Every summer, a pond at Rusted Plowshare farm used to fill with algae blooms. Orderly rows of corn and soybeans stretched out across the central Missouri landscape, but native grasses and wildflowers were few and far between. Josh Payne, who worked on the farm with his grandfather until he took over the running of it in 2020, says there hadn’t been a quail sighting in 40 years. But that was before the chestnut trees. In 2017 Payne planted 20 acres of chestnut saplings, growing commodity crops in wide rows between the trees. A few years later, the farm stopped growing corn and soy entirely, instead switching to raising sheep around what has become 200 acres of chestnut trees today. The pond now stays clear. “There’s just a lot more diverse life here,” says Payne. “A lot of the things that don’t really have a place in the corn and soy scenario are coming back.” The post Midwest Farms Are Going Nuts appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.