…up the old Shawnee Trail (also known as State Highway 289), past the suburbs and the rapidly growing formerly small towns, through another forty miles of open cattle ranchland, left on SH120 and then around the bend, resides a boutique farmette known as SunnieBelle Farm. It is eleven acres total, the back five of which are devoted to reclaiming/maintaining the natural beauty. This meadow of native grasses and wildflowers joins a neighbor’s woodland of oaks, elms, pines and others to create a peaceful and safe habitat for native birds, insects, and animals of all sorts. SunnieBelle is also home to eight hives of European honeybees (SunnieBelle’s Sweet Bees — who make the best honey from her wildflowers!) as well as two rescue donkeys, John Brown and Senor Carlos de Queso, who are the kindest old gentlemen you’ll ever meet!
How SunnieBelle Farm came into existence is a fairly long story… if you would like to read about it, click here. Otherwise, lets go look around the farm!
These first photos below are the entry drive and front north pasture. This pasture consists of native grasses such as little bluestem, splitbeard bluestem, purpletop tridens, Indian grass and switchgrass. These are all native warm season perennials. The donkeys graze on them in the spring but as the summer goes by they become less palatable and the donkeys stop eating them. They grow tall and are left for wildlife cover throughout the winter months. The frog pond was originally installed as a stock tank back when there was cattle on the land. It is now used by frogs, ducks, deer, opossums, raccoons, the occasional snake and other wildlife for drinking and habitat.
Next we have the front south pasture — Johnny & Queso’s home. This is still a work in progress as it was completely overrun with greenbriar, nettle, poison ivy, curly dock and other various plants that are not suitable for a horse/donkey pasture. While I try to keep & work with the natives, some of them have to go. Once the land is cleared and prepped we will plant warm season annual and cool season grasses for forage.
Finally, we get to the back pasture; this is where SunnieBelle’s natural beauty really shines! Alongside the same native grasses as in the front pasture grow many types of annual, biennial and perennial plants, wildflowers and shrubs. Since each season is favorable to different species of plant life there is always something growing, taking their turn in the ecosystem and some time in the sun. It seems every time I walk back here I see a new plant that I don’t recognize. I have been using the PictureThis app to help identify them and it seems to be pretty accurate! I will be documenting these plants in SunnieBelle’s Garden page. Some of these natives will be available as seeds or potted plants in our gift shop, so you can bring a bit of SBF to your backyard or even a back porch Pocket Prairie Planter!
