You can probably see that there’s lettuce in the photo above. And perhaps you recognize the kohlrabi on the left, too. In fact, there are 76 pounds of lettuce, spinach, kohlrabi and radishes there – all of it harvested at the Urban Farm at Lafayette and immediately donated (I mean, within minutes of harvesting) to the Interfaith Food Pantry.

Last week, the Dodge staff put on its gardening gloves and headed over to Grow it Green Morristown’s headquarters at the Urban Farm at Lafayette for a day of getting our hands dirty in service to our grantee and to our community of Morristown.

Founded by Samantha Rothman, Carolle Huber and Myra Bowie McCready, and directed by Farmer Tammy Toad Ryan,  Grow it Green Morristown is a creative, resourceful and inspiring organization which uses its gardening projects to promote the practices of sustainable communities: a commitment to fresh, local food; access to clean air and water; bike-friendly streets and safe, walkable neighborhoods.

The Urban Farm at Lafayette is a 1/3 acre of land behind the Lafayette Learning Center, which also houses the Morris School District (MSD) Board of Education offices. The Farm is a creative partnership with the school district: Grow it Green leases the land from them at an affordable rate; in exchange, Grow it Green teaches the joys of gardening and the principles of sustainability to MSD students while collaborating with the district on new curriculum.

As this new partnership develops, Grow it Green and MSD are discovering benefits they hadn’t anticipated. Field trips with buses are expensive when they leave the district, for example, but are inexpensive when visiting local places. Since May, 20 classes already have visited the farm 4 times each (yes! 4 times each!) to dig deep into the gardening and growing experience, helping to plant pumpkins, eggplant, brussel sprouts, kale, lettuce, radishes and many other vegetables and flowers – 18 beds in all so far. Furthermore, Grow it Green provides a permanent garden and learning space for MSD students, solving the district’s problem of trying to maintain separate gardens at the individual MSD schools.

Most importantly, in a community where the majority of the school children receive free or reduced lunch and where there is significant food insecurity, the Farm is able to donate fresh produce to the school district to help feed its students (in addition to donating it to the community at large).

Grow it Green Founders Samantha Rothman (right) Myra Bowie McCready (left)

Environmental consultant and Grow it Green Founder Samantha Rothman gave us a full tour of the garden, while sharing stories of generosity and community collaboration to get the land cleared and farm planted and maintained. Marty’s Reliable Cycles donated cardboard boxes, which were laid down on the paths between the garden beds as an eco-friendly way to suppress weeds before being covered by free mulch from the city of Morristown. Conservation Resources Inc. (another Dodge grantee) provided a grant for fencing, Lowe’s has provided lumber at cost, and Morris Brick & Stone donated brick pavers. The Sheriff’s Labor Assistance Program, Boy Scouts, school children, parents, and community members have volunteered hundreds of hours of their time. (See their full list of local businesses who have helped them).

As Samantha spoke, we were struck time and again by the enthusiastic response they’ve received from the community in such a short amount of time – this is only their first growing season at the Urban Farm. We were also impressed with the resourcefulness with which Grow it Green gets donations and maximizes its limited resources. This is clearly a labor of love for so many people.

After harvesting fresh produce to donate to Interfaith Food Pantry, which was our first order of the day, we got to work on our main task: building part of an herb garden designed by landscape architect (and Founding member) Carolle Huber.

The area around the path will be filled in with different beds of herbs; the design also includes an arbor to go over this part of the garden. We can’t wait to see what it looks like when Carolle’s vision comes to life.

In addition to her herb garden design, Carolle asked us to try our hand at building bamboo trellises. Imagine how beautiful this will be in the garden when covered with blooms:

While we were working, Carolle’s mother and sister had come to help finish painting the barn; Carolle’s sister then painted this cheerful rooster on the barn door and is working with her daughter to paint sunflowers on the side of the barn (which you can see in the photo above).

The Urban Farm is not just for school children; it’s a community space, and as we worked, we could see that the public has embraced it as such. Community members wandered in and out of the garden, some parents brought their children, and here was a class from the Lafayette Learning Center getting a lesson from Farmer Tammy (far left, in the purple shirt):

And here we are (most of us), at the end of a productive day at the Urban Farm:

For more information about Grow it Green Morristown, visit their website and watch a short movie about their first project, the community garden at Early Street. You can also read their blog, and if you feel inspired, donate your time or other resources to them. You can also see a terrific photo gallery of the farm in the Daily Record.

