MEADE COUNTY, KS – On the Edwards family farm in southwest Kansas, there is a piece of ground everyone knows as Lake View. The name is not an exaggeration. When enough rain falls, water pools in the playa until hundreds of acres can be underwater. Phil Edwards estimates that when Lake View really fills, more than 300 acres can disappear beneath the water.
Playas — also called mud holes, buffalo wallows and lagoons — are round, shallow depressions found at the lowest point of a watershed. Their clay-lined basins collect and hold rainfall and runoff, creating temporary wetlands, sometimes called lakes, that naturally cycle between wet and dry periods. Over time, that water either evaporates or seeps into the soil, slowly moving toward the aquifer.
For generations, the Edwards family tried to farm around the playa. They learned to watch the weather. They learned to work around the water. Most importantly, they learned that when Lake View was ready to be farmed, everything else had to wait.
Get there too early, and the heavy, wet clay stuck to the equipment so badly they had to stop and scrape it from the sweeps. Wait too long, and the ground went the opposite direction. “It turned to concrete,” Phil said. “You couldn’t even get the plows in the ground.”
There was a narrow window in between. “When it came time to plow, you had to pull off what you were doing, go over and plow the lake,” he said. “The other ground had to wait.”
For decades, that was simply part of farming Lake View. Now, Phil and his wife, Michele, are pursuing a Wetland Reserve Easement on the property — an opportunity that could permanently protect the playa and allow a place their family spent generations trying to farm to finally do what it was always meant to do. Hold water.
“To me, it feels like it’s always trying to go back to the way it should be,” Phil said. “We were fighting the elements.”
Lake View has been part of Phil’s family story since roughly the early 1900s. The property came through his grandmother and was eventually passed down through his mother. No matter whose name was on the paperwork, though, there was another name that stuck. It was “Granny’s ground.”
Phil’s father, Kenneth Edwards, was the tenant farmer on Lake View for many years. He and the family cultivated the ground knowing its challenges. Water dictated much of what happened there. Some years, crops could be raised. Other years, water won. “We’d have drought and flood the same year,” Phil said.
Rain falling across the surrounding landscape drained toward the playa. A crop growing in the wrong place at the wrong time could drown. Then another year could bring the opposite problem, leaving the soil so dry and hard it became nearly impossible to work.
“It just wasn’t farmable ground, but we had to do it,” Phil said. “To generate some cash or money. Because the taxes are always coming due.”
When the USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) became available, Lake View found a better fit. The family enrolled the property in CRP, allowing them to keep the land while taking difficult acres out of crop production.
Still, the playa never stopped being a playa. And when it filled, Lake View came alive. Geese descended on the property. Wildlife gathered around the water. One year, the Edwards family even photographed a bald eagle there with a snow goose it had caught. Another time, the number of snow geese was almost hard to comprehend. “It looked like it had snowed out there,” Phil said.
Except the white covering the landscape wasn’t snow. It was birds.
For years, CRP worked well for Lake View. But Phil and Michele knew that program enrollment was not the same as permanently deciding what the property would become. Then a postcard arrived. It introduced Phil and Michele to the Wetland Reserve Easement program. Phil called the number, connected with Ducks Unlimited Biologist Abe Lollar and eventually began working with USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Easement Program Manager David Driscoll.
The more they learned, the more WRE seemed to fit Lake View. Through the program, landowners can protect and restore wetlands while retaining ownership of their property. For Phil, the idea of protecting Lake View permanently stood out. “We could lock it up,” he said, “and let it go back the way it should be.”
Still, the couple looked for the catch.
“When’s the other shoe going to drop here?” Phil remembered thinking. They asked questions about the easement, what permanent protection would mean and what responsibilities would remain with them as landowners. Phil said Driscoll was forthcoming throughout the process.
Instead of finding a reason not to pursue WRE, the couple became more convinced it fit the property. That was especially true as they learned more about the role playas can play in groundwater recharge.
“In Southwest Kansas, we value the water very much,” Phil said. “I hate to see the Ogallala get sucked down, but we can help in recharging it. It’s just a plus all the way around.”
There was an economic reality, too. Even difficult ground has to generate enough income to justify keeping it. Without CRP or another option, Phil said the family could eventually face putting those acres back into production.
“You’ve got to have the land generate some revenue, or else you’re going to lose it,” he said.
WRE offered another path while allowing the Edwardses to retain ownership and continue enjoying the property and its wildlife.
The couple is still going through the easement process, with the boundary survey among the next steps at the time of their interview. Michele acknowledges it takes time, but said talking with others who have been through the process and working with people enthusiastic about the project has helped.
“It is a lengthy process,” she said. “But there’s just so much enthusiasm, and it’s pretty exciting to be a part of it.”
For other landowners struggling with wet, difficult-to-farm acres, Phil recommends at least exploring the opportunity. “I understand what people have to do. You have to farm it,” he said. “But this looks like a great opportunity to take it out of production and put it into something that is good for our future.”
More than a century after Lake View became part of the Edwards family story, Phil and Michele are not walking away from the land. They are choosing a different way to care for it.
Generations before them planted wheat there. Phil’s grandmother drove out to check the crop. His father chased the narrow window between mud and concrete. But through all those years, the water kept returning. It flooded crops, drew geese by the thousands and even brought a bald eagle to the family farm. Every time enough rain fell, Lake View lived up to its name.
Now, instead of fighting the water, Phil and Michele are making room for it.
“Knowing that it will be kept this way forever,” Phil said, “I appreciate that.”
After generations of trying to farm around the water, the Edwards family is ready to let Lake View be Lake View.
Learn more about Phil’s story and hear him talk about fighting water.
This story previously appeared on Playas Work For Kansas.
Copyright 2026 High Plains Public Radio.
