Pond Gap Land Scouts

Cutting greens at Pond Gap Elementary School, Knoxville, TN

This is the second year of Land Scouts at Pond Gap Elementary School in Knoxville, TN. I've had the pleasure of working first with Matt Callo and now with Elias Attea, both AmeriCorps VISTA Volunteers through Pellissippi State Community College's Service Learning program. Both have given good feedback on how the Scouts work and can be improved to serve Pond Gap's after school program. Below are badges now en route to Attea's troop.

From back to front: Decomposition, Digestion,
Collection, Observation, and Propagation

If you're interested in hosting a troop or using the Land Scouts with an existing group I want to help that happen. In addition to the newly launched Land Scout Guide Book, there's a curricular outline of all ten core values and how to teach them with young people. You can download a free copy of the Guide Book here. It explains how to get started hosting a troop and earning the Observation badge. The rest of the badges and activities are spelled out in the aforementioned outline. It's still a rough draft and not yet published, please email me if you'd like a copy of it.

the Guide Book!

Behold: The Land Scout Guide Book is online and free to download. Read all about it, share with friends and family, and start yourselves a troop!

In the Works

I've been working on a Land Scout Guide Book this summer. It includes general information about the scouts, instructions for earning the Observation badge, and a guideline for starting your own troop. And photos and drawings! Yee-haw. Shown here: a printed draft.

If you'd like to collaborate on the Land Scouts by hosting your own troop and/or giving thoughtful feedback on this book, be in touch and I'll send you a copy.

Hey now!

Last week I got an email from a woman at a Unitarian Church in Knoxville, TN. Seems someone had been helping themselves to the berries and vegetables from the church gardens planted "specifically...to provide food for the local WIC program and their food training program." When confronted about their harvesting the "foragers" (and picking from someone else's garden hardly qualifies as foraging) made reference to the Land Scouts' Knoxville Map.

Now listen here folks: foraging isn't just a fancy word for stealing. And if you're taking from somebody's garden without their permission, that's not foraging. That's stealing. So please don't do that. Or, if you insist in doing that, don't call yourself a Land Scout. That's not how we do.

Berries often grow wild and are easy to harvest without destroying the plant or taking all of them. 

Lake Flies!

Thanks to meteorologist @jefflast for pointing us to the phenomenon of lake flies hatching over Lake Winnebago. And thank you to the fine folks at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for this 2009 animation showing us instead of telling us: there are a lot of these flies.
"Millions...potentially trillions." You can read more about the hatch on the noaa.gov site here. 

At long last it is (somewhat consistently) warmer and over half the trees are leafing out. I look forward to discovering new flora and fauna as we head into our first full Wisconsin summer.

Begin Within Your Bin

We moved to Wisconsin with a worm bin. I naively left it outside all winter -- Polar Vortex and all-- and resigned myself to the death of the worms. I found two survivors under the bin this spring and rejoiced to see them. Not great worm stewardship. Some more dedicated vermicomposters go to great lengths to warm their worms through the winter.

I added dryer lint to the bin at the beginning of winter. It did not decompose (perhaps because of the declining worm population) and instead formed blanket-like mats throughout the bin. Gross, but perhaps insulating? At any rate, I will not add it again.

When we traveled south to Tennessee recently (and to beautiful, riotously technicolor spring), I was able to stock up on worms from my mother's bin. And once again we brought red wrigglers to Wisconsin. They are now burrowing, eating, and pooping through our kitchen waste and "enjoying" the balmy 60-degree F weather of the bin (roughly 20 degrees warmer than the air above).

Next winter I will ask our landlord about storing the bin in the basement. Or I will build a straw bale fort around it. Or sneak them into the basement floor of the building where I work. For now I am glad to have the bin restarted and eager to see the population grow. Not only do the worms greatly accelerate the decomposition process, allowing us to quickly compost our kitchen scraps in a relatively small space, but rooting through the bin is a nice stand-in for gardening while the soil warms up enough for plants. It satisfies my green heart and gets me outside thinking about something other than myself and work. The presence and activity of the worms is its own odd, slimy promise of spring. Thanks worms.

Thaw

When we tell people that this was our first midwestern winter they assure us, "They're not usually this cold/bad/long." It was a long winter.

Until very recently (today, yesterday) it continued to feel like winter despite the passing of the spring equinox. There was evidence of the coming warmth: most of the snow was melting, the maple tree out back had tight clusters of buds on its branches, there were more birds singing, and most of the ice fishing shacks disappeared from the Fox River.

Now the maple tree has larger buds, the river is thawed, there are more birds calling, and this evening I saw in our neighbor's yard some irises are poking out sharply under leave litter. The ground is soft with melting snow. It is an odd expectant time. The longer days help lighten our hearts. As do the rising temperatures.

The lingering piles of plowed snow. I kick at them to break up the ice and help them melt faster.