Update: February 15, 2026 1-3pm: We had beautiful weather and an excellent turnout for our 3rd Annual Doughnut Hole Roasting Event. Please enjoy these photos and we hope you to join us in years to come.

This year the Valley Grove Preservation Society will feature “The Art of Valley Grove.” You are invited to bring your favorite painting, photo, sketch, or pastel of Valley Grove for the two-hour pop-up exhibit in the Stone Church. Coffee and treats, of course, will be served.

Congratulations to Steve and Barb Strack, neighbors to Valley Grove, who were the winners of the lottery draw. Tax-deductible donations may be sent to Valley Grove Preservation Society, PO Box 75, Nerstrand MN 55053, or online.

Update: Our Steeple Restoration project has been paid in full! The left over money that was contributed will go to painting one side of the wooden church this Spring. Thank you…

On the prairie surrounding Valley Grove, there are the beginnings of seven peaceful and scenic memorial groves. The initial cost of a tree, including mulching and watering until the tree is established is $500.00. We will gladly accept larger donations and put them to good use. Remember that any donation is tax deductible.

Seventeen acres of Valley Grove prairie were put to the torch in April, leaving a blackened landscape as counterpoint to the waving beauty of the adjoining dry thatch of the previous year’s growth. The burn area, a month later, is now a lush field of green with golden alexander already blooming in great profusion.

The shrew was so tiny that the spike that had been used to impale it had nearly passed through its entire body, pushing a bulge of hide out on the opposite side. It was either a pigmy shrew or a masked shrew, the only shrews this small occurring in this area. These are among the smallest mammals on the planet, seldom weighing more than six or seven grams (depending on when they last had dinner), with head and body length less than two and a half inches. For a weight comparison, a nickel weighs five grams, brand new.

There are two species of meadowlarks in Minnesota, the eastern, Sturnella magna and the western, Sturnella neglecta. They are both in the blackbird family of Icteridae, and their ranges overlap in a north/south zone in the western third of the state.

In September of 2018 we lost a 250+ year old oak bur. The base of the trunk looked as though it had exploded, its stump shattered into vertical spikes and shards. As it fell, the strong limbs slipped between the headstones, caught the great weight of tree, and eased it into an almost decorous repose doing surprisingly minimal damage on its way down.

Note:  The following piece was written prior to the tornado that swept the grounds on September 20, 2018. The grand old oak was taken in that storm and no longer stands. Please enjoy the photos and text below as an earlier piece of our story.

A friend planted a small prairie patch along the boulevard strip between his sidewalk and street. It is a diminutive prairie, but with a richness of forbs and grasses that creates a discontinuity in the block-long stretch of Kentucky-bluegrass boulevard; a riotous non-sequitur of color and form offending the collective aesthetic of block after block of manicured turf. The neighbors, for the most part, were tolerant and polite, but at least one couldn’t resist a head-shaking disapproval and the derisive query, “Attracted any buffalo yet?”

I’m standing on a westerly slope of Valley Grove Prairie, looking at a patch of weedy plants, roughly thirty feet in diameter, which appears as a discontinuity in the surrounding prairie that spreads away in all directions. it was a spot I knew was here, and it only took me a few minutes of searching to locate it.