Category Archives: Volunteering

Last Child in the Meadow

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I think not. To take a page from the famous Richard Louv book, Last Child in the Woods, helping children connect with nature brings immense satisfaction.

Like this week. Bioblitz Belmont. Four days with seventh graders from Ellicott Mills and Thomas Viaduct middle schools. You know, those middle schoolers who aren’t impressed with things adults do or like. WRONG!!!

What a fun time we had.

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Today wasn’t as nice out as yesterday, but we still had a great, albeit wet time, wading through meadows in deep grass looking for insects, plants, animal tracks, trees and grasses. We use iNaturalist to catalogue what we found. Yes, it rained today but who cared.

We also had visits with our local nature center residents like our owl.

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And, Maize, our corn snake. I didn’t get a pic of Maize, but the students loved being able to see and touch him.

It doesn’t get much better than this.

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Uploading and editing their citizen scientist observations. Any resident nature experts are welcome to set up an account, log into the Belmont Bioblitz project and help them identify what they observed.

Tea ‘N Scones

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For Mother’s Day. This Saturday. A trip through the gardens surrounding the Conservancy Farm, with all the gardeners to show off their handiwork.

It may not be a proper cuppa, but still. This event, in its third year, keeps getting bigger.

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The flowers are in full bloom all over the gardens. Master gardeners will be there, helping you with your questions and selling some plants. The community gardeners will be there, talking about what we grow, and how.

Those clubs that maintain all the other lovely gardens surrounding the historic farm will also be there.

Come with mom. With friends. With your friend’s mom.

Here’s all the sites that are open.

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You can preregister online here.

I am baking scones. Two kinds. I am also hosting up at the community gardens. Talking mostly about our food bank plots.

The event starts at 10 am. If you are lucky you can watch the baby killdeer chase after momma and poppa.

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They hatched Tuesday and are now running all over the place.

See you maybe?

Commitment

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For those of us who volunteer. Not just for a few hours. For the long haul. Those of us who dedicate dozens of hours, if not hundreds, in some cases.

Yesterday I saw three different groups at work. One, doing gardening. One, readying a food bank site. And one, helping influence our next generations, at an Extreme Weather conference for 9th graders.

I got to the Conservancy at 8AM. There were about a dozen of us supporting the 3rd annual weather conference. For 9th graders from four local high schools. I greeted a bus from Long Reach and then watched the Office of Emergency Management bring in their Command Center.

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While we were setting up, a half dozen volunteers arrived for the regularly scheduled Wednesday morning drop in gardening session. They were working on the herb gardens outside the historic farm buildings on the site.

We, at the time, all 12 of us volunteers, were getting ready to host the various stations that the students would visit. I got to moderate the Tree Maintenance station, manned by Bartlett Tree Service.

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They were giving a demonstration on how they take care of trees, those damaged by the weather, and those that are healthy, to protect them from high winds and other weather events.

Marty Adams and Victor Nakashima captured the interest of the students, with their stories, their information, and that climbing ability of Victor.

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They were impressed with the bucket truck, as well.

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Lots of fun questions. From fear of heights, to animal attacks, to foul weather gear, to what is an arborist, the students were engaged and interested.

After six hours there, I headed over to the Food Bank garden site. Where three volunteers were still planting spring plants in the newly tilled plots. They had been there since 10 am, when my husband came out to till the plots. The other volunteers, part of a core group that donates dozens of hours to food bank plot maintenance and harvest, were still hard at work.

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Today as I popped out to Sharps for a few things, I found that a food bank volunteer had been there picking out warm weather seedlings. Next week they will be planted. Our first harvest will be the end of May.

One day. Two dozen volunteers. I am so impressed with the commitment of my fellow Howard Countians, who donate their time tirelessly, doing what they love to do.

I’m working on recruiting Marty to be a subject matter expert at our May BioBlitz at Belmont. He would be such an asset with his knowledge of plants, trees and insects.