Special thanks to Sam, Carolle, Myra and Tammy for hosting the Dodge staff last week. We are inspired by your dedication to Morristown.

Last week I was part of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food System Funders Conference (note, I didn’t say I that I attended – there is an urgency to this issue that calls for much more than attendance).  What struck me most was the convergence of thought leaders, practitioners and organizers from traditionally separate sectors. These presenters were not simply at the same conference, they were co-leading sessions, learning from each other, and identifying the knowledge gaps. Funders were invited to taste a fusion of community food, finance and design (as in planners, builders, and engineers), and to cultivate the models and policies to support this mashing of flavors at a larger scale. There was also a sense about this being the moment in time for the philanthropic sector to step-up and build local and regional food economies and communities (remember, we just fused these). The question is whether the sector will choose to do so (here’s a great article on how local and national philanthropy is gearing up to “effect big change” in this arena).

The conference learning went from head to field to stomach. While in the field, we met neighborhood food producers, local food pioneers, sustainable ag farmers, community development leaders, emergency food providers, policy leaders, and healthy food entrepreneurs.  We also saw that food production is happening on private walls and roofs, institutional lands, faith based lands, municipal lands, and if land is not granted, then by way of guerrilla gardening. Food is being sold, shared and gleaned, and there are linkages to food cupboards, neighbors and markets (sometimes a hybrid of all three).

Since the title of the conference was “Shaking it Up, Making it Last,” I’m about to honor the shaking it up portion by combining notes from the tour I led with my colleague Andy Johnson from the William Penn Foundation with reflections from the conference sessions. But let me start with what was for me the most critical take-away. It came from Jeremy Nowak, President and CEO of The Reinvestment Fund . He said that in this space of regional foods, we must start somewhere, we cannot wait for the perfect comprehensive plan. He underscored that development is iterative; that we need to pursue ideas and thinking and learn from them as they get embedded in practice. This is, in Jeremy’s words, about “craft” – and we must use craft and practice to go to scale, all the while creating a living narrative around the work. This, he says, is where hope lives.

Hope was certainly thriving in Camden, NJ on the day of our tour which was entitled, “A Union of Urban Food, Faith & Empowerment.”

Josh Chisholm of Camden Churches Organized for People (CCOP) told the story of how this was once a trash strewn lot where abandoned police trailers stood covered with graffiti and where a drug economy thrived. With the help of the Camden City Garden Club , which is the primary life support system for community gardens and farms in Camden, this ¾ acre lot now has 35 family plots and star quality community leaders. The Checos, whose son was sparked by CCGC’s “Grow Lab” program at neighboring St. Anthony’s school, and who in turn sparked the lot transformation, now organize potluck dinners wherein gardeners exchange techniques and best practices.  Mr. Checo also serves on the City’s new food security advisory council.

Speakers throughout the conference talked about the benefits of transforming vacant lots to productive lands. Here are a few benefits to consider: lower public land maintenance costs, reduced household food expenditures (this can be in excess of $1,000 year), increased property values, added jobs, increased opportunities for skills training, improved health, and improved environmental stewardship, biodiversity, and access to and use of open space. As food system analyst, Ken Meter noted, our current food and economic systems fail us on all of the following fronts – health, wealth, connection and capacity; but local food economies embrace and integrate all four. Mr. Meter, who is the President of the Crossroads Resource Center in Minneapolis sees local foods as a prime economic recovery strategy. If the $1 trillion dollar food economy were shifted to a regional food system, he asserts that true recovery could happen because the economic changes would build wealth in low income settings. How might this get kick started? Well, he noted that local and state governments spend $ 550 billion on economic development strategies that are not delivering on their promises. What if some of these funds were repurposed to support regional food system development?

At the local level, there is a community development corporation (CDC) in Camden that is combining community revitalization with community gardening. The response to Cramer Hill CDC’s support for community gardens is off the chart. When Andy and I sketched out the tour route a few weeks ago, the “lot” below was an overgrown triangle of neglect, but now it joins the ranks of some 80 community gardens in Camden that are connected to CCGC.

