Planting History in the Sand Counties

by Maia Buschman

Mid- to late-April: a significant time of year where environmental holidays are concerned – Earth Day, Arbor Day – and significant, of course, in the timeline of Leopold history. On April 14th, 1948, Aldo received a letter from Oxford University Press accepting the manuscript that would later become A Sand County Almanac. However, just one week later, on April 21st, Leopold was struck by a fatal heart attack while helping fight a grass fire on a neighbor’s property. These few weeks are bittersweet with reminders of legends lost and dreams that almost never came to fruition; but the tide of the season is finally pushing out of the last dregs of winter, with the first few buds opening up and the woods livened by the cheery birdsong of spring’s earliest arrivals.  

It’s also, importantly, the perfect time to plant apples.

The Shack is home to its own apple orchard, a few westerly steps out the front door. Only two of the trees date back to the original Shack days, established on the property by the farmers that preceded the Leopolds; the rest have been planted by family and friends in the years since Aldo’s passing.  

Now, mid-April 2025, folks have gathered again to add a few new saplings to the Shack orchard. Among those in attendance: Curt Meine, Senior Fellow and Leopold biographer; ecologist and ornithologist Mike Mossman, a Leopold Fellow from the cohort of 1978; Rob Nurre, landscape historian and past president of the Wisconsin Archeological Society; Leopold family friend and Shack tour guide Alan Anderson; and Trish Stevenson, daughter of Nina Leopold Bradley, eldest daughter of Aldo and Estella. Also present are Arik Duhr, site manager; Land Stewardship Fellows Sophie Van Zee and Lily Simko; and Joan Fordham, treasurer of the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance.

A scattering of shovels and three swaddled apple saplings sat before the Shack; a bottle of cider graced a nearby bench. It was slightly drizzly, but red-wings and frogs called from the marsh across Levee Road, bald eagles twittering from their perches over the river. Meine pulled out a large binder to discuss the three trees chosen for planting that day. “Call it what it is,” said Nurre, laughing. “The apple bible.”

This “bible” serves as a comprehensive field guide to the 150+ apple trees found in the Badger Lands, the former site of the Badger Army Ammunition Plant, about twenty miles south of the Shack. Each page corresponds to a specific tree in the field, identified by number; the entries include detailed information about a tree’s location (with coordinates and satellite maps), state of health, and propagation history, with photos of the specimen and its fruits.

All of this is crucial information for the apple enthusiasts and restorationists in our midst. But one intriguing attribute recorded for each is this: “historic farmstead.”

The construction of the ammunition plant, initiated in 1942, involved the seizure of thousands of acres of farmland that had been tended for a century by European immigrants and transplants from the eastern states. Dozens of farm families were displaced, generational ties to earth and soil severed as they had been for the Indigenous Ho-Chunk a hundred years before, when thousands of acres of prairie were lost to the plow. Right off Highway 12, a main route between Madison and Baraboo, the Leopolds would have witnessed the creation of the Badger Ordnance Works (as it was originally known) on their drives to and from the Shack.

After the plant’s eventual decommission in 1997, the community’s disparate interests in the lands were woven together as the Badger Reuse Plan. The lands have since been divided between three primary owners – the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and the Ho-Chunk Nation – in a diverse mosaic reflecting the reuse plan’s varied goals: ecological restoration, agriculture, research and education, and recreation.

Within this mosaic are the apple trees. While conducting bird surveys after the plant’s closure, Mike Mossman stumbled across these trees, lingering remnants of farmsteads seized more than fifty years before. Mossman noted of their locations, but it was a while before he and others returned to inventory them. In 2014, a group of volunteers dubbed the “Badger Apple Corps” (coordinated by Curt Meine through the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance) took on the task of cataloging the trees – notes that today comprise the aforementioned apple bible. Many specimens date back to pre-ammo plant orchards. In Meine’s words, “the apple trees are among the few living connections to the displaced farming community of Sauk Prairie.”  

The significance of this linkage spurred the Corps to start a nursery, preserving and propagating these historic plants through cuttings and graftings that the community works to collect and tend. In 2020, the first fledgling trees left the nursery, the progeny of near-forgotten apples reunited with the progeny of displaced farmers. Additional saplings have since been planted across various public, private, and tribal lands in the area. Now, some have found a home in the orchard at the Leopold Shack.

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“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant [a tree], for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel.” ―Aldo Leopold

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On planting day, Badger Land history and Leopold history intertwined as young and old carried saplings and lugged shovels across the grass. Spades pried open the softened earth between gnarled orchard veterans, in the shadow of pines planted by the Leopolds over 80 years ago. Once the holes were dug, helpful hands stirred composted manure and mycorrhizae inoculant into the dirt to boost the little trees' growing power.

While the Apple Corps still has plenty to puzzle out about each of the Badger Lands’ historic trees, their apple bible provides context for the three varieties chosen for the Shack orchard. #33 was selected for its high sugar content, a trait prized among cider brewers. #102 is the favorite of Mike Mossman―a fitting tribute for a former Leopold fellow at the root of the apple project who has done so much to preserve the Badger Lands history. The last, #31, is a mystery variety – no fruit has been collected from it – from a “parent” growing on the old Litscher farmstead. The displaced Litschers eventually became neighbors to the Leopolds. Bob Litscher, just a child when his family was uprooted, was among those helping fight the fateful fire on April 21st, 1948.

All three saplings nestled in the soil, the group reconvened for a toast. Meine, ever the apple aficionado, provided the cider―not from Badger apples, but nonetheless made in Wisconsin. A bittersweet atmosphere coalesced as paper cups were lifted to the sky: honoring friends, family, and community members lost, but celebrating spring, and growth, and the reconnection forged by a handful of baby apple trees.  

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Learn more at the links below:  

Explore the full history of the Badger Lands.

Read more about the Badger Land apples in this piece by Curt Meine.

Watch a video about the Badger Land apple project.