Have you made a commitment? Do you give some time or effort in areas that interest you?

Weather and Wool

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Tomorrow I am volunteering for the third extreme weather event held for Howard County High School Students. It should prove to be another fantastic event and I hope to get many pictures of the participants learning from all the amazing companies that give their time to expand the knowledge of our students.

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As usual, the Howard County Conservancy field trip managers have put together an exciting array of activities, demonstrations and speakers to present for this day long event.

A few days later, I intend to immerse myself into the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this Saturday and Sunday out at the Howard County Fairgrounds. I have never been around to take in the festival. One of the largest and best sheep and wool festivals in the USA and Canada.

Many farms in the area participate in this event. Like Breezy Willow , Catoctin Creek and Shepherds Manor Creamery.

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Medomak Retreat Center has a booth. I so want to spend a week there at one of their “summer camps” for adults.

Landreth Seeds will be there. I hope to find something rare from them.

And, Greenbridge Pottery. Another local favorite when it comes to looking for unique gifts.

That’s all I recognize in this year’s catalogue but I probably missed a few more local farms and vendors. This festival is huge so if you want to go, be prepared for very large crowds.

I do intend to check out the lamb cooking demonstration, and maybe make the Sunday Brunch. See you there?

The Winter That Won’t Quit

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It may be April 25th, but winter hasn’t given up yet.

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If you look closely, you will see the sleet coming down. It later turned to big fat snowflakes but I was driving when it did that. Not the best time to celebrate Earth Day with outdoor activities, but we made it work up at the Conservancy. I went up to buy some heirlooms from the Master Gardeners and to put my shallots and rainbow chard into my newly tilled garden. I got a couple of my favorite tomatoes.

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Those two teeny plants on the bottom left are Purple Calabash. I bought my first seeds of this heirloom at the shop at Monticello.

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I won my first ribbon at the Howard County Fair with this variety. Haven’t won an heirloom ribbon since. Maybe they will make me lucky again this August.

As for the tomatoes, they are overtaking my kitchen, along with all the other seedlings I have.

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We need it to warm up. To get these plants in the ground. We still have two weeks before we can safely plant tomatoes. They need soil temperatures greater than 50 degrees, and we aren’t there yet.

I will be planting on Mother’s Day weekend, when I am one of the volunteers for our Mother’s Day garden party. Saturday, May 9th at 10 am. Tea, scones, gardens in bloom. Come visit us. There are numerous garden clubs who maintain areas out at Mt. Pleasant. You can talk with garden club members, and learn a few “tricks of the trade” while enjoying freshly baked scones.

Check out the web page for details. In the meantime, cross your fingers that we will get warmer weather.

Blue Bird Visits

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We tilled our community garden today. Time to get more vegetables in the ground. Tilling turns up bugs. That attracts the blue birds.

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First, they check everything out by perching on adjacent poles. This is the male. The female was too flighty to stay still long enough for me to photograph her. I didn’t have my good lens on the camera either, so no close ups.

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I also caught him on the ground grabbing whatever little critters he could.

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He had lots of territory that he could check out. When we left the two of them were flitting around and looking for more.

Tomorrow is the Earth Day celebration at the Howard County Conservancy. I will be up there with many of our gardeners. Finishing the early plantings. Buying some plants from the Master Gardener plant sale. Doing some basic maintenance on our pathways.

If you attend, even if you miss the 8 am bird walk, you are bound to see the blue birds. The hawks. The killdeer. And much more.

To The River

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The annual trek. A favorite hike. Done almost every year at the Mt. Pleasant site of the Howard County Conservancy. This year’s hike is Saturday April 11th. At 10 am, the volunteers will lead groups eastward from the Conservancy parking lot, head up to the fields and then down to the river.

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This picture is from one of the fall hikes. We now do the hikes only in springtime to avoid picking up wavyleaf basket grass seeds on clothing and spreading this annoying invasive plant.

