Cannon River Valley’s rare wildflower

Could increased taxes

threaten endangered species?

Do taxes upset you? One property owner asked me to look into their predicament. So I interviewed a variety of businessmen and residents as to their perspectives. The county assessor, Peggy Trebil, was also very accomodating in giving me information.
Then, following an early morning meeting in town, I came back to our farm and changed into old worn out slacks and sweater... a benefit of working at home. (And although sloppy, they were clean. My mother, although dead many years, would want you to know that!)

It was during a phone call that I heard a knock on the front door. Holding on to our portable phone I ran down and opened it up to a surprise visit from Peggy - the assessor. I welcomed her into the house and told her to find a chair in the kitchen while I finished my interview.

Then we sat and discussed the story I was writing about taxes. Following this she explained that she was reevaluating our farm. She had been out here a couple of years ago, she recalled.

She wanted to look at every room in our house. This was a bit humiliating! The kitchen floor had burn marks where I had spilled a burning cookie sheet. And the wall oven was broken and needed replacement. I apologized that we couldn’t use the bathroom because the toilet wasn’t working right. The carpet was buckled from wear and a bag of garbage was sitting by the front door waiting to be taken outside. The laundry room was serving as a catch-all for various bargain cans of juice and vegetables, etc. Rooms were dark because the window shades had been pulled down to conserve heat.

Then we went outside where she checked the age of the roof, etc. We looked in the garage/shed and she noticed the cement floor. I explained that the tractor and loader were on plain dirt at the other end.
As we looked toward the corrals we talked about our stallion. She understood that you don’t keep a stallion for a “pet”. I had asked a previous assessor if we should be classified as a tree farm because we were logging the woodland, but he said our stallion kept us agricultural. Peggy said the state was not classifying horses as livestock. So apparently we would be changed to a residential classification. I recalled that our farm had been part of a class action suit back in the ’70’s to fight that category. And we had won then.

Although I was embarrassed at how poorly both the house and I appeared, how much do you want to bet that our tax evaluation would be higher anyway?
You’re right. The letter arrived a day or so later. We would now be classified as 40 acres of residential.
Someone “up there”, (the legislature, not God!), decided that 40 acres needs to have 10 acres tilled or used for a saleable crop and it should have sufficient or substantial income. When we bought the farm almost 40 years ago, part of it was tilled. And we did that too, until we raised horses and decided to use it for pasture.

So we could raise crops again. But the result would be that we would then have to put our horses into the wooded areas and the river bottomland. And that is the area where the state discovered the federally endangered species, the Dwarf Trout Lily, growing. This is Minnesota’s only endemic plant, meaning it only grows in a few miles of the Cannon River Valley and no where else in the whole world. If someone digs up one of these rare endangered species they can be fined $25,000. But the owners of such property can destroy them by plowing or letting their livestock trample them.

Seems like a higher purpose would be served by simply looking at the best use of the land and just letting country be country.

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