Independently Speaking By Brent Olson

Lake Elizabeth

A few days ago, I was walking past Lake Elizabeth, thinking about Milton Friedman.

Like you do…

Lake Elizabeth is kind of a grandiose name for what it really is, which is just a hole in the ground in the corner of our grove. It came about several decades ago.

When I still farmed, there was a row of grain bins on the south edge of our building site. We started hauling grain with semi trucks and I wanted a circular driveway in order to avoid the need to back up to load and unload. Adding a driveway meant we had to get dirt from someplace and our youngest daughter suggested we build a pond for swimming and other recreational activities.

It was a great idea, so instead of just a hole, we had the contractor gently slope one side and after the driveway was built, we had a load of washed sand hauled in to make a beach. Then we named it after the person who had the idea in the first place.

It was big fun for a couple years, until some leeches showed up, probably carried in as eggs on a duck’s foot. That cut down on the swimming use, but it’s still very popular with wildlife, and it’s a lovely place to sit and contemplate the state of the universe.

Where does Milton Friedman come in? He’s the famous economist who in 1970 wrote an editorial for the New York Times wherein he stated that the only purpose of a corporation was to provide value for the shareholders. His point was that corporations should just focus on business, not doing charity work or improving the world.

Now, Milt was a smart guy, but there were a couple of problems with his theory. First, thousands of greedy and unprincipled people latched onto his essay as an excuse to be selfish. As in, it’s a dog-eat-dog world and all you should do is focus on what works for you and the rest of the world is on its own.

Second, and I’ll put this as tactfully as I can, he was wrong. It’s actually not that hard to do two things at once. It just takes a little thought, and the ability to be flexible. Lake Elizabeth is one example, but on the north side of our farm is another.

A few decades ago, I wanted to put a strip of prairie grass and a couple rows of trees on the edge of our slough, the body of water the plat books now call Olson Lake. The local soil conservation district was eager to help with the project, because a lot more trees are being cut down than are being planted. My one requirement made them a little tired.

I thought instead of the generic shrubs and ash trees to stop erosion, the two rows should all consist of plants that animals could eat. So, black walnut, oak, highbush cranberries, plums — just as big a variety as would work for our climate.

I admit it was a little bit of a bother. I pulled the tree planter, a little device that dug a trench and had two people sitting in it to feed the saplings down into the groove. Instead of planting a mile of one variety and then turning around and planting a mile of something else, the tree planters had to keep switching back and forth. And, in all honesty, it looks a little goofy in the spring. Instead of a predictable mile of blossoms, there’s a hodge-podge of different colored blooms at different times. But the wild variety slows the wind and stops erosion just as well as something that looks more organized and I love walking along it in the winter and seeing the vast assortment of animal tracks browsing at the buffet.

I was thinking about Lake Elizabeth while listening to an argument about land for solar farms. People hate seeing good land go for solar farms, and I can understand that. However, if solar panels are raised just a little bit, they make fine shade for pastureland. The people running the solar businesses probably all went to business school, and probably studied Milton Friedman, and maybe don’t realize that with a little less tunnel vision they could do several things at once, and make at least as much money, with fewer people mad at them.

I could give a dozen other examples, but you get my point.

The grain bins are long gone. We have an orchard there now. The second driveway is still in use, although strictly speaking we don’t need it. Lake Elizabeth though? That’s still flourishing. Don’t get tunnel vision, folks. Milt was wrong. It is possible to do more than one thing at a time, to make things better AND make a living.

Copyright 2026 Brent Olson