Reflection · Seeds of Kindness
Restoring What Farming Left Behind
Shared by John Kaminski
Team: Christmas Island Worldwide · Team member John Kaminski
The ponds in my yard had been shaped by many years of farming. When I first started paying close attention, some of the small signs of a healthy wetland were simply missing. I did not see frogs. I did not see snails. Even bulrushes, native grasses and many of the flowers I expected around the water were absent. That became its own long-term project: not just making the ponds look nicer, but helping them function more like wetlands again. I started making careful remediations around the water, protecting places that needed a chance to recover, adding vegetation and allowing natural processes more room to work. The changes did not happen all at once. They came slowly, season by season.
A wetland with pieces missing
The ponds were there, but many of the signs I associated with healthy pond edges were not. Years of agricultural use had changed the surrounding land. The absence of frogs, snails, bulrushes, native grasses and flowers made it clear that water alone does not make a wetland.
Remediation instead of replacement
The work became a process of helping the ponds recover rather than trying to rebuild nature from scratch. I adjusted how areas around the water were treated, protected recovering edges, encouraged vegetation and gave the wet places more room. Some interventions were deliberate; others were simply decisions to stop interfering and allow succession to happen.
A landscape remembering what it can be
Over time the ponds and surrounding ground began to feel less like leftover farm water and more like living wetland. The aim is not to recreate a precise historical snapshot, but to restore more of the structure, diversity and resilience that prairie wetlands in this part of Saskatchewan would once have supported before intensive settlement and agricultural alteration.
Rama, Saskatchewan · reflection