The decision to go in a new direction with this land was not simple. People like me and my siblings who inherit land but never grew up on it are often in a quandary as to what to do with these generous gifts from our parents. What ends up happening with it is often dependent on the personality and priorities of the new owner(s). In our case, our father gave the entire 32 acres to all three of us, with each of us getting one-third interest. It was not subdivided to give each of us would get a given parcel with an equal area or equal value. This gave us options. 

The default would be to keep doing what we’d been doing: leasing the land to a farmer. My father entered into this lease in 2017 with Jeff Menard who was already farming nearby family land. My cousin Gerard stopped farming but kept his land in sugarcane with his friend Jeff. Before then, Gerard farmed crawfish on it and treated us to a big boil every Easter as a thank you. Daddy was happy to have them use the land for little or no rent because they would be the ones to maintain it and keep it from being overtaken by noxious weeds like chicken trees. This is appealing for many landowners who don’t live in the area and don’t have the connections, equipment, or desire to keep the land “clean”. A commercial farmer also handles all the paperwork. All we had to do was cash his nice check every year. 

When Daddy gave us the land, he said we could do what we wanted with it. None of us planned to ever live out there. We had all settled into our homes in Lafayette, Baton Rouge and Sunset. We also confirmed that none of our children had dreams about living there either. 

Daddy thought we should keep it in sugarcane. Knowing my father, this was more about keeping the rural and family peace and not rocking boats. He is all about getting along. He is also all about minimizing effort. Letting a farmer farm it was a perfect solution.

We could also sell the property. Maurice was quickly becoming a bedroom community for Lafayette. Tract houses are mushrooming all around. Possibly a developer would be interested. But that idea was not appealing to any of us. Nothing changes the character of a community faster, and the nostalgia of our childhood summers in the country stopped that idea cold. Daddy did ask, should we decide to sell it, that we offer it to the Baudoin cousins first. None of us felt ready to sell it unless to each other, but none of us wanted to own more family land than this. Our spouses would need to be on board, and none of us felt strongly enough to make the pitch to buy out one or both siblings. I had a conversation with a real estate agent and appraiser about what it was worth. If any of us were in a bind, the cash would have been welcome. Thankfully, none of us was in that situation, and we could hold on to the land indefinitely.  

So we decided not to sell it any time soon and to just let the sugarcane lease play out while we considered our options. It was a year-to-year lease, but we felt a responsibility to renew the lease until five years had elapsed, since sugarcane is one of those crops with a costly startup. Sugarcane is planted one year, then harvested for about four more before its productivity begins to wane and the sugarcane needs to be replanted. We thought it would be unfair to the farmer to end the lease before his fifth year since the farmer had already invested a lot in tractor work, chemicals and starts. I had been keeping my eye on 2023 as the time to make a decision about what would happen next. Daddy would ask me, “What’s the rush?”, assuming I was in a hurry to make changes. He never said it, but I’m sure he thought I was being naive about land and what it could be. I am also sure he was right. But I was skeptical that its only destiny was to be farmed. I wasn’t in a rush either, but I knew I’d need time to get the information needed to make a decision so that my siblings could either join in or we’d have to move ahead with subdividing in time for me to take action for my parcel when the lease ended.

As it turns out, I should have started even earlier. A couple of years before the end of the sugarcane lease, I started looking into what it would take to restore the property as habitat for wildlife. I felt strongly that I wanted to make an active decision about what to do with my 10+ acres, especially since my two children would one day inherit it. I wanted its value to only increase. And I wanted what I did with it to reflect my values and those of a future buyer who, like me and so many others I know, would far prefer to live on land that has mature trees, wildflowers, and water. We humans have come far since our days on the savanna, but we still seek out habitats with these features. They are soothing and restorative. I’m gambling on the assumption that thoughtfully rewilded homesites will fetch more in the real estate market than cookie-cutter wastelands that most subdivisions are. Maybe if I restore it, they will come. First the plants, then the animals, then the right buyers who share my values and appreciate that someone bothered to improve the site well ahead of their desire for it. But even if we or our children never sell the land as premium multi-acre homesites, it will still be more valuable than leaving it in marginal farmland. 

Over those couple of years, I looked for opportunities to talk with my siblings about my idea. I left open all the options and hopefully was careful to not make them feel pushed into a decision. As I learned more about government and nonprofit programs that would cover most of the costs of the restoration, I shared what I knew to the degree that they were interested. Then several months before the last sugarcane harvest, I asked them to either come along with me, or I’d start the process of subdividing our land into three fair pieces so that I could move forward with a plan for my 10 acres. Lucky for me, they were both supportive of the spirit of the restoration even though it meant foregoing the lease checks we had enjoyed. Once I promised they wouldn’t have to lift a finger or contribute a dime to the project, they bought in. That agreement also gave me permission to make all the decisions and take care of all the financial transactions. This meant that my spouse and I would front the costs and be reimbursed. That meant my spouse also had to buy in, which he did, once he determined it wouldn’t mean more work on his part.

