The Annual Old Fashioned Prairie Fest

Saturday, September 11, 10:00am to 4:00pm
Free event @ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester

Save the Prairie Society’s invites you to a free community event: The Annual Old Fashioned Prairie Fest! at the parkway of the Prairie House. Rain date September 18.

Featuring:

  • Cold-blooded animals exhibit from Cross Town Exotics
  • 20 crafters and artists selling hand-made articles
  • Dulcimer players
  • Shannon Adam’s band
  • Display of beautiful, hand-made quilts
  • Spinning wheel demonstration
  • Prairie volunteer tent
  • Enjoy good food and drinks
  • Buy tickets to win one of our 8 gift baskets
  • Guided tour of the highest quality mesic prairie east of the Mississippi
  • The Historic Prairie House will be open to all – learn about the history of the house and the people who lived there as well as the architecture and history found in the enclosed 1853 schoolhouse   

Insect Safari

Sunday, September 12, 1:00pm
$5 for adults, children are free @ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester

Join in the fun with Professor Michael Rush. Using the nets provided by Save The Prairie Society, participants will be able to catch a variety of insects. We will then identify and study them. In the end, we will release them back onto the Prairie.

Note: wear sturdy shoes and long pants.

Polskie Radio1030 Chicago Tours the WRP

A Polish TV film crew toured the Wolf Road Prairie last week to to highlight the importance of the prairie ecosystems! Most of the video is in Polish, but the latter portion features an English-language tour of the Franzosenbusch Prairie House with STPS Director Rita McCabe.

Save The Prairie Society’s July Event – Don’t Squash That Bug

July 25th, 1:00pm
Free event @ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester

Speaker: Insect specialist James Rowan

We see insects in our gardens and when we take our walks in the neighborhood. Most of us enjoy seeing the fireflies, the pollinators, and the butterflies. Our July guest speaker hopes to broaden our appreciation of those insects that are unfamiliar to us, even though they play an important role in keeping our ecosystem healthy. The more we know about the natural world the more interesting it is.

Note: The historic Prairie House is air conditioned.

Gardens of the Desert: An Introduction to Illinois Prairies

June 27th, 1:00pm
@ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester

Speaker: Jack Shouba, who worked tirelessly to Save Wolf Road Prairie before the State of Illinois’ IDNR and Cook County Forest Preserves stepped to insure that it would remain prairie.

Slide Presentation: Called “the most beautiful country imaginable” by French explorer Pierre Liette, and “gardens of the desert” by poet William Cullen Bryant, the Illinois prairie is all but gone and the word prairie has lost its meaning. We are still “the prairie state,” but today it is Silicon Prairie, not Silphium prairie. In this program we explore the question of just what is an Illinois prairie and we look at how the relationships of people to the prairie changed over time. We look at prairie plants and their adaptations, prairie animals, and the role of fire. We search for places that still contain scraps of prairie, and consider why we must save these precious remnants. The program includes “Prairie Reverie,” a humorous look at the (mis)use and misspelling of the word prairie.

May Flower Walk

May 13th, 10:00am
@ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester

Celebrate The Merry Month of May

Spring flowers are now blooming at Wolf Road Prairie. Save The Prairie Society would like to share the colorful spring beauty of our native flowers with you.
We will be hosting a Wolf Road Prairie walk both in the Savanna and the Prairie on May 13 @10 am.

Participants can park in one of the three parking bays on the north side of 31st Street just west of Wolf Road.

A great opportunity for all ages to learn the land we live on and connect with the other organisms that call it home and depend on it.

Village Free Press: Westchester Stakeholders Mobilizing To Block Townhome Development Near Prairie Nature Preserve

A group of Westchester residents and stakeholders are pushing back against a developer’s plan to build a luxury townhome community on 15 acres of land adjacent to the roughly 80-acre Wolf Road Prairie Nature Preserve and the 43-acre Hickory Lane buffer lands — an area known worldwide for its biodiversity and soil composition.

Wyatt Widmer, a board director of the Save the Prairie Society — a nonprofit chartered in 1975 that’s dedicated to protecting the rare black soil prairie in Westchester — said he’s been conducting research on the proposed development’s potential environmental effects.

Read the full article.

Earth Day Gardening

April 22nd, 1:00pm to 3:00pm
@ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester

Celebrate Earth Day with us!

Our prairie garden needs tending and the more hands the better. We will be sprucing up the garden on April 22 from 1 pm to 3 pm. Whether you stay an hour or
all 3 hours, your help will be appreciated. Bring gloves if you have them, if not we have extras.

Refreshments will be available.

The Sky Dance of the Male Woodcock

April 1st, 2nd & 3rd, starting 7:00pm
@ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester

Join us on the deck of the Prairie House as we listen for the persistent peenting of the male Woodcock and then watch as he ascends high in the sky, then dramatically returns performing a daring fast downward zig zag spiral and at the last moment, pulls back and lands on the spot where he started. This daring flight is performed in hopes of impressing a potential mate. Wolf Road Prairie is one of the few places in Cook County where this twilight courtship can be seen.

Zoom Safari

Sunday, March 28, 1:00 PM
@Zoom

World Traveler and wildlife photographer, Rick Schoenfield, will guide you into the wilds of Africa and South America. He will be sharing both his adventures and his professional photographs.

Highlighting: Jaguars, Great River Otters, Lions, Cheetahs and Gorillas.

To sign up for this free event, confirm that you plan to attend by sending an email to: wrp.stps@gmail.com with Zoom Safari as your subject.

Your email address  is all that is needed to register. You will receive your Zoom Safari log-in information by way of email the day before the event. On the 28th, as 1:00 PM approaches, sign in as instructed and you will enter a virtual waiting room.

Please fill free to forward this information to anyone you think may be interested in attending.