We have purposely avoided any significant building projects. Buildings are expensive and tend to become a major focus of activity. We prefer to put our resources into restoration work.

Original buildings

The shack

The term “shack” has special significance in Wisconsin but is very appropriate here.

The building to the left in the photo above has been moderately remodeled and now serves as a field station. The other building was unusuable and was burned down (for practice) by the local volunteer fire department in the late 1980s.

The shack was once a pig pen but has been remodeled into a usable building (compare with the photo below).

The shack is a single-room affair. It has electricity but no running water, and is heated only by a wood stove. We have a small library of plant identification manuals, a dissecting microscope, and a refrigerator. We store brush cutters and leaf blowers and some hand tools. This is where we have lunch every day we are in the field. Among other things, lunch is the time when we discuss upcoming projects. Visitors sometimes drop in.

The well house

Near the cabin, painted to match, is the well house, a very important facility. Although we don’t drink the water, we use lots for diluting herbicides and for filling our pumper units for controlled burns. Because the well house is not heated, we have to drain the pump before the first freeze in the fall.

Behind the well house, painted to match, is the privy, another important facility. This one was built in 2005 to replace the old one that was housed in the corn crib (see photo below).

The corn crib

The corn crib was the only building remaining from the original Lockwood farm. It formerly housed the privy, and had probably been used by generations of land owners. Because of our interest in history, we were reluctant to tear it down but because it was complicating the management of the Crane Prairie we finally burned it down in February 2013. See post for details on the burn.

The overall setting of the buildings