I’ve only learned about repurposing farmland peripherally, from my family. My parents, Ray and Cynthia Baudoin, built their homestead in the early 1990s on six acres of bean fields my mother inherited from her father, Willie Arabie, about 10 miles north of the Baudoin Prairie and also in Vermilion Parish. After removing the bean rows, they dug a pond (with NRCS consultation) to raise the house pad. They planted fruit and shade trees and put in a big vegetable garden for Daddy. Mom wanted big swaths of wildflowers in front, something she embraced as a result of the Wildflower movement in the 1980s but that Daddy only tolerated. He eventually wore down her defenses and added those big patches to his mowing area. And Daddy, in his late 80s, still mows every few weeks in the summer. To him, mowing is what responsible property owners do. Whether it needs it or not. It wasn’t until the mower died that they started considering moving from that land in their 80s.

My Aunt Judith inherited the property adjacent to Mom’s. Her dream before she died was to rewild it, before rewilding was a thing. This was in the 1980s. Her strategy was to plant trees, mostly pines. At the time, I’m sure Daddy judged it folly, but he usually keeps his opinions to himself.  It is now somewhat mature woods. Her three sons still own it and have no plans to sell it. I asked. Out of curiosity about how the ecosystem succession has proceeded, I walked through there a few years ago to see what plants have volunteered. I was hoping to spot a few gems but fully expected a healthy representation of invasives. Most of what I saw was neither. Just mid-succession understory shrubs and vines. Nothing I’d have asked my cousins for permission to harvest but also nothing that raised alarm bells. This visit reminded me that rewilding can proceed with little intervention, but it wouldn’t get a restoration ecologist’s pulse racing if they visited. It probably isn’t the biodiversity reservoir it could be with active management.  I don’t see my cousins enough to have the kind of relationship where I could say, hey, do you want some beautyberry or buckeye plants?  

When my husband Pete retired in 2015, we were living in Houston. It took no time to decide to move to Acadiana. It was my home, and our boys, my parents and family were all still nearby. We loved the music and festivals. It wasn’t as important to Pete where we lived, so long as he had outdoor space to putter. So we started looking for property in Acadiana. We wanted acreage that already had nature: woods, meadows and some wet spots. We were always attracted to this type of homestead. When house-hunting, homes with natural landscapes had always won out. We ended up buying seven partially wooded acres of former horse pasture in St. Landry Parish, and we designed our home to be nestled among the flora, with big windows to witness all the action. Pete’s nomination of Out to Pasture as the name of our homestead won handily. 

Pete has always been the primary caretaker of our family properties. He would choose yard work over kids’ soccer games if I’d have let him.  He underwent his conversion to native plants when we bought our first home in 1993 in New Orleans, possibly by my mother, who gave him Bill Fontenot’s Native Gardening in the South as a Christmas gift. Now our full-time property manager, Pete calls what he does “accelerated succession.” Succession is the ecological term for the process by which an ecosystem recovers following disturbance. Because of human activity, most of the planet’s ecosystems are in some state of succession. Everything farmed or developed or managed has had its succession clock restarted, often every year. Early succession is characterized by weeds and weedy animals like rats and wasps that also love disturbance. Pete is accelerating succession Out to Pasture by adding diverse species of trees, shrubs, grasses and wildflowers among what is already here and keeping the invasive privets, honeysuckle and tallows at bay. He is intentionally adding different oak and other tree species next to our many water oaks to give them a headstart for the inevitable day the water oak goes down.  It seems to be working. We are attracting a lot of bird and insect life, and that for us is the sign that we are on the right track. We are proud to be stewards of a habitat whose quality is improving every year. And hopefully his excellent records will help someone else do likewise on their own land.

What I am taking on at the Baudoin Prairie is very different from my parents’ homestead, my aunt’s pine woodlot and our place Out to Pasture. I feel out of my depth as I embark on restoration of the Baudoin Prairie. These fields have been tilled almost yearly for a century and sprayed with herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers pretty regularly. It has been a long, long time since it has had any biodiversity; it’s practically a blank slate. Succession here will be slow and possibly painful. When the last sugarcane crop was harvested in October 2023, it left an ecological vacuum. Since nature abhors said vacuums, we can expect weeds to move in quickly. I better have my plan ready to execute or we will be overrun with undesirable nonnative flora and fauna. 

Restoration of crop land is most successful with a clean slate. Most restorations begin by killing existing vegetation with chemicals or tilling. That’s why the end of a crop harvest is the perfect time to start a restoration. Land that has been only grazed or hayed may merit a less aggressive restoration plan, depending on what forage grasses have been planted. Bermuda grass is one of the most common, and its persistence has been the death of many a restoration project. Some of the highest quality remnant prairies, like the Nash Prairie near Houston, are those that have been hayed and burned for a century or more. 

And so it begins. I’m grateful to my siblings and spouse for playing along. I’ll keep you posted about its progress.