Wally and Ellen

In this episode, we meet Wally Winter and Ellen Ewing, my neighbors and two of the original owners in Prairie Crossing.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello neighbors, I hope you're enjoying these last days of summer.

(00:12):
One of my favorite photos I've taken in Prairie Crescent was taken just about four years ago.
We were new to the Midwest, new to Illinois, and new to Lake County.
The pandemic meant we only had one weekend, July 4th, to scout for places to live here
in just one or two days to look at homes.
Our dog Sadie was in the last months of her life when we moved in.

(00:35):
She's part husky and had dementia and was only happy walking, so that's what we did
for hours.
One of those days the sky was full of billowing clouds threatening to storm it away, and I
found only the Midwest can.
These beautiful yellow flowers near Jones Point Road and Osage Orange Road, which are
blooming right now in that spot, were being whipped in the wind.

(00:59):
I printed that photo out and it hangs in my office at work.
I also encountered in those early days how welcoming our community was and still is.
One neighbor, Wally Winter, was curious why we moved here.
It was Kendall's job that brought us here, I said, and I told him honestly that I'd never
considered one way or the other about living in the Midwest or near Chicago.

(01:23):
Except for what I'd learned in grade school, I knew very little about the area.
So you're not against learning about it, Wally asked.
Well, no, I guess not, I responded.
A day or two later he was at my door with a stack of books from his vast library about
the history of the region in Chicago, some of which I'm still working through.

(01:45):
We were lucky enough to land on a special street in Prairie Crossing.
There are nine homes and five of them are owned by the people who built them.
Wally and his wife, Ellen Ewing, included.
Thanks to our conversations during shared cookouts in our little common green and chance
encounters, I feel like I've been privy to a deep education about Prairie Crossing.

(02:08):
Since I've lived here, two of them have passed, Klaus Weissel and John Estep.
Those are two remarkable people I won't get to talk to again or record their stories.
I hope they're the only ones I miss.
Almost 30 years on, many of our founding neighbors are still here and they're fascinating people.
I hope to hear from many of them to give us context about how and why this unique experiment

(02:33):
was founded so we all know where Prairie Crossing comes from.
I'm excited to have Wally and Ellen as guests on this episode and able to share with their
experience of Prairie Crossing has been like.
They're friends now and neighbors and I'm also proud to serve with Ellen on the board
of directors of Growing Healthy Veterans, an exciting effort founded by her late son,

(02:55):
Lucan, interesting one of the first people I ever met here while doing the home inspection,
to engage and heal veterans through agriculture and help end the food desert in North Chicago.
Here's Wally and Ellen.
Okay, well Ellen Ewing and Wally Winter, thank you for joining me on my little podcast.

(03:27):
Thank you for having us.
Yeah, it's great opportunities.
So tell me how long have you lived in Prairie Crossing?
When did you move in?
We moved in in August of 26 of 96.
96.
Right.
So this is an anniversary.

(03:47):
We just passed probably the anniversary of you moving in.
Right.
Me too.
I moved in August 4th, I think was our close date.
And what was here when you got here?
When Wally and I first heard about it, Wally had actually known George and Vicki for a
long time.
He grew up with George's younger brother, Eddie.

(04:13):
But we had gotten, we were living together and we're needing to relocate because we
were living in the house that he had lived in with his former wife and it had horse stables
and things that we didn't need.
So Wally's idea was that we were going to move, probably move into Chicago.
And I was concerned because the house that we were living in in St. Charles was on seven

(04:37):
and a half acres and he had a big garden and I wasn't sure how the transition to move
into Chicago was going to be.
And I had different ideas in my head and we kept going back and forth.
And then we were invited to the Ranney's house when they lived down in Hyde Park.
And Vicki took us up and showed us the plans of Prairie Crossing.

(05:02):
And I knew right then that this is where I wanted to go because I had moved out to Seattle
in the, on my own, in the late 1980s.
And as much as I loved Seattle and loved living there, I found it very difficult to make friends

(05:26):
my own age.
Most of the women that I met were married and had their own group of friends.
So I had great friends, but they were all in their 20s and 30s.
And when I lost my job, I realized I wanted to have people my own age around.
So when I heard about a community being formed where everybody would be coming together,

(05:50):
it just seemed like that was great.
It also was, the location was great because while I grew up in Lake Forest and his mother
was still living in Lake Forest, and he went to the Lake Forest Friends Meeting and his
mother was getting close to the end of her life.
And so I had in my head that we needed to live someplace close to where she was and

(06:16):
also close to the Lake Forest Meeting because I knew that if we were in Chicago or still
out in St. Charles, he wouldn't attend, be as likely to attend that meeting when he needed
that kind of support.
So Wally, where were you in all these plans and what did you think of Vicki's pitch?