We now take the hike before the trails become covered and impossible to easily navigate. Once we crest the hill behind the buildings and start through the fields, we generally stop to admire the view out towards Woodstock.

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We’ll also stop to check out the second largest yellow poplar in Howard County.

Poplar, Yellow
Liriodendron tulipifera
20 feet 3 inches-circumference
98 feet-height
87 feet-spread, 362.8 points
Howard County Conservancy
Woodstock

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Crossing a few more fields, we then move into the woods and follow the stream down to the Patapsco River. Carefully investigating around some old foundations, and looking at the signs of spring along the river. Maybe a train will pass when we are down there. The railroad that follows the Howard County side of the river here continues down through Ellicott City.

This hike is free. There will be many volunteers to keep groups of similar pace together. If you want to enjoy the change in weather and enjoy being outdoors, come join us.

Details here, on the Conservancy web site.

Garden Plann(t)ing 2015

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Today was the real beginning of the gardening season up at our community garden plots.

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All of our plots are full again this year. Eighteen new gardeners joined us. We had our row cover sale today, and a work session cleaning out and preparing our 900 square foot food bank plots.

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Sharps Farm provides us with row cover to sell to our gardeners. We pay the bulk prices to buy the cover then sell it at a very small markup to pay for our seedlings and seeds for the food bank plots. In other words, we round up the per foot price slightly. Still, 12 food wide row cover for 70 cents a foot is a tremendous bargain. They were doing a brisk business. We also held a “barn” sale on those items the food bank plots have accumulated as donations over the years from past gardeners. Mesh screens. Tomato cages. Trellis pieces. The extra “Surround” we bought last year. All told, it will help us finance our efforts to provide fresh vegetables to the Howard County Food Bank.

Today the food bank plots looked like this.

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Weeding. Moving the hoops and changing where we will plant tomatoes. In July, it should look like this again.

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We now train the tomatoes to grow between the rebar rows, as the cages just aren’t heavy enough to hold them. We plant vegetables that produce well, and that are easily prepared by those with limited resources. We have learned that rare and exotic vegetables don’t lend themselves to simple preparations. We grow huge amounts of carrots, beets, collards, kale, spinach, lettuces, garlic, tomatoes, zucchini and peppers. Last year we donated 1679 pounds of vegetables to the food bank. We were lucky to have an extra plot when someone had to give up theirs. This year, we are back to the original 900 square feet.

It’s good to see the weather changing, and to see all our gardening friends out there today. Here’s to another great harvest year.

There’s An App For That

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iNaturalist.

For the Belmont Bioblitz. Did you know we have a project on the iNaturalist website? Populated by Howard County Public School Middle and Elementary School children. The first blitz. Last fall.

What is a BioblitZ? How do I help with one? How do I record the species observed? How do I document what I see, and identify it? This May two more Howard County 7th grades will descend upon the Belmont site, in Elkridge, and with the help of dozens of volunteers and subject matter experts will spend four days adding observations to the expanding collection to document the species found on the historic grounds.

Belmont is a treasure. In many ways. Historic. Relatively pristine. And, located where the coastal plains meet the Piedmont plateau.

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If you ever wanted to volunteer to do something absolutely positively fun, exciting, rewarding and important, check out the possibility of becoming a volunteer at the Howard County Conservancy. As a naturalist, we learn along with the children, more and more about our local environment.

Today my small training group, armed with our smart phones and the iNaturalist app, went out to train and get a chance to record what we found in four of the zones on the property. We found quite a bit of fungi on the trees in our zone. Like this one.

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Which we uploaded and will monitor to see who may identify it for us.

The school children have such a great time with this event. They become citizen scientists. They learn to observe, to record, to research, and to monitor scientific data taking and sharing. This year the two schools participating are Ellicott Mills and Thomas Viaduct Middle Schools.

More info to learn how to volunteer here. Yes, I am shamelessly recruiting volunteers. I can see on our data sheets that we have an incredibly busy April and May, with dozens of opportunities to lead hikes, lead activities and to support those hike leaders. Training is taking place this month.