Our tour trolley then headed to south Camden, probably the hardest hit area of all the Camden neighborhoods, yet one in which community gardening has helped keep some blocks together for many years.

Pedro Rodriguez - Neighborhood Food Producer and Educator

Again, when Andy I did our pre-tour run, the lot in this south Camden block was devoid of any real life, now hope sprouts throughout the lot and those working on it.

There are innovative policies popping up all over the country to help accelerate the conversion of vacant and underutilized city lots. Many “fixes” focus on longer land tenure, including the concept of urban garden zones. There are also new city farm animal and bee ordinances, and there is an urban agriculture overlay district in Cleveland. Vancouver also has new urban ag design standard. I even heard a conference participant suggest “ 1% for urban ag” ( a new take on 1% for art). I learned about a number of these approaches last November at a Funders Network Conference in Cleveland, but the rate of change from then to now is staggering (see my blog post from last November).

The policy push feels necessary to effect change. Jason McLennan of the Living Building Challenge (who is also the CEO of Cascadia Region Green Building Council ) reminded us that rapid change is not only possible, but that many social revolutions occurred in short bursts. He noted that we went from cities built for walking and riding horses to auto cities in a span of 20-30 years – and that happened without a sense of urgency for change. Remember, too, that during WWII, Victory Gardens quickly ramped up, yielding 40% of all produce in the country. So with the ingredients we have for a food system revolution, imagine what our cities might look like in 2030 in terms of food production, transportation, architecture, and culture.

And I didn’t mean to gloss over the significance of having a green building expert at this conference. The Living Building Challenge is about regenerative design wherein our built infrastructure can help heal our degraded landscapes. McLennan said that we must have a blending of food & architecture – of community design – and that this is more about a re-imagining of our food system. He noted that food used to be an integrated part of community design – think pre WWII visions, or when Frank Lloyd Wright designed the broad acre city.

Do we have all the answers on regional/local food systems? No. There are lots of knowledge gaps regarding sustainable ag and urban ag. And we definitely need a deep learning session with Ann Carroll of the EPA Brownfields program. There is no doubt that we need to know HOW to operate in urban environments. Ann waves the banner of “methyl ethyl death,” but lucky for us, she is also a local food champion and advocate of the highest caliber – she just wants to make sure it happens in a way that protects our health and well being.  Working on or near contaminated lands is no walk in the park.

One of the last stops on our tour took us to the beginning of an urban farm in south Camden – just down the block from the two “lot” sized gardens.

There’s been more research on the impact of food production in Philly, so I’ll pass on these stats from Domenic Vitiello, founding president of the Philadelphia Orchard Project and a professor of city planning at the University of Pennsylvania who has done research to quantify local community garden food production (he also teaches a course on community development and food system planning). Philadelphia’s 200 food related community gardens, tended to by more than 500 people, produces more than $5 million in summer veggies. This without formal supports!  Imagine if there were maintenance and endowment programs, supportive experiential education to build consumer demand, and entrepreneurial and job skill training opportunities.

Going back to Ken Meter’s discussion – the Camden Farm could be part of Camden’s economic recovery, and it could operate as a hybrid model (part neighborhood food production and part farmers market, with perhaps a few spin-off food enterprises).  As professor Vitiello noted, this is about planting seeds and growing lives.

It also is about growing networks.  Ken Meter talked about the shift from working old supply chains to “building value networks” – clusters of small businesses that trade with each other. This would include a farmer, a local food processing operation, the distributor, a compost operation, etc.  Each serving as a multiplier in a local or regional economy. At the local level this might look like the Growers Alliance in Philly, which is about creating a green resource center to coordinate bulk purchases of seedlings, hay, and mulch for its member, as well as providing education and training. There are 17 growers in the alliance today; the forecast is for 300 in the next 3 years. At a higher level, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies provides support for sustainable business networks across the country and the globe.

