"Holy Wisdom Monastery Restoring Rare Landscape With Horse-Powered Help"

"TOWN OF WESTPORT — Rosebud and Duchess seemed anxious to get to work as they heard trees being felled on a recent misty November morning.

The pair of harnessed American Suffolk horses would soon be hauling timber out of a wooded area near Lake Mendota. The work, which recalled an earlier era when land was cleared by muscle alone, also seeks to turn the clock back on this parcel of land to oak savanna, now one of the rarest ecological environments in America.

Holy Wisdom Monastery is undergoing a years-long project to convert some 30 acres of its property to oak savanna, characterized by a sparse placement of oak trees with long grasses and flowering plants covering the ground in between."

Logan Wroge reports for the Wisconsin State Journal November 26, 2017.