(06:41):
Well Vicki's pitch was very interesting, but not totally convincing because basically it
involved building a community on the grounds of four soybean fields.
And as a creature of leafy lake forests, that wasn't my idea of a place where I wanted to

(07:06):
live.
And when we went and actually visited the site, there was no lake, there was just a
kind of a big hole and it looked like a lunar landscape.
All the topsoil was scraped off and heaped into large mounds.
But the clincher for me was knowing George from childhood and what a remarkable person

(07:32):
he was and what good judgment I thought he probably had.
But even more so, Vicki Ranney, who is a landscape scholar of Frederick Law Olmsted, if she was
behind this, I knew that it was going to be a project that would probably be fascinating.

(07:53):
And I was right.
If there's a list of homeowners who signed up, were you guys one of the first?
We were I think the 50th to put down a deposit and fortunately we acted just in time.
This would have been I guess in let's see, 1995 or something.

(08:14):
1995.
And we got the only house left that was on the lake.
In fact, George came and had dinner once.
He swam to our house from the beach.
That's right.
So there was water when your house was finally built I guess.
Yes.
It was very reassuring.

(08:36):
Because I kept bringing, we went, we came the first time with a young friend who was
from England who was studying architecture at the time.
And that's when Wally looked at me and said, who could live on this?
And I thought, well I've got a little bit more work to do.
So because we would go back and forth from St. Charles to Lake Forest on Sundays to go

(08:59):
to meetings, I waited another two or three months and we came back and more things were
happening and it looked more interesting.
And then about two months after that we came back and there was water in the lake and it
was a done.
He looked at me and said, you think you could live here?
And I thought, well I guess so after all this time.

(09:21):
But it just, it was so intriguing.
There were so many aspects of it.
For example, I'm not sure people realized the lake when it was dug was dug not like
a typical I think lake for a housing.

(09:41):
Yeah a retention pond right?
Right.
It has ledges for fish, it was dug and it had the island kept in it for birds and just
little details like that that you think about and make you realize that this is really something
special.
And then we found out that we were going to have a full-time environmentalist on the staff

(10:10):
to make sure that even though we were living next to the landfill and we had I think people
may not know in the very beginning when we bought there was an agreement with the landfill
that if during the first ten years we wanted to sell our house they would buy it back with
the cost of living and then after ten years that was extended for another five.

(10:38):
So you had a little assurance if it didn't work out you had an out.
Right.
Right and this is a way of waste management showing that they were convinced they could
address the odor issue.
And they haven't totally fixed it but it's much better than it was.

(10:58):
So it sounds like Alan you were in for the community and maybe the environmentalism and
Wally you were into the architecture and the environmentalism.
Were you guys, I know you as environmentalists but was that a focus of your lives back then
too?
Well I was, you know I'm an Aldo Leopold enthusiast and I like the idea of getting in touch with

(11:20):
prairie.
My former wife was a big prairie restoration person.
And so that made it more appealing to me but also as I say Vicki Ranney is one of a kind
and so much so that she was actually featured as a cover article in the Chicago Tribune

(11:45):
describing not only her involvement in prairie crossing but what she had done in creating
Friends of the Parks in Chicago as a force of conservation.
So I knew that conservation would be central to the theme and I knew she was a Frederick
Law Olmsted expert and scholar actually and actually had written a book and I went to

(12:07):
her talk about it about 40 years ago about Frederick Law Olmsted's works in the Chicago
area.
So she's a serious scholar and has an absolutely brilliant mind and all those things convinced
me that this was really going to be an interesting experiment and I will give Ellen credit for
recognizing potential that I hadn't even thought of as what it would be as a community,

(12:33):
as an interactive community and that has been one of the deeply satisfying aspects of it.
When you moved in how many were those 50 other folks in as well I suppose then?
So you guys were one of 50 families here?
We all knew each other pretty well.
We had potlucks on a regular basis in the barn and it was a very different, there were