So where does the patient capital to fuel this shift come from? Let’s go back to Jeremy Nowak and the work of The Reinvestment Fund. Jeremy jumped into the food arena through housing and community development and attempts to address the issue of urban food deserts. TRF’s Fresh Food Financing Initiative has now reached national acclaim, including White House interest. Jeremy notes that data collection and relationship building is how TRF built “Wholefoods in the hood.” Now he sees the power and potential of the local and regional food movement and is considering models like mushroom farms and other food production enterprises as a complement to the supermarket financing initiative. He will collect data and build relationships with growers and then develop the finance models. He thinks funders can identify the “burning bushes” of activity in their regions by creating an activity map. From there, funders can identify where success might happen, as well as the range of risks and the different kinds of funding mechanisms that are needed (blended grants, loans, etc.). This calls for more foundations to jump into the impact investment arena – or to work with intermediaries like RSF Social Finance , whose team is creating a series of small food related Program Related Investment (PRI) funds (they do the underwriting, due diligence etc.) The Community Food Enterprise Report is a good starting point for this work. Sandy Wiggins, chair of E3 Bank , put it this way, “We need to change our mindset from one of exclusively “managing risk” to one of “creating prosperity.”

Mike Devlin of CCGC talks with NJ Ag Secretary Doug Fisher

Under a tent at CCGC, the final stop on our tour, we were joined by Mark Smith, Chef / Owner of Tortilla Press who is dedicated to sourcing local foods. I’d say more, but my mouth still waters when I think about the veggie quesadillas he served us. We were also joined by Tracy Duffield of Duffield’s Farm. Duffields represents the ever important rural to urban connection in our regional food system, evidenced by the blueberry crumb cake that was quickly consumed by our tour participants. But I have to say that even though he didn’t serve up any food, NJ Secretary of Agriculture Doug Fisher stole the show when he announced that he is talking to USDA’s NJ Rural Development Office about “a 21st century version of the produce vendors and fish peddlers who used to traverse the streets of our cities.” He wants to pilot a “fresh mobile” unit (a cross between a book mobile and ice cream vendor truck) that would have “cold storage amenities that offer locally grown produce and other in season ag products.” In addition to raw and prepared foods, there would be value added products – and all Fresh Mobile units would be equipped with EBT machines and non cash ways of handling SNAP, WIC, Senior Farmer Market coupons, and related payments. Secretary Fisher’s background in retail and wholesale food distribution provides him with the working knowledge that just because food is grown and harvested in NJ, it does not necessarily reach the plate of every resident, especially in our urban centers. He is also very sensitive to the availability of cheap, unhealthy foods that are prevalent in food outlets in our cities.

Secretary Fisher’s comments regarding unhealthy diets served as a nice segue to one of the final plenary sessions, “Refocusing the National Food System.” A collaborative effort among Columbia University , MIT, and the United Health Foundation offered a perspective on the link between the food system and health. Did you know that we will spend $344 billion by 2018 to manage the health consequences of obesity? Dr. Reed Tuckson, Executive Vice President and Chief of Medical Affairs at UnitedHealth Group, thinks that the ubiquitous $1 cheeseburger and our current food system has everything to do with this issue. This study group is calling for a decentralized local healthy food hub system – they want the nation to recalibrate and think in terms of Food Sheds. How does this shift happen? A huge part of it is about food literacy – something Secretary Fisher keyed in on as well. Dr. Tuckson proclaimed that we all need to become good food citizens in order to change a system that produces more than enough food calories, yet leaves 1 billion people hungry. I suppose we could wait until oil prices reach a catastrophic tipping point (futurist John Michael Greer was on hand to talk about his vision of a post oil peak “Ecotechnic Future”), but I have a little more faith in the power of people to organize for this food revolution.

Are you a good food citizen? What are your ideas about improving food literacy, cultivating the concept of food sheds and promoting civic engagement around regional food systems?

During the conference, I met some amazing writer, blogger, foodie colleagues from Seeding Chicago. They blogged about several tours and conference sessions. The “must reads” from their site include a general post on the conference, a tour stop at Cathedral Kitchen , more on Jeremy Nowak , and a tour stop at Greens Grow.

We thank the Educational Information Resource Center and its Monarch Teacher Network for so generously sharing their stories of transformation with us. We hope that you have felt as inspired by Mary, Sarita, Hope and Maren as we have.

By Maren Pearson

Mexico’s history and culture are so much more rich and beautiful than I ever realized.

Our trip began in Mexico City at the Museum of Anthropology, which really started the entire journey off right by laying the foundation for what we would experience during the week. A labyrinth of halls, each museum hall is filled with artifacts and dedicated to a different indigenous Mexican culture. As a prelude to our adventure, we toured the halls of Teotihuacan, Toltec, Aztec, Olmec and Maya, getting our first glimpse of the Mesoamerican god, Quetzalcoatl, the “feathered serpent”.

Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent (Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City)

Throughout the week, our Mexican tour guide, Marcos Garcia, gave us the gift of his knowledge of Mexican people, history, culture and soul. Before becoming a professional guide, Marcos worked for four years at the Museum of Anthropology. Now as he moved fluidly between present and past… on foot or on horse… Marcos became our gateway to understanding.

Marcos Garcia at the Sierra Chincua Monarch Sanctuary

On the final day of our trip, we explored the ruins of the ancient city of Teotihuacan (Tay-oh-tee-WHAH-cahn). Built by a culture that flourished a thousand years before the Aztecs, Teotihuacan is dominated by the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, some of the largest pyramids in the world. After discovering its ruins, the Aztecs were so impressed they named it Teotihuacan, “the City of the Gods”. Visitors can climb the Sun Pyramid’s 260 steps to the top and ponder its connection to Mesoamerica’s 260-day Sacred Calendar.

Pyramid of the Sun

Also on the final day, we toured the Diego Rivera murals at the National Palace in Mexico City that capture the history and richness of Mexico’s indigenous past. A masterful explanation of the murals by Marcos brought our trip to a powerful close.

Diego Rivera painting at the National Palace depicting Cortez taking a bribe after the Conquest while the indigenous people are enslaved

I have always wanted to learn about other cultures, but Monarch Teacher Network’s trip to Mexico made me thirsty for more knowledge.

My professional ‘a-ha’ moment happened when we visited a school in the rural town of Santa Fe de la Laguna, a lakeshore community near the butterfly area. I teach students with severe disabilities, so learning that Mexican children with disabilities are not given the opportunity to attend school broke my heart (parents have to cope with their children’s disabilities the best they can). It made me grateful for what America offers people of all abilities. While I yearn to know more about the culture of the indigenous Mexican people I met, I am thankful for the inclusive culture and opportunity of America.

Sharing a bilingual copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar with a Purhepecha student, Santa Fe de la Laguna, Mexico

The Mexico trip was a chance for me to learn more about monarch butterflies, as I expected, but even more it was an opportunity to learn about a nation and its people. While monarchs are a great hands-on science unit, I now have information for a social studies unit about Mexico to accompany the science unit. Next year, I want to do more classroom work with cultures and include what I learned about on my journey.

As I reflect on my trip to Mexico I find new ways to bring those experiences to my students. I hope someday I have the opportunity to return to Mexico and learn even more to bring back to my students and school. I think my students could use their knowledge of Mexico to teach other people, which would empower my students.

I am a special education teacher of students with disabilities. The students I teach are not able to speak orally, but they can express feelings and communicate in other ways. I brought back lots of photos and artifacts for my students to enjoy and explore. Some of my artifacts made sounds, some had smells, some were brightly colored or had a great texture to feel. These items gave my students the chance to experience authentic Mexican culture in a way they could not do before. Telling my students about what I learned is not as meaningful as when I create opportunities for them to learn in new ways – this experience helped me to do this and have fun!

I have one student who was born and raised in Mexico, so my Mexico journey helps me to speak and relate to him more than ever. This also offers my class the opportunity to celebrate the different cultures that are found within our classroom. Students can learn about each other and interact in new and exciting ways.

Seed bomb by Heavy Petal

If you’re not familiar with them, seed bombs are small balls – a mixture of clay, compost and seeds – that you can toss onto an empty lot or a neglected patch of ground to help green your community. The clay and compost protect the seeds from drying out in the sun (which makes seed bombs especially useful in dry/arid areas) or getting eaten by birds. When enough rain has permeated the ball, the seeds will begin to sprout, nourished by the compost mixture.

There are several varieties and creative shapes of seed bombs (see Guerrilla Gardening’s Seed Bomb Guide for examples and instructions), and you can make them, or buy them (here and here)

But what do seed bombs have to do with gumball machines?

The duo of Daniel Phillips and Kim Karlsrud of Common Studio created Greenaid, a project that cleverly repurposes old gumball vending machines to sell seed bombs.

Common Studios: Green Aid from ISHOTHIM on Vimeo.

