Restoring a piece of pre-settlement Wisconsin, one acre at a time.
Cylindrical Blazing Star (Liatris cylindracea)
Treinen Farm is 200 acres in the rolling country north of Madison. Most of it is working agricultural land — corn, soybeans, hay, pumpkins. Some of it is the farm you walk through in the fall. And about thirteen acres of it is something else: a south-facing bluff with dolomite outcrops, where we are slowly restoring an oak savanna and prairie that has not existed here for a hundred years.
This is the Oak Savanna Restoration Project. It is the work we do when the corn maze is closed.
The land matters here. Our approach is informed by the spirit of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic — the idea that we are not owners of the land but members of a community that includes the soil, the water, the plants, and the animals. The conservation work on this farm is a multi-generation project. The work we do now is work whose full results we may not live to see. We do it because it’s the right thing to do for a place we love.
When the first government land surveyors walked this property in 1833, they recorded bur oaks along the section line at the top of the bluff. The 1937 aerial photographs show the bluff still completely open — the same prairie and savanna character that had been here for thousands of years.
Before European settlement, southern Wisconsin was a mosaic of tallgrass prairie, oak savanna, and oak woodland. Oak savanna — open grassland scattered with mature oak trees, kept open by frequent fire — was one of the defining ecosystems of this region. Today, it is one of the rarest habitats in the Midwest. Far less than one percent of original Wisconsin oak savanna still exists.
The bluff at Treinen Farm is what conservationists call a remnant — a place where native prairie plants survived through generations of grazing without ever fully disappearing. Remnants are precious because they cannot be replicated. You can plant a new prairie, but you cannot plant an old one. We are working to restore the remnant we have, and to expand it back into the slopes around it.
Ancient bur oaks on top of the bluff
We burn most restored areas every year or at least every few years (as much as possible)
Bur oak — the dominant savanna oak — grows alongside black, white, and red oak across the property. The prairie remnant supports a remarkable diversity of native species despite a century of pressure: big bluestem, little bluestem, side-oats grama, lead plant, purple prairie clover, fringed puccoon, shooting star, birdsfoot violet, cylindrical blazingstar, prairie coreopsis, silky aster, and many other natives are returning up on the bluff and surrounding slopes.
The bluff is also habitat for native pollinators, and it includes possible habitat for the rusty patched bumble bee — a federally endangered species whose populations have collapsed across most of its historic range. The frequent burning we do here is part of what supports them.
It is, in other words, a small living example of the Wisconsin that existed before the plow. Walking through it, you are walking through something almost no one in southern Wisconsin gets to see anymore.
Restoring an oak savanna is the work of decades. Three things drive the work:
Fire. Frequent prescribed burns are the foundation of the project. Fire was the natural force that kept savannas open for thousands of years before settlement, and it is the most powerful tool we have for pushing back invasive species, releasing nutrients, and giving native plants the conditions they evolved for. We burn most years, in fall after the oaks drop their leaves or in early spring.
Brush removal and follow-up treatment. Decades of fire suppression allowed non-native and aggressive woody species — eastern red cedar, buckthorn, bush honeysuckle, sumac, prickly ash — to overtake areas that were once open. Clearing them is hard work, and the follow-up is harder. Cleared areas need treatment for years to keep them from coming back.
Seeding. Where brush has been removed, we seed in native prairie and savanna species — using locally collected seed wherever possible — so that the restored ground returns to native vegetation rather than weeds. We add Canada wild rye as a cover, then layer in flowering species over multiple years.
The project is funded entirely by the agritourism business — every ticket helps pay for seed, equipment, and the labor that keeps the work moving forward. Most of the rest is off-season hands-on work by the family. People sometimes ask what Angie does when the corn maze isn’t open. A lot of the answer is: she’s up on the bluff.
We work in partnership with The Prairie Enthusiasts, a regional conservation organization whose ecologists have helped guide the project’s long-term plan.
Much of the work is heavy brush and tree removal on very steep terrain.
The hike up the bluff passes several restoration areas in various stages, so you can see the progress.
Most guests come to Treinen Farm for the corn maze and the pumpkin patch. But for those who want to see the restoration project, the bluff is walkable from the main farm area. The walk is uphill — not a difficult climb, but enough that we want to be honest that it isn’t right for everyone — and the reward is a view across the prairie remnant, the cleared slopes, and the open ground where the bur oaks stand.
We are working on improved signage along the trail so that guests can identify what they’re seeing — the prairie species in bloom, the oaks, the cleared areas, the burn history. Look for the new interpretation in the 2026 season.
If you come up the hill and stop to look at a flower, or wonder about the burned ground in spring, or run your hand over the bark of a 250-year-old bur oak — that’s the thing we built this for.
One of the things that drew us into this work, and still drives it, is the simple recognition that Wisconsin is full of wildlife — even in the cities. The cranes overhead, the goldfinches in the prairie, the bumble bees on the milkweed, the deer at the edge of the woods. You don’t have to drive to a national park to be in the middle of something wild. You just have to look up, or walk uphill, or stop and pay attention for a minute.
The restoration project is, in a way, a gesture of attention — a way of saying that this place, and the wildlife in it, is worth caring about. We hope that walking through it makes you feel the same way.
Bumble bee on bee balm (Monarda fistulosa)
Visit us at the Treinen Farm Corn Maze & Pumpkin Patch!
W12420 WI Trunk 60
Lodi, WI 53555
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