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The
Fritillary
& Bluestem.
An
Occasional Newsletter of Program
Activities
Summer is our field season (and our forest season). Most
days are spent doing fieldwork, be that surveying the plants and animals of
floodplain forests, creating generalized ecological maps of farmland, or
leading nature walks.
This summer a central project has been our study of
floodplain forests in the County. These are the forests that are located along
our creeks, where spring and winter floods periodically wash the ground.
Typical trees of these forests include Cottonwood, Sycamore, Silver Maple and
Green Ash. Spice Bush, Stinging Nettle, Ostrich Fern and Jewelweed are often found
below the canopy. These are rich sites and in May they are usually bedecked
with spring ephemerals such as Bloodroot, Dutchman’s Britches, Trout Lily, and
Spring Beauty. These forests often share
the bottomlands with farm fields, and forest only survives where regular
flooding discouraged cultivation and/or where use as a woodlot made standing
timber valuable. Despite their biological diversity, these forests are often
dismissed as muddy tangles by the public. The goal of our work this year is to
document what local plants and animals live in the most pristine floodplain
forests that we can find, and to then use that knowledge to build greater
appreciation for these sites.
Happily, we have been helped in this task by a great group
of interns: Tim Biello, Erin Philp, Tori Shelley and Matt Tymchak. Claudia and
Tim have focused on describing vegetation, Tori and Conrad have been gathering
mammal data, Erin has focused on birds (literally), and Matt has been our
resident hydrogeomorphologist, helping us to assess the topography of these
dynamic floodplains. We’ve had great help from Otis Denner and Leo
Proechel-Bensman, two home schoolers and, more recently, from Natalie
Langham, a visitor from Texas. John Piwowarski, an environmental
educator from Long Island, has voluntarily snooped for salamanders (and Slimy
Sculpin!) The whole team has been helping us look at insects on the same sites.
Susan
Jenks, a professor at Russell Sage College, has been joining us to
study crayfish, and Bob Schmidt, of Hudsonia and Simon’s Rock, has helped us
investigate the fish.
We’ve also been working to develop the Know Your Place Project. The goal of this work is to help residents
of the County connect with their surroundings. True, long-term conservation
will only occur when people know and love their landscape. Through educational
packets, maps, workshops, and other materials, the Know Your Place Project (or KYPP) is intended to help students and
non-students explore those aspects of the landscape that most interest them. Tim
Biello ran a series of Focal Groups this summer to help us garner input on the
design and subject matter that would be most effective. Tim is planning to
complete his Masters thesis based on his work, and we’re beginning to mull over
the results.
We’ve been conducting additional fieldwork as part of
consulting work for the Glynwood Center’s
Conservation Landowners Program. Our
task is the ecological description of five large properties whose owners are
considering to intensify the agricultural utilization of their land in an
ecologically sensitive manner. Steffen Schneider is preparing the
agricultural recommendations for those properties. Much former farmland is
currently under agricultural easement in the Hudson Valley, and the Glynwood
Center’s program is intended to encourage non-farm landowners to bring some of
that land into active production. We are currently also working on consulting
projects with the Columbia Land
Conservancy (at the Schor Conservation Area), and informally with Oakwood Farm, the farm at St. Joseph’s, and the Hillsdale Town Park.
Here at Hawthorne
Valley Farm, we provide ecological baseline information for the Stickles Road Dairy Farm and are
facilitating the Water Plan Group,
which is looking into the water supply, water quality, and waste water
situation here in the Valley. We are also participating in a group that helps Rachel
Schneider envision and realize a Learning
Center at Hawthorne Valley Farm including its first initiative, The Farm Beginnings Program.
Given all these commitments, the work with the Farmer’s Research Circle, for which we
have so far not been able to obtain significant funding, continues at a somewhat
slower pace this summer. However, Juliana Hunt, a HVS alumnus who is
now a graduate student in the Conservation Biology and Policy Program at SUNY
Albany is developing her master’s thesis
project with us related to soil health on Columbia County Farms. And Laurie
Drinkwater, a professor in horticulture from Cornell University, came
to the county to involve interested farmers in a research project exploring the
levels of biological nitrogen fixation occurring in fields with different
levels of manuring and different types of cover crops.
In the meantime, Martin Holdrege has continued to
collect information on the value of native bees as crop pollinators. Martin
presented a poster at the Northeast
Natural History Conference in Albany about his research into Native Bees as
Pollinators on Columbia County Farms. His poster was selected as one of the ten
best student posters at the conference. Martin is going into his senior year at
Hawthorne Valley School, and you may look forward to his senior project presentation about the native bees on our farms. His
classmate Eileen Ohoff is planning to join us and do her senior project
on aquatic insects as bioindicators of water quality.
The Spring Flower
Walks offered this year were in such demand, that we actually had to limit
the number of participants in order to keep the experience enjoyable for all
and our trampling impact on the flowers to a minimum. The ongoing monthly Ecology Walks on Hawthorne Valley Farm
are appreciated by a very diverse audience as an opportunity to better get to
know the farm and its wild inhabitants.
Finally, you can get a sneak preview of our latest
publication by checking out www.hawthornevalleyfarm.org/fep/peopleandnature.html. This report, entitled In Our Own Image: People &
Nature in Columbia County, NY is meant as an introduction to some of
the ecology and land use history of our county.
It is still very much a draft and is currently being proof-read. We have
posted this half-baked version in order to garner feedback that can help
improve the final version. Comments are welcome.
Please join us for one of the upcoming Hawthorne Valley Farm Ecology Walks (co-sponsored by the Columbia
Land Conservancy):
- Saturday,
September 6th, 2pm: “The Stars of Fall: Asters and Goldenrods”
- Saturday,
October 4th, 2pm:
“Color of the Wood: Forest Trees”
All Hawthorne Valley Farm Ecology Walks will start in front
of the Farmstore.
Please also visit our Farmscape
Ecology Program Info Table in front of the Farmstore on the first Saturday
of the each month from June – October (same days as the Farm Ecology Walks)
from 10am – 2pm. We will display seasonal hands-on natural history materials,
answer your natural history questions, and update you on our research and other
activities. Look for our displays at the Columbia
County Fair, the Hawthorne Valley
Harvest Festival, and other celebrations of agriculture in the county this
fall.
So far, we have received $ 9,490 in donations, which leaves
us $ 5,510 short of meeting the challenge put to us by a couple of anonymous
donors, who generously offered to match this year’s donations 1:1 up to $
15,000. Our fiscal year ends August 30! So, if you had planned on donating to
the Farmscape Ecology Program any time soon, now is a great time! You may send
your tax-deductable contribution to
the Farmscape Ecology Program, Hawthorne Valley Farm, 327 Rte. 21C, Ghent NY
12075 or donate
on-line at www.hawthornevalleyfarm.org
(make sure to designate the Farmscape Ecology Program as the recipient).
We gratefully
acknowledge recent donations by Rodney & Suzanne Dow, Josh Dowd, Eric
Heyer & Diana Steele, Bob Laurie, Martin & Janene Ping, Natti Rao, Sheila
Rorke, Tessa Schmidt, Tina & Livingston Van De Water, Myrian Valle, and an
anonymous donor. Grant support to the Farmscape Ecology Program during this
summer comes from the Biodiversity Research Institute, David Rockefeller Fund,
Hudson River Estuary Program, and NYS-Dept. of Ag & Markets.
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