(12:59):
a lot of empty nesters actually.
There weren't that many people with children which is one of the interesting demographic
changes.
One of the things that also sold me on wanting a place here is that the hope was that this
would be an integrated community racially and there was a woman in the sales office
who was a black woman and I thought well you know that's a significant symbolic act and

(13:23):
initially actually there were more people of color who decided to live here and we still
need to improve on that but it was something that Lake County was not well known for shall
we say.
So you mentioned the barn.
When you guys came to look you described kind of a moonscape in the pit and then your house

(13:46):
was built.
At that point had the roads all been put in place or sections of the area?
Just the first section down to the end of Prairie Trail before it turns.
Right and then Station Village was still in the planning session so basically Prairie
Holdings Corporation had control over that.

(14:08):
The homeowners association hadn't gotten its independence yet so there was a lot of controversy
about that because they did shift a little bit the number of units that were going to
be made and the size of the units and there was a big controversy over something called
granny flats if they would be allowed.
And people said yeah you call them granny flats I call them CLC beer party flats.

(14:32):
It's funny our last guest John he had mentioned that was one of the things that hit him was
there was a difference in the number of units that were going to be over there compared
to what actually was developed.
That's interesting you both hit on that.
Well I think that a lot of our neighbor here Sonny Sunnenschein who is a real scholar is

(14:58):
doing all the research and I think so much of this will come out and prove that this
idea everything that George and Vicki and the rest of the Prairie Holdings did was really
aimed to keep the community affordable.

(15:18):
When we first started when we first were looking at they were just building the barn and we
were told that the barn was going to be the community center and then after we moved in
shortly after when they finished building it they realized that the cost for construction
was so much more than they had anticipated and the cost for maintaining it was going

(15:44):
to be higher than they had anticipated it.
So they said that what they needed to do was to find ways that the barn could be more self
sufficient and that they didn't feel that it was fair to the homeowners to burden them
with these expenses because they would have made our monthly assessment so much higher.

(16:11):
But again it wasn't done because they wanted to make more money it was done so that we
as homeowners wouldn't have that expense and a lot of what was going on with the expansion
with the grannies they were looking at ways for things.
It's so interesting to me I mean while he says there weren't children one of the things

(16:32):
that really attracted me to the community was that it was aimed to have this age diversity
because so many housing developments are age specific.
You know you have housing developments for people with young kids and then as the kids
grow and the family makes more money they move to another one and then they have kids
with and I love the fact that there were going to be kids and in fact our other one of our

(16:59):
other neighbors when we first moved in who moved in at the same time Ellen was pregnant
and so I got to be a surrogate grandmother and to her kids and stuff and it was great
that there were all these.
The other thing is I don't think we recognized how unique the community was until all of

(17:20):
a sudden the New York Times ran a three page article about this community called Prairie
Crossing.
The National Geographic noted that it was one of the ten most unique communities in
the country and the National let's see and I mentioned the Sunday Tribune doing a cover
story so we were all kind of a little bit smugly proud that this was a unique community.

(17:44):
In terms of affordability however it soon became unaffordable for a lot of my colleagues
who are like I am a sort of public interest lawyer they said you know how are you going
to get low income people or even moderately medium level people to move to Prairie Crossing
if they have to pay then like three hundred thousand or something.

(18:08):
So that's been a problem along with not meeting the full kind of racial and income diversity
objectives that are part of the ten guiding principles.
Sure I appreciate that perspective on the assessments and the barn because I'm not
sure that I ever had a complete picture about why we don't have a communal space that is

(18:30):
controlled by the community.
That kind of makes sense like if the barn was here but there was that worry about affordability
and welcoming families of all economic levels that to throw that on the assessments might
be too burdensome.
I understand that.
When we first moved in the other thing that attracted us was the diversity in the prices

(18:52):
of the houses because again most housing developments tend to be you know within a price one price
range whereas when we moved in that their house the initial smaller houses were in the
200 250s.
Yeah the low 200s.

(19:12):
And went up to the 400s.
So maybe 450s but it was a pretty big difference.
I would say from my own context my parents bought a house that was not new construction
in 1993 and an area I would say is somewhat equivalent and they paid one hundred and three

(19:35):
thousand dollars for a ranch a two bedroom ranch on an acre.
So I could see with the amenities that were planned here and for the unique nature of
it and the construction that I know of the homes and the sales pitch for the you know
how well they are made and how tight they are.
I could see that difference in that that would be in the market for that time would be a
reasonable price for a home here.

