OakTober fest returns trees to Barrington Hills prarie

Teens, families and nature lovers spread across a Barrington Hills field Sunday to plant young oak trees during the second annual OakTober Family Fest at the Far Field Nature Preserve.

The Barrington Area Conservation Trust-sponsored event featured tree planting, seed collecting, environmental education activities and music.

"Our oak ecosystems are slowly but surely disappearing. So this is a cool opportunity for us to take this 12-acre parcel that was once a soybean field and turn it back into, what we know several hundred years ago, was once an oak savanna," said Lisa Woolford, executive director of the conservation trust.

The organization started adding oak trees to the prairie during last year's inaugural fest. This year, through gifts from donors and the Barrington Breakfast Rotary Club, more than 50 trees were planted.

With folk music by the band Beamish playing in the background, more than 100 adults, children and seniors dug holes and planted young saplings, while others collected seeds from plants called rattlesnake master, foxglove beardtongue and black-eyed Susans.

"I just really enjoy helping out and I enjoy planting oak trees," said 14-year-old Greta Franke, a member of Teens 4 Green, a junior organization of the trust. "I feel like we are really restoring the natural environment and returning it back to an oak savanna, which is native to the area."