You can purchase a machine (or several machines) directly from Common Studio, and they will work with you to develop a seed mix that’s appropriate for your location as well as a strategy for using the seed bomb machine effectively.

They are already in place in San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles—but wouldn’t it be great to see them in Newark, Trenton, Camden and other urban locations across New Jersey?

I have been a preschool teacher at the Bergen Community College Child Development Center, a laboratory school in NJ, for the past 25 years. When I began planning my trip to visit the monarchs in Mexico I had no idea the trip would become a defining spiritual journey. A pre-trip letter from Monarch Teacher Network (MTN) suggested that participants visit a doctor prior to the trip. As a result of that suggestion, I discovered that I had breast cancer. Instead of packing for the trip, I found myself riding a wave of diagnostic procedures. Finally, my doctors approved my trip to Mexico, with surgery scheduled for the day after my return. I packed in a haze, then off I went, traveling with other teachers from New Jersey, other states and Canada.

Personally and professionally, that first Mexico trip was the most defining experience of my life. As I quietly rode on horseback through the high mountain forest of the Sierra Chincua monarch sanctuary, I realized how truly interconnected I was to the forest, the butterflies, the horse and my guide. What a very small thread in this web of life I was, but an enormously important one. I imagined I felt like the preschool children whom I teach: both tiny and huge all at the same time! I was open in a way I had never been before. I wanted to share this joy and wonder with my students. I envisioned having “Circle Time” with my little ones while a river of thousands of monarchs swirled like autumn leaves overhead. I wanted to introduce my New Jersey students to the Mexican students children I met, who were so very much like themselves.

Because of my illness, upon my return from Mexico I could not return to my classroom that first year. But I had traveled to Mexico with a class mascot, a stuffed raccoon named Yummy. So I created a book for my students about the adventures of Yummy and me in Mexico. And, just like the monarchs, I find that I MUST travel to Mexico each year, and so I have, each year since, with Monarch Teacher Network. This past February was my fourth trip.

My students help me plan for my trips. We create tri-lingual books: Spanish, English and Purhepecha (Purr-HEH-peh-chuh is the language of the indigenous people who live in the area where the butterflies stay each winter),  and games for the Mexican students I meet. We create a quilt to present to a Mexican school as a symbol of friendship. My students create photo albums to share the life of our classroom.

And I return from Mexico with so much to share! Videos from my trip, dances and games from the Mexican students, hand-made Purhepecha embroidery that I display in our classroom, tiny “butterfly fishing boats” for our classroom water table (the Purhepecha people fish with butterfly-shaped nets), Loteria for our classroom game table, and painted butterflies from the sanctuaries which are counted in the math center. My students create papel picado needlework and murals. They prepare frothy, hot chocolate the way the Aztecs did 500 years ago, using a carved wooden utensil called a Molinillo (Mole-le-KNEE-oh). They prepare guacamole with a mortar and pestle made from volcanic rock, exactly as people in Mexico do today. My students listen to music from Michoacán (the butterfly area) and set up a “Market” in our dramatic play area. They create butterflies to place on an oyamel fir tree (a donated artificial Christmas tree—oyamels are the trees in the sanctuaries that protect monarchs through the Mexican winter). Through songs, stories, pictures and art my students and I learn about this distant, magical place where Monarchs go every fall.

The monarch’s cycle of life, including its fall migration, is now at the heart of our curriculum. The curriculum stems from student interest in monarchs and the outdoor environment near our school. My students are intensely curious about Mexico. Where is this place? Who lives there? What is it like there? My students feel a sense of pride and accomplishment that they are helping nature “raise a butterfly.” They become teachers as they share their knowledge with their parents and with community college students on our campus.

The teachers and directors of Monarch Teacher Network, both here, in Mexico and Canada have enriched my life in ways that are precious. Mexico has become my sanctuary. In turn I have become a more inspired teacher.

I want to extend a heartfelt thanks to the Dodge Foundation for their support of this project and for giving me and other teachers the opportunity to participate in this amazing journey.

Every teacher who has the privilege to go to Mexico and witness the monarch spectacle has their own story to tell. Like me, they will be inspired to tell that story and bring the joy of that experience back to their students.

Below are links with photos and information from three of my trips to Mexico with Monarch Teacher Network.

