Ellyn Satter was DALC’s first-ever Legacy Society member, kicking off a special group of supporters who include DALC in their will or estate plans. We are deeply honored by every individual who chooses to entrust DALC with their legacy. Your trust is not just a responsibility but a privilege we cherish wholeheartedly. Every story, every dream, and every legacy that passes through our hands is treated with the utmost care and respect. For Ellyn, the decision to join the Legacy Society arose from a lifetime of love for the land.
Ellyn grew up on a farm in South Dakota and credits her family’s care of the land as the beginning of her strong land ethic. “I always loved being outside. Walking in the pasture, riding my bike, helping with farming, driving tractors was fun; pulling cockleburrs was not so fun.”
“My dad was a holistic farmer before holistic farmers were fashionable,” Ellyn says. “Before we had pesticides and fertilizers, farmers rotated their crops regularly and grew grain for the livestock. It was an extremely diverse setup. My mom raised about 100 chickens and had an egg business. She would take the eggs to town on Saturday nights and trade them for groceries. They were before their time.”
But as Ellyn shares, her parents’ story was one of loss of community. With the introduction of the combine and haybaler, harvesting methods changed from collaborative events to working alone. “Threshing and haystacking were always community affairs, with Mom making big dinners for a dozen or more workers. Dad stopped enjoying farming when he could no longer get together with his neighbors and brothers and friends to do the work. Mom lost community as well. The church closed and the Ladies Aid stopped meeting. But the biggest loss was when her party telephone line was replaced with a private line. We had about 28 people on the party line and everybody would ‘rubber’ or listen in. It was a way to find out everybody’s news.
If there were a community emergency or news, the operator would put out a general call that everyone knew they needed to pick up. Mom really missed the party line. She was a pretty shy person and never replaced the party line as a way to stay connected with others.”
Life would take Ellyn to Madison, WI, for an internship and graduate school, and was the place she started her family. There, Ellyn began building her own community – with the people around her, and with the natural world.
“When the kids were little, we used to go camping all the time. It was the glory days in the state parks. Back in the day, there were lots of programs and rangers. We could go on bird walks, geology walks, tree walks, and flower walks. There were lots of public programs with various topics in the evenings. I started enjoying being able to put names to what I was seeing,” Ellyn shares. “I really credit the state parks for giving me a direction for learning and growing with respect to the natural world. From there on I was able to find other opportunities to feed my interest.”
In the late 1970’s, Ellyn and her husband purchased their farm north of Barneveld. “It was exciting to get out on the land and learn what was there. We put the woods into Managed Forest Law and didn’t have cows, and it was wonderful to see what wildflowers came back. I got interested in native gardening in town, and now have a couple of pocket prairies as well as some understory gardens.”
Now at 83, Ellyn still visits natural areas as often as possible. It’s her favorite form of recreation. “There’s nothing like getting out in nature and seeing the wildflowers—it’s like seeing an old friend. I feel energized and rejuvenated by nature. When you can recognize plants and plant communities, you enjoy them so much more. You learn enough to speak a language, to at least ask the questions to learn even more.”
We are so grateful for Ellyn’s love of the Driftless Area and her trust in DALC to do our part by helping to care for it. This impactful commitment ensures that DALC can continue protecting land, restoring habitat, and connecting people with the Driftless long into the future.