Keweenaw Wild Ones began working with the Glad Tidings Assembly of God, in Hancock, after a chance meeting between member Karen Cayce and Pastor TJ Stauffer. Here’s Karen’s story.
In May/June of 2023 I was on my driveway getting ready for a Wild Ones Keweenaw Farmers Market and loading plants into my vehicle. A FedEx driver pulled up and said ”we don’t have fireflies here.” I said well, I do, in my yard. He was responding to a sign I had in my front yard saying “no mow this is firefly habitat.” I responded, “Well, you must have nothing but green lawn that you mow weekly, and there’s no habitat for the fireflies.” He told me that he was a member of a church nearby, that he was interested in learning more about what I had to say, and he asked if he could stop by again sometime. I said sure.
A few weeks later I was working in my sewing room with [daughter-in-law] Wei and she said, “Karen, someone just pulled up into the driveway, and he’s wearing a suit and he’s coming towards the front door.” I looked out the front door and I said, “Oh it’s the FedEx guy,” and I went running out there. Wei thought I said “it’s the feds” so she went running to get [husband] Walter. I invited the man to sit on the front patio as we spoke, and then he introduced himself as TJ Stauffer, the pastor of Glad Tidings Church. I then discovered that one of our members, Kathe Salmi, who had died in an accident the year before, had been an active member of his church, and he and Kathi had talked about doing a native plant project. We agreed to talk more at some point.
I invited Marcia to the next few meetings and chose the highest priorites for the church: South facing, poor soil, requiring no maintenance. A dream for a picnic area for staff, members and community. Less mowing. More inviting spaces for all. The first-year plan was to employ the lasagna method to mulch out existing vegetation for the highest priority areas. The church members have biannual work days, and that October we did just that. I also applied for a grant through Wild Ones, which we did not get, so then proceeded with the plan to smother the existing “lawn.” We defined the priority areas and completed this task with the church members, including a very active youth group.
In 2024 I experienced some medical issues and Polly Havins stepped up to help me manage this project. She has worked with the children to perform soil tests and has helped instruct them how to plant plants correctly. We also did some winter sowing directly into the raised beds, which did not end up working very well because of the weed pressure. So, we’re still in the experimental phase, although this past fall we put hundreds of plants (donated by WOK and other members from their yards) in the ground. In the spring and summer of 2025 we actually had about 150 plants come up from the year before, so we’re making progress. TJ has also put in a number of trees that he purchased, and we helped him plan his future picnic area, which will be shaded. We’re just working on patch by patch. There’s another area planted to aromatic sumac. They’ve done okay, but have not been maintained so one of our focuses is to cleaned up that area and possibly add some red-twig dogwoods.