Best wishes on the wings of butterflies,
Hope D’Avino-Jennings

http://www.misshope.org/mexico

http://www.misshope.org/mexico2008

http://www.misshope.org/mexico2010

Spring is a time of re-creating our connections with our land in many ways. Even a simple walk in one of our state’s parks or nature preserves reminds us of the extraordinary living systems around us.

Last week we caught up with one of our partners, The Nature Conservancy, for yet another reminder of just how awe-inspiring our natural systems are here in New Jersey.

Barbara Brummer, New Jersey State Director
The Nature Conservancy

The Arctic Meadows Nature Preserve, one of 37 preserves The Nature Conservancy owns and manages in New Jersey, is nestled along the Kittatinny Ridge in Sussex County, between the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area and Trout Brook Wildlife Management Area. It shelters an abundance of life.

Among its treasures are patches of a rare flower that thrives on the area’s cool, acidic waters. Many other flowers thrive in this environment – including gaywings (also called flowering wintergreen; Polygala paucifolia) and dwarf ginseng (Panax trifolius). Bald eagles, songbirds, long-tailed salamanders, wood turtles, and brook trout inhabit the area. Pileated woodpeckers punctuate the forest, and a tapestry of mosses, liverworts, ferns and lichens thrive along the cool forest floor.

A patch of a rare flower found only in the Kittatinny Ridge & Valley area of New Jersey

While access to this preserve is limited because of the fragile nature of its plant communities, the Conservancy has helped increase access to many of its preserves in the area and around the state. The public is taking advantage of this, and the scientific community is appreciative of the partnering opportunities with the Conservancy. Last week at Arctic Meadows, for instance, two botanists from the renowned Brooklyn Botanic Garden visited to study rare plant species on the property. The scientists were delighted to share their immediate observations with staff and supporters on the walk.

Each preserve plays a special role in protecting the state’s natural systems. Arctic Meadows, for instance, helps connect other protected lands in an area of the state where large expanses of forest produce the freshwater that supports plants and animals and provides water that people depend on for drinking and other needs.

Attendees of a recent walk hosted in New Jersey by The Nature Conservancy listen to a botanist from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Each preserve also offers a unique opportunity to study, or just enjoy. From New Jersey’s forests in the northwest to our protected areas in the northeast to our expansive and delicate Delaware Bayshore, our natural systems are within reach of all of us.

Whether you are alone on a walk, or accompanied by land stewards and scientists such as those participating in the Conservancy’s preserve tours, it’s only natural to seek out spring’s glories.

For more on The Nature Conservancy’s work in New Jersey, including its activities and tours, you may visit this link.

Yours in conservation,
Barbara

For many years, the Dodge Foundation has supported EIRC in their efforts to provide teachers with environmental experiences that both inspire and empower their classroom work. Our efforts started with the NJ Teachers for Biodiversity but when EIRC launched its monarch butterfly program, we witnessed the meteoric rise of the Monarch Teacher Network (MTN). MTN trains pre-kindergarten to 12th grade teachers, gardeners and naturalists. The training utilizes monarch butterflies to teach a variety of concepts, skills and issues (e.g., science, language arts, geography and cultural studies; character education, global warming and extinction, deforestation, lawn practices/gardening). As the project has spread across New Jersey, other states and Canada, it highlights our shared North American heritage and the need to be responsible stewards of the environment.

We continued to be amazed by the transformative effect of the butterfly’s journey on teachers and their students. Today’s post by Sarita Matari, a PreK Special Education Teacher at Jackson Avenue School in Hackensack, is no exception.

By Sarita Matari

“Gotta Go! Gotta Go! Gotta Go to Mexico!” is what I kept reciting in my head after leaving the Monarch Teacher Network workshop at William Paterson University this past summer. I imagined visiting the monarch butterflies in Michoacan, Mexico to interact with the people and experience this magical world. This past February, I was so fortunate to have that dream come true.

When I arrived at the Sierra Chincua Butterfly Sanctuary in Mexico, I immediately felt a sense of peace. Then, as I quietly stood, listening to the tranquil sounds of the forest, I heard a tiny voice singing about sweet raindrops and how much fun it would be to catch them one by one. When I turned to find that voice, I saw a butterfly keeper, a naturalist with a gentle hand and a loving smile: Marcos Antonio, an amazing nine year-old child who works with his father at the butterfly sanctuary. Marcos was as calm as the cool wind, and as captivating as the monarchs that flew around me. Through Marcos Antonio’s eyes, I saw the beauty and importance of this tree-covered forest that protects that most gentle of insects, the monarch butterfly. I was in awe as I heard his words express how special the monarch butterflies are to him and his family. It was like tasting the sweet raindrops that he sang about.