(19:58):
Of course we also haven't mentioned the really unique aspect of pretty crossing which was
having an organic farm right in the middle of it which now is being copied all over the
country but you know we call ourselves the first conservation community.
I don't know if we could defend that in court but it really is certainly one of the first

(20:19):
and there Vicki and George were very generous in giving advice a lot of the times and many
hours to other people that said so how did you do it you know.
And they they said well you know there are a lot of ways to skin the cat and here's the
way we tried to do it.
It wasn't easy.
The road was rocky.
I don't think they thought it was going to be as difficult as it was but it's still a

(20:44):
work in progress.
What was the role of the farm because that was in a lot of the marketing materials.
It still is.
It was initially it was that you just bought shares.
We didn't even have the garden plots in the beginning but we had two really great farmers
a husband and wife with two little kids and almost everybody bought the annual shares

(21:13):
and one of the interesting things so probably for about five years you would pay X number
of dollars at the beginning of the summer and you would get your box of things.
They slowly switched so that they had the long white barn was open and you could buy

(21:35):
come in and buy what you wanted because they one of the things that the farmers did was
go around and pick up all the compost and they were finding lots of their wonderful
vegetables just put in the compost because people either didn't know how to eat them
or didn't like them or stuff and so it was another very interesting experience but because

(21:59):
of the nature of the community it was something that we all knew about.
The other thing that's made it unique is of course the reason it's Prairie Crossing
the two train lines.
When we first moved in the Antioch train didn't stop here and it took a while for that to
happen but it certainly is a blessing to be able to take the train to the airport if you

(22:23):
need to.
That certainly was made possible in large part because George was on the RTA board.
He might have even been chairman and so he was able to make the case that this was a
fast growing area and putting a stop there even though there was also a stop on the Milwaukee
line would make sense and I think that that decision has been vindicated.

(22:46):
Yeah I mean I guess 300 homes within community distance of Chicago.
I guess we could all go to Libertyville or could go to Grace Lake but we'd have to drive
there right and this one we wouldn't have to.
It fits with the model I guess of the community.
So you guys moved in in 96 and how long like why did you choose the model you did?

(23:13):
Like what were some of the experiences that you had when you like I understand everybody
had to pick a tree right.
That's mostly what was that like what would that seems a little different than if I buy
a piece in another development.
I've never done it but being able to select you know like you just get the house and you

(23:33):
get the land and then do what you want but it wasn't that way with Prairie Crossing.
No we I mean we picked a maple which is now this majestic canopy over our house you can't
even see the house.
We also decided to grow in our backyard some live Christmas trees which actually we planted
too close together and actually we didn't get HOA approval and I don't think it was

(23:59):
even required then but if we had asked today they would have said we're not so sure pine
trees are great and secondly they're way too close together but so we learned a little
bit but yeah we definitely had a landscape plan and I had Betsy Deedle who is the wife

(24:20):
of Mike Sands our environmental consultant.
She is the only landscape person I've ever hired to tell me how to get a prairie started
in my front yard.
How about the model that you chose like what could you have chosen any of the other ones
or was it based on the size of the property or how close to the lake?

(24:41):
No we had at that point I think there were seven or eight different models.
We actually chose the model that we have because we have this wonderful rug that Wally inherited
it's an Oriental rug and it's huge and we had to find a model we actually had to move
the kitchen over a little bit but and we like the look of it.

(25:05):
We both really were excited about the look of the farmhouse look with front porches and
their back porch screened in back porch.
I mean Vicki designed these houses in conjunction with these prominent architects with the idea
of making them look a little like the New England houses that she grew up with outside

(25:27):
of Boston which basically were the design that many of the people that immigrated from
New England here adopted.
So a quote farmhouse in Illinois is really very New England in its presentation and that's
why in many ways people feel that this has a kind of the New England look to it.

