Thinking Like a Prairie offered hands-on workshops focused on creative and artistic ways to engage with prairie soils and prairie plants, combined with education about how soil health principles derive from the prairie ecosystem. The workshops were presented to the local FFA chapters in Walsh County, ND, by myself and soil conservationist Joshua T. Anderson with the Walsh County Three Rivers Soil Conservation District.

In the fall of 2025, the project included a soil pigment-making workshop and a prairie seed paper-making workshop, as well as a ceramic plateware workshop using prairie plants. In the spring of 2026, we led drawing and cyanotype workshops, glazed the ceramic plateware, and hosted a culminating student exhibition and dinner featuring local ingredients (including bison burgers from the ranch students visited in the fall!).

Thinking Like a Prairie included participation from local ranchers for field visits, soil sampling, and material collection, and the students created multidisciplinary projects that featured what they learned about prairies, soil health principles, and working lands approaches to grasslands management.

This project was supported by a generous grant from the North Dakota Natural Resources Trust.