drought could have some impact on the numbers, but the idea is to keep track over time and see how the population changes.

All the butterflies are caught, where males, because the male butterflies, actually come out a week or two before the females and they set up territories.

So, when the females come out, they have their spot.

If see two butterflies that are flying together and flying up in the air, there's actually a butterfly battle going on.

- And the females will come out, they mate, once both are out, the females go into, what's kind of like a sexual diet pause, where they're not gonna lay the eggs right away.

They're just kind of hide, I think they're hiding from the males, I think they're sick of the harassment.

So, they kind of go into hiding into the grass and they'll in the fall lay the eggs.

They lay up to 2000 eggs and those eggs, once they hatch, late in the fall, there's not Prairie Violet's out here, it's a spring plant.

And so, really the only thing that caterpillar gets to eat as it hatches it's the egg itself.

And then it overwinters like in the leaf litter or in the grasses as a caterpillar.

- The caterpillars over winter is basically a teeny little first instar caterpillar.

- And then in the spring is when it's gonna finally have those Prairie Violet's available and then it can eat that Prairie Violet and then it will turn into, it will pupate into that, the chrysalis and emerge as an adult.

- And what makes it unique is it is, one that all of its cycle, all of its life cycle is spent in one place, it doesn't migrate, it doesn't like to even fly over wooded fence rows.

- [Angela] Maybe by moving it here, giving it that little helping hand.

We can play a part in hopefully long the longevity of this species continuing to stay in Minnesota.

I just don't think there's a lot of opportunities for people to see a butterfly like this.

And that's right in Hennepin county here.

(soft music) - [Narrator] Whitewater State Park in Southeast Minnesota, features dramatic topography with steep Lovelands that early settlers nicknamed Goat Prairie's because the only livestock that get climbed, the rugged cliffs were goats.

So, it made sense to bring them in to help control invasive shrubs on the parks bluff Prairie's.

- This is our first attempt that prescribed grilled grazing at Whitewater State Park within parks, but our non game and wildlife divisions have been using goats for quite a few years, say eight, 10 years with some success on managing kind of larger blackberries.

This site has been burned, multiple times say every two to three years for the last even 15, 20 years.

But the problem we had the buckthorn was getting so thick and pockets that the fire was going on or going around it.

We had a series of three wet years, where we couldn't get good burn.

Those things helped us decide, hey, we need to try something new that we were not getting enough fire on the site.

And that's really what drove us to try the goat grazing.

The whole site is about 20 acres, so 10 acres in each paddock and there are 55 goats.

The entire paddock system is set up with temporary.

kind of a woven electric fence, we can adjust paddocks as we need to.

If we need to make it a little smaller, little larger, move them over to a patch of buckthorn, it's really easy , to move that paddock fencing around to meet our management needs.

There are signs that, warn that it is electrified just in case a visitor does wander up and see the fences.

This site is remote, so there is no hiking trail to this site, but they're very visible from the campground and road.

There is definitely a hierarchy within the herd, there's a lead billy, his name is Bat and he definitely controls, the herd he's sorts out some of the females and keeps the younger males kind of in check and then that whole series of younger, billy goats are always kind of jocking for their position within the herd.

(upbeat music) We brought them in right around the 1st of July and our plan is to have them through mid October.

The focus is on buckthorn, honeysuckle and other brushy Woody species that have been problematic on this site.

These particular goats seem to really prefer the buckthorn actually, they went around and they ate the ends, the new growth of the buckthorn first and then after they kind of cleaned out the new fresh growth, they kind of make the rounds back around and eat a little bit further down the stem, to the older vegetation.

So, it kind of took two rounds before they were, really making a pretty big impact of browsing.

And they really didn't come down to the sumac at the bottom of the hill here until the buckthorn was mostly defoliated at the top of the hill.

Now we're on the, up on the main blood Prairie of this site and if you look behind us, you can see, how much Woody vegetation, there's a lot of buckthorn, I see some honeysuckle, some sumac, and really the goats have done it.

Just an outstanding job of browsing this site.

The goats have just really enjoyed browsing out here on the cliffs.

So, oftentimes in the evening and early morning, they're on these rock outcrop standing right up on the rocks and on edge of that cliff.

So, that's a real treat for our visiting, for our visitors at the campground to watch them for right down below us.

This project really started approximately 20 years ago, back behind us here, this was not open like it is right now, it was really just filled in with red Cedar, buckthorn, other trees.

So, and historically it should have been more like this, so we came in here with chainsaws and we really removed a lot of the Cedar trees, other trees, shrubs, and opened it up and then started burning it.

We have at least 20 sites that are similar to this, that we're working on and this was, we probably started on one of the worst ones as far as buckthorn and that was on purpose so that we could see how they would help us in the fight against buckthorn.

I think it's worth rotating goats through almost all of our sites, especially the ones that are having brushed problems.

Now, hopefully there's more a ground vegetation, fine fuels that our next buyer actually carries through.

And then this patch will be kind of maintained by fire long term, but we just needed that extra boost to make them packed from the goat grazing.

This project is funded with Parks and Trails Legacy Funds and we use those same funds to do prescribed Prairie other invasives work.

So, this is just a perfect fit.

- [Narrator] Goat grazing, the 20 acre site, costs $7,500 by comparison brushed sawing, the same area would cost $10,000 or more and a prescribed burn about 2000, but goats also free up a cruise time for other priority projects.

- For me now, going forward, this is gonna be another tool in the toolbox, another treatment, in addition to fire and cutting that we can use for restoration practices.

(soft music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program, was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, SafeBasements of Minnesota, your basement waterproofing and foundation repair specialist, since 1990, peace of mind is a safe basement.

Live Wide Open.

The more people know about West Central Minnesota, the more reasons they have to live here.

More at livewideopen.com.

Western Minnesota Prairie Waters, where peace, relaxation and opportunities await.

- Turn on that side, okay, you stay in.

Yeah, you stay in.