(25:56):
Was everyone who lived here of the like mind with the conservation or did people move here
also because it's convenient Chicago maybe didn't care about the conservation angle
when you were first here?
I think when we were first here because the tent guiding principles were such a strong
thing I mean they were in the sales office when you went in to look to buy the first

(26:17):
thing you saw were all the tent guiding principles.
So I think that there was a real self selection of people in the landscaping with all the
prairie grasses and stuff.
So somebody that wasn't very environmentally interested probably would not want to move

(26:42):
into a community where it looked like everybody had weeds in their front yards and stuff.
And we got a little push back from people in Grays Lake initially that we were some
kind of cult.
I would say not initially.
When we went to the lawyers office to sign for the purchase of our house she said are

(27:04):
you sure you want to live there?
And that was really ironic to me because we were there we had done all this work there
was no backing out then and she lives in Arbor Vista.
So it's not then it's maybe different now but we still are different.
There's still people that think the church on our southern border is a part of the cult

(27:28):
of prairie crossing.
Interesting.
Other thoughts about Ellen you started talking about the barn and I interrupted you.
You said that the use of that changed when we were talking about assessments.
How did it change?
Well it changed that it wasn't the foundation then the builders.

(27:56):
Prairie Holdings Corporation.
Prairie Holdings Corporation was going to keep ownership of the barn because of the
expense and that they were going to need to do things to create some revenue with the
barn.
So these were two reasons why they felt it didn't make sense to try to turn it over

(28:16):
because not only would we have all these additional expenses but then we would also have to hire
somebody to try to help and that they were willing to take this on.
And so it proved to be very successful as a venue for banks.
I say you know all this because you were the first person.
Yes I was the first person hired and my major job initially was talking to all the homeowners

(28:40):
that had bought with the idea that the barn was going to be ours and our community center
and explaining to them what had happened and then and figuring out really talking to people
what kinds of things we wanted to use the barn for.
And I think while I mentioned that we used to have monthly potluck suppers that was a

(29:03):
really important part.
So things like that you know I would talk to George and Vicki and say these are the
things that are important to the homeowners.
And then I did a lot of research on wedding spaces because it seemed like that this would
be probably be the best way.
Wedding and then corporate lunches and stuff.

(29:27):
And it turned out that we got a positive response.
So positive that I decided that I needed to probably look for another job because most
people don't know Vicki.
Vicki is such an amazing person but she's also very precise about things and I would

(29:48):
get calls that there weren't that we needed paper more paper towels in the bathroom or
toilet paper.
So I couldn't drive by the barn without stopping to run in to make sure everything was neat
and tidy and stuff.
So I was very happy to turn it over and we had a wonderful person Stan Rosenberg who

(30:08):
was a resident at that time who took over.
And it has taken off.
It was one of the most popular wedding venues and was booked years in advance.
But that's interesting because that just ended.
You know Liberty Prairie decided not to do that or maybe the school decided not to do
that.

(30:29):
But one of the other things that I started that was really wonderful was for the first
two years we had a farmers market in the parking lot.
It was before that school building was built.
And we had music and we had not only our farm but I was able to find some other vendors

(30:51):
and we had people massage therapists and a whole range of things for kids to do and stuff.
And so I would say probably at least half of Prairie Crossing would turn up on Friday
nights.
And so that was another way that we all became pretty close.
I mean in a sense there was this golden age of the barn.

(31:12):
And again it was Prairie Holdings Corporation.
It wasn't the homeowners that were financially making these events possible.
But we had all four children of Aldo Leopold on one event.
We had a Tuskegee Airman.
We had an expert on Yates talking about Yates' poetry.

(31:32):
We had a political scientist from the Lake Forest College talk about Thomas Jefferson's
concept of community, slaves and all.
So those were ongoing and stimulating things.
We had the historian from the Waukegan talk about the history of Waukegan because a lot
of people in Prairie Crossing don't know much about Waukegan.
Yeah I'm one of them.

(31:53):
So you guys have lived here pretty much the entire existence of Prairie Crossing.
What has it brought you?
What would you say is how it's added to your lives?
I could go on forever.
The biggest thing I think that it brought me was my own grandchildren because living

(32:14):
so close to this other family that had kids and sort of—because my son and his wife
lived in Seattle.
So they came back to visit.
It was after the second child was born, Charlie, and he was really my baby because I got to

(32:36):
see him being born.
So I'm going on and on with Matthew and his wife.
Matthew's going, Mom, they're not your grandchildren.
I said, well, they're the closest thing I have.
And so six months later I got the call, guess what, Mom, you're going to have one of your
own.
So I always attribute living in Prairie Crossing to helping me get there because I'm not sure

(33:00):
I would.
Who knows?
But it's just the wonderful friendships that we've made.
We've gone on trips, great trips.
We took a trip to Portugal with a bunch of friends.
We've gone down—
From Prairie Crossing.
From Prairie Crossing friends.

