Photo Credit: A poster for the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council’s May 3rd Coon Creek Confluence.
Coon Creek Confluence to celebrate water, conservation, and community
by Sydney Widell
Coon Creek Community Watershed Council
TIMBER COULEE, Wis.– Our third annual Coon Creek Confluence watershed celebration is approaching quickly! Join us 11-5:00 Saturday May 3rd at Timber Coulee’s Westby Rod and Gun Club for a day full of live music, family fun, and watershed conservation.
Highlights of the day include a 1:00 performance from Mollie B and her full band with Ted Lange; a creekside hog roast featuring the Chaseburg-based Simply Smoked family beginning at 12:00; a fishing pole giveaway sponsored by Coulee Region Trout Unlimited and WKTY while supplies last; a kids’ polka party with Mollie B at 12:30; and a Watershed Fair featuring farmers, makers, and other conservation partners.
We hope the festival will bring residents together from within and beyond the Driftless Area’s Coon Creek Watershed.
“We have a lot to celebrate this year, and we also have a lot to learn,” said our president, Nancy Wedwick. “That’s the whole idea behind the Confluence–to bring together a wide range of partners to share ideas, make connections, and advance the health of our soils, streams, economy, and communities. And everyone who lives in or cares about the Coon Creek Watershed is a partner in this work.”
Some of the partners who will be present at the Confluence include a range of local farmers and other land use decision makers. They will be on site to answer questions and have candid conversations about their conservation practices. Other watershed partners include representatives from Monroe, La Crosse, and Vernon Counties’ conservation departments; partners from the local Natural Resources Conservation Service office; regional cropping and organics educators with UW Extension; and grazing specialists from groups like Golden Sands RC&D, and UW-Madison’s Grassland 2.0; and more.
In addition to exploring land management resources, guests will also have a chance to meet area artists and authors whose work is inspired by Driftless landscapes and stories, and to get to know watershed-based vendors like American Hazelnut Company, Embark Maple, Fizzeology Foods, Gist, Great American Pancake Company, and Good Thunder Elderberry Collective.
This year’s Confluence takes place on the banks of Timber Coulee Creek, in the headwaters of the Coon Creek Watershed, and only a few minutes’ drive from several renowned public fishing areas. The Coon Creek Watershed is also famously the site of the 1930s Coon Creek Watershed Demonstration Project—the first watershed conservation project in the nation.
In the 1930s, Coon Creek residents facing overwhelming and intertwined soil erosion and flooding crises collaborated with a broad coalition of partners to develop land use practices that remain critical to reducing soil erosion and flooding in the Coon Creek Watershed and in watersheds across the nation.
This coordinated, basin-scale conservation project eventually reversed catastrophic cycles of flooding and erosion in the Coon Creek Watershed set in motion by settler agriculture. At a moment when flooding is once again intensifying, the CCCWC is looking to and learning from the watershed’s history of community collaboration to guide its path forward
“We hope our festival calls back the experimental and collaborative spirit that made the Coon Creek project a national model for land and water conservation,” Nancy said. “We know that the Coon Creek community has always been at the heart of conservation work, and the CCCWC is proud to carry that tradition forward through events like the Coon Creek Confluence.”
Entry to the Coon Creek Confluence is free. Tickets to see Mollie B’s 1:00 performance are $25 for adults, and may be purchased at the door or in advance at https://cooncreekwatershed.ludus.com/200478291.
Guests are encouraged to bring lawn chairs, shoes they are comfortable wearing on grass, extra layers, and their own picnicware to help us reduce waste. They are also welcome to bring a pickled entry to submit to our second annual pickle-off. Anything goes, so long as it is plant-based and passes our food safety test.
A full schedule and an event program are available on our website: cooncreekwatershed.org/coon-creek-confluence.