On Sunday, June 14, the Garfield Farm Museum will host a prairie walk about summer on the prairie from 9 AM to noon. Reservations for the informative three hour nature hike are requested. The hike will feature the recently restored marsh where participants may have a chance to glimpse local wildlife such as wood ducks, heron, and egrets. The beaver marsh and the Mill Creek Prairie will also be featured.
Hikers wearing water-resistant shoes can see the beaver dike up close.
The beavers pushed up mud to create the dike and to create a safe canal for reaching inland food sources. Not only will hikers see the prairie and wetlands firsthand, they will learn about individual native flora such as sedge, prairie dock, and the towering great angelica as well as what flora and fauna were brought in from other areas, often to the detriment to native species. Among various interesting items, hikers will learn how to tell the difference between grasses and sedges. The difference is most obvious at the stem. There's more to the hike than seeing the wildlife and learning the differences between plants.