Rescuing a Kickapoo Kettle Valley

by Patricia H. Roth

The year was 1977 and a group of six of us – as a real estate trust – were purchasing 147 acres which overlooked the beautiful Kickapoo Valley. The acreage included ridge on three sides with a bowl-shaped valley in the middle, which drains to the Kickapoo River less than a mile to the east.

Unfortunately, the farmer selling it to us was badly overextended, and one of his last maneuvers before the closing in July had been to cash rent the small acreage in the bowl-shaped valley (known as “The “Kettle”). The renter had plowed the valley from tree line to tree line, and planted corn. As I watched him harvesting that fall, his picker rig at a heart-stopping angle on the slope, the travesty of his “farming” effort was obvious: every hundred yards an ear or two would riffle out of the chute. That just wasn’t corn ground.

Walking the property months later on the eastern end of The Kettle, I was suddenly dropped about five feet into a great gulch that had developed. The sides of the little valley were also veined with erosion marks.

The trust invested hundreds of dollars to have the little valley bulldozed smooth again, the topsoil spread uniformly over the land, the gulch and rivulets filled in. As the ‘dozer finished and a gentle sprinkle began, we prayed it wouldn’t be a “gully washer.” Several of us walked the newly-laid open ground with hand seeders, sowing a mixed crop of fast-growing, soil holding and leguminous seeds. Luckily, the crop “caught” before any big rains fell.

Thankfully, that acreage has never been tilled again. We paid it off this spring. Twenty-five years later, the little bowl-shaped valley is still “The Kettle.” I do hate to think how much Wisconsin soil is clogging the Mississippi delta at its mouth, though.

August 20, 2002