Come take a few walks with us. The views are awesome, and so are the people.

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Telling Tales

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World Storytelling Day! The Equinox weekend. Did you ever want to attend something truly awesome? Like stories told by people who are absolutely incredible at it?

Here’s your chance. My favorite non profit, where I volunteer, is holding a storytelling day of its own. With three amazing performers. For families and adults. Two venues. One, for the whole family. One, focused on the little ones. In the Howard County Conservancy Gudelsky Center in Woodstock. Upstairs, for the families and adults. Down in the Nature Center, for those with little ones to be spellbound by the weaving of the stories.

Saturday March 21st (yes, we know the equinox is Friday but Saturday the children aren’t in school). 1-4 Pm. Details here.

Vernyce Dannells, Kristin Pedemonti and Walter Jones, Jr, are have their way of telling tales. Drawing you in. Making you smile, dance, sing along maybe.

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Kristin Pedemonti. As conduit, connector and catalyst Kristin builds bridges between people and cultures, breaking down stereotypes and barriers through Traditional and True stories of acceptance, perseverance, possibility, resilience and understanding. Her stories are collected through worldwide travels as well as interviews with artists, educators, entrepreneurs, innovators and students in the developing and developed world. Kristin’s tales illustrate that everyone has a story, those stories matter and we all have the potential to make an impact on the world around us, no matter what our age, background, gender or geography.

Award winning, cause-focused storyteller, speaker, author, lead facilitator for CGI member Artfully Aware and TED Talks talent search finalist, Kristin Pedemonti performs world-wide at festivals, conferences, TEDx, universities, schools corporate and special events. She’s performed throughout the US including NYC & globally in Belfast, Berlin, Bogota, Gdansk, London, Nairobi, Naples, Paris, Stockholm, Warsaw & beyond..

In 2005 Kristin sold her home & most of her possessions to create/facilitate Literacy Outreach in Belize, where she has conducted programs for 33,000 youth and trained 800 teachers how to use their own cultural stories in schools. Her book, Building Bridges Between; Connecting Culture, Classrooms & Communities is slated for publication. In 2013, Kristin facilitated Artfully Aware’s Community Created Book Project in Kenya, Ghana and Haiti. The resulting books, Ghana Is… and Perseverance & Possibility in Kenya are now available.

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Vernyce Dannells. Vernyce is a multi-cultural performance artist whose “jumble jungle” background informs much of her work. She honed her abilities while producing arts and culture features for National Public Radio affiliates in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Northwest. Now, whether opening Honolulu’s famed Talk Story Festival or scaring folk witless at A Philadelphia’s Teenager’s Inc. Ghost Walk, watching her breathe life and light (and sometimes fright) into a story gives a new twist to Shakespeare’s line, “The tale’s the thing!”.

Author of the chapbook Temporarily Abated, published by Cadenza Press, and the recently released Arcadia Press edition in its historical places series, Overbrook Farms, Vernyce uses her pen, voice, body and choice to weave spirited, indelible enchantments on her audiences.

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Walter Jones, Jr. Multi-instrumentalist Walter Jones Jr. sings, dances and encourages audiences of all ages to sing along, dance along and join the journey as we explore various cultures, historical events and colorful characters from your favorite stories from around the world..

Walter Jones Jr. has been a public school special educator, entertainer and children and families minister for over 30 years. He has a natural rapport with children of all ages. He has been honored as a “Sign of Hope” in the Baltimore community by the mayor and city council; “Teacher of the Year” at Matthew Henson Elementary school; featured artist for the Grand Opening of the Richmond Children’s Museum; and featured artist for the Summer Reading Programs for both Baltimore County and Baltimore City public libraries..

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I took the descriptions from their biography on the Conservancy website. I can’t tell you how cool this event is going to be. You have to experience it yourself. For me, the joy of volunteering at such an incredible place is seeing the commitment of the staff and the various committees to bringing world class events to our community.