Download a photo of kids at Sylvan Lake.

GRANITE FALLS, Minn. —  Stocking keeper-size walleyes in kids’ ponds, Ginger Homme’s award-winning efforts to conserve soil, water quality and energy, and robotic mowers used to control pasture weeds will be featured in the next Prairie Sportsman. “Walleyes for Kids and Ginger’s Legacy” will air on Pioneer PBS on Sunday, March 21 at 7:30 p.m. For air times and dates on all Minnesota PBS stations, go to prairiesportsman.org.

Sylvan Lake in Canby and other small kids ponds in western Minnesota are being stocked with keeper-size walleyes by the DNR. Ortonville Area Fisheries staff manage 45 rearing ponds that they stock with fingerlings in the spring and net in the fall to stock area lakes. However some walleyes escape the nets and quickly grow large in the managed ponds. DNR staff decided to stock these in small ponds near towns to give youth exciting fishing opportunities and hook them on angling for life. The Prairie Sportsman crew is out with DNR staff at night in an electrofishing boat used to capture larger walleyes, then at Sylvan Lake where youth help bring nets full of walleyes into the pond, and they talk with the DNR’s Kyle Anderson and Canby anglers Cayden Anderson and Zack Hansen.  

The next segment showcases Ginger Homme’s soil, water quality and energy conservation practices that earned her the  “Conservationist of the Year” award from the Chippewa County Soil and Water Conservation District in 2019. Ginger and her husband Paul had been running a cattle operation on blufflands near Granite Falls when Paul died unexpectedly in 2004. Because she didn’t want to manage the large house and long driveway, she moved to property the couple had recently purchased near town and built an energy-saving house. She installed geothermal, solar and wind energy systems, added pollinator plots and built a wetland on her farm site.

The final segment features a robotic mower being tested in cow pastures at the University of Minnesota Morris. Cows graze grass but leave weeds like thistle and burdock that need to be removed every few years. The remote control autonomous mower is easier to operate than a tractor mower in rough and rocky fields full of gopher mounds.  The West Central Research and Outreach Center, U of M computer programmers and the Toro Company collaborated on the autonomous mower’s design. 

About Prairie Sportsman

Prairie Sportsman celebrates our love of the outdoors to hunt, fish and recreate, provided by our vast resources of lakes, rivers, trails and grasslands, and to promote environmental stewardship. 

Prairie Sportsman’s team includes Cindy Dorn, producer/writer; Bret Amundson, host/editor; and Dylan Curfman, editor/videographer. The 2021 season is made possible by funding from SafeBasements of Minnesota, Live Wide Open, Western Minnesota Prairie Waters and members of Pioneer PBS.

About Pioneer PBS

Established in 1966, Pioneer PBS is an award-winning, viewer-supported television station dedicated to sharing local stories of the region with the world.  For more information visit www.pioneer.org.