This trip changed my life in so many ways. It is an experience that will be with me always, and I will continue to share my stories with all who will listen. My journey with the monarch butterflies will continue as I help people to be like Marcos: a butterfly keeper, a naturalist with a gentle hand and a loving smile.

Nature was once a beautiful place full of wonder and life, a place where our mothers, fathers, and ancestors stood and listened. Sadly, so much nature is disappearing before our eyes, never to be seen again but in memory.

Not long ago, a child in my class asked me, “How can I help Earth? Earth is too big, and I am small”. I simply responded, “I’m so happy you asked. You see, our world has been waiting for you to help. Together we can keep our Earth clean, happy and free.” This was the perfect moment for me to introduce the monarch butterfly and the importance of caring for our environment.

The magnificent monarchs have started their journey back from Mexico. My pre-k students at Jackson Avenue School, also known as our “little scientists,” have been learning about the life cycle of monarch butterflies and how to care for them. They are amazed at how monarchs find their way to Mexico and back to New Jersey without directions or guidance. My students have seen monarch caterpillars hatching from eggs, eating milkweed, and shedding their skins. They have seen a caterpillar become a chrysalis in just a few minutes and witnessed the transformation that occurs inside that chrysalis. Beautiful butterflies emerged before their eyes! My students have created a beautiful butterfly garden for monarchs, an inviting environment of flowers and milkweed that will welcome monarchs back to our school year after year. Additional lessons about keeping our school grounds clean, and recycling, have motivated my students to want to preserve and nurture the world around them. We continue to take small steps to make a huge difference in caring for Earth and the beauty we see outside our classroom windows.

“I want to go to Mexico!”
“Look the caterpillars are getting bigger”
“My mom has a monarch butterfly too!”
“Look, I see milkweed.”

These are just a few of the things I have heard my students say in the classroom. When my students speak of what they saw or discovered through our monarch studies and butterfly garden, it brings me great joy and hope: the joy of knowing that my students will share what they learned, with other people, and the hope that someday my students will play an important role in preserving and caring for our world. My students continue to motivate me, and each other, to make a difference. Although my students are small, together they will achieve something great.

My students created a poem about the monarch butterfly and recited it at our first-ever butterfly release this past fall. It was a huge success!

Orange and Black

Monarchs, Monarchs orange and black

Moving along for miles making your way back

You fly through the air and soar with ease

Quietly you move so gently through the breeze

I’m so happy you will soon be with me

Monarch, Monarchs, I do love to see

Tilly by artist Emilio Rossi

This past weekend marked the opening of “Sculptoure,” an annual outdoor urban sculpture exhibition presented by SICA (The Shore Institute for Contemporary Arts). The “urban sculpture park” has been expanded from seven sites in Long Branch to include eleven sites in Asbury Park, along with a new presenting partner in artscap (Arts Coalition of Asbury Park). I’m an Asbury Park resident, so I grabbed an exhibition map (which spans seventeen blocks in Asbury’s downtown and boardwalk areas) and headed out to see the transformed landscape. My walk had the allure of a treasure hunt, and I struck gold three times in encountering artists at their sites.

Artist Marah Fellicce

The first artist /sculpture find was at the “piling field.” If you didn’t know better, you might think it was a telephone pole nursery, but for the locals it stands as a reminder of past failed urban renewal projects. When the half built town house project burned, it was cut off at the knees – or at least at the foundation pilings – but on this day artist Marah Fellicce invited us to imagine it a new.

She invoked the power of color, texture, and an added dimension of height in “Memento Mori.” Since my Latin is limited to a few legal terms, I had to look up this phrase (I went as far as wikipedia). In contrast to the lively design, Memento mori is translated as “remember you must die” and it applies to a genre of art linked to expressions of the punishment that awaits one who has gone against their religion, as well as the emptiness of earthly luxuries and achievements. I don’t know the fate of the old developer, but this space has been temporarily reborn.

I