(33:21):
The hard thing for us right now is with people moving out.
So many of our really close friends have.
Well, I didn't say Gary and Ellen left right when I moved in.
I moved in in August, they left in November, I think, right?
Right.
But our cul-de-sac has, I think, probably the longest.
We have one, two, three, three original owners on the small cul-de-sac.

(33:51):
Stuart and Sunny were the first lot sold.
Yeah, I want to talk to them too.
Unfortunately, neighbors are going to hear from a lot of Wild Eyers folks on this podcast
because they're just a wealth of knowledge.
I knew Klaus Weisold just before he passed.
I got to meet him, but not enough.

(34:12):
Part of the reason I'm capturing these is because we're losing you guys.
John Asep died shortly after I moved here too.
So that's part of the reason I'm trying to capture these.
So that was the beginning.
We got that and we've kind of got—
Actually, I didn't let you answer that question.

(34:32):
How's this added to your life?
You gave up the leafy confines of—
Was it St. Charles?
Or was it the Grand Forest?
I was used to commuting from St. Charles, so I was still commuting when I lived here.
I would say the conversations on the train got a lot more interesting when I moved here.
Sometimes talking to George when he didn't fall asleep in the middle of a conversation

(34:56):
because he had a disorder that didn't allow him to sleep very well.
He finally got one of those CPAC machines.
Even when George is asleep, he's an interesting person to sit next to.
I got to know a lot of people just by talking to them on the train.
When I retired, I kind of missed that interaction actually.

(35:19):
That was one reason.
I started this group called the Walkers and Talkers Association, which was based on the
idea that you can have interesting conversations if you walk with someone and also become physically
fit at the same time.
Unfortunately, the organization was short-lived, but there are some people like Linda Sheehan
who said, let's restart this organization, so we'll see.

(35:44):
I don't know if we've walked our dogs together.
We always run into each other walking our dogs and just being neighbors out in our little
cul-de-sac.
We've had amazing conversations.
It's part of the reason I wanted to ask you guys on, because based on those conversations.
How about now, 30-ish years on, almost 30 years on, how is it different now?

(36:10):
I have to say that in some ways it's very different, but in other ways it's very exciting
the way that other, as it's grown, people have started the Fright Fest and the other
activities to keep the community going.
It seems like, like anything, we've had ups and downs.

(36:34):
As we mentioned before, when they were expanding, originally when we moved in, it was going
to be 365 houses.
Then when they were doing the Phase II station village and the talk about doing granny flats

(36:55):
and different things.
It was very difficult, I think, for us, knowing George and Vicki as well as we do, to hear—in
fact, I refuse to have anything to do with the listserv, because people were just coming
on and vilifying them and saying they were your traditional, greedy developers and they

(37:20):
were always out for the money and stuff.
But I'm really encouraged that people are getting more interested in looking at what
the Ten Guiding Principles are and what they're about, and just maintaining the community.
Because there are so many amazing stories.

(37:41):
I think one of the stories that I always tell people about Prairie Crossing involves Linda
Weins.
We had a group of us older, original owners, or not all original, but of a certain age,
decided that we really wanted to go out feet first.

(38:01):
We wanted to be able to stay at Prairie Crossing until the very end.
We formed a committee and we met and we talked, we visited, I mean, did research.
At the end of about a year, we decided that one of the things that we loved about Prairie
Crossing was the age diversity, but that age diversity meant what we wanted to do was not

(38:26):
going to work, because we wouldn't have enough numbers of people the same age who
would need the same kind of things.
We decided, okay, so we've spent all this time, what can we do with the information?
We decided that we would put together this list that is now being re-energized of people

(38:50):
that will either volunteer to drive people or make meals or do all these various different
things.
This is something that I'm excited that people are getting to know again, because it was
wonderful that you had a resource right there.

(39:11):
A week after we had sort of put this list together, Linda Weins, who was part of our
group, contacted us and said she'd like to meet again and talk to us.
We met on a Thursday night and she said, most of you don't know, but I have a heart condition

(39:35):
that makes certain things very difficult for me.
I have been told by my cardiologist that I'm eligible for a heart transplant, but I have
to guarantee that I can have somebody with me 24-7 for the first three months after the
transplant.
Her insurance wasn't going to cover that.

(39:56):
Her brother and sister lived in Canada and they're farmers, they couldn't take that
time.
We sat down that night and we divided up all the different things that she would need if
this happened.
She went to the doctor on Friday.
Saturday night, Bill Pogson, who was the first name on the list to drive her, got a call

(40:18):
at two in the morning, she went and she got a new heart.
That was twelve years ago, ten years ago?
Probably twelve, thirteen years ago, yeah.
Another part of that story was like two years later when she turned seventy, seventy-five,

(40:40):
she had a milestone birthday.
We had a big birthday party for her.
The wife of the recipient, I mean of the donor, and her son's girlfriend came to this party.
It was so moving because we're all giving Linda all these tributes and this woman is

(41:03):
just crying her eyes out to know that her heart has allowed this woman to live another.
His heart.
His heart, I mean.
Well, in a way, I guess.
Right.
That's fantastic.
Then I guess kind of last thoughts.
There's so much I could talk to both of you about.
Wally, you've had a really interesting life, so many different things.

(41:25):
But if you had to look at Prairie Crossing and maybe where it's going in the next, I
don't know, five years, where would you want to see it go?
What do you want to see happen here?
Well, I think we need another barn.
We'll never get a replica of that wonderful building, but we need a community center so
we can have some of these other events on a more regular basis and have informal gatherings.

(41:50):
I think that would add a lot to the amenities.
We get to know, I mean, if I didn't have a dog, I wouldn't know a lot of people, which
is one way to get to know people.
But I think there are other ways that might be even better.
And having a community center, I think, is really important to work for.
How about you, Ellen?

(42:10):
I think just to really bring back the Ten Guiding Principles and bring back the idea
when new people move in, really make sure that they get a copy of the Ten Guiding Principles,
get a copy of the list of people that are available to help with various things.

(42:31):
I mean, we got to know somebody that we never would have met that needed a babysitter because
of that list.
Anything that we can do that will really—
They are getting copies, I'm happy to say, of Sand County Almanac new purchasers.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah.
I never got mine.

(42:51):
Karen has seen through that.
I think I've read it, but that's a nice welcoming gift.
Because there are a lot of people that have no idea who Aldo Leopold was.
And it's really important that people try to wrap their mind around this concept of
the land ethic, that we have this ethical responsibility to not only one another, but

(43:13):
to the land and everything on the land, including spiders.
Including spiders, right?
And bees.
My daughter is not a big fan of the bees, but we can have as many bees as want to be
here because we need them.
I just want to add that I think that it's important what we're doing and what Sunny's
going to be doing, so that there's a lot more transparency, because there are big changes

(43:38):
that are happening with the foundation.
And we were able to use the yellow farmhouse before, and then all these changes, and they're
happening, like so many of things that are happening in the world right now, because
the prices of things are going up.
And so we need to find ways of working together and not automatically thinking, oh, they're

(44:03):
just price gouging us, or they're just trying to make more money.
To really have a sense that we're all in this together, that we're one big tent.
And what can we do to make the foundation, or it's not the foundation, they make Liberty
Prairie self-sustaining.
Because it's important that we have this farm, and we have these things that are part

(44:27):
of Liberty Prairie.
Building on that, I think what Karen Wilkes is doing in terms of trying to get the high
school, the local high school, engaged in agriculture is tremendously exciting.
It's too bad that our incubator farmer project, we couldn't afford to do that.

(44:47):
But if you can reach these high school kids who are already amazingly energized by their
interaction with growing things and the animals, I think we've really achieved something that
would be rare.
OK.
On that, I want to thank you guys for being on the podcast.
I might even have you get back another time to go into some of those things.

(45:08):
Maybe we need an Aldo Leopold episode.
I don't know.
Well, we need a pilgrimage to Aldo Leopold's shack in Wisconsin.
There you go.
Maybe.
I can be mobile.
But thank you guys.
I appreciate being here.
Thank you so much.
It's been wonderful.
I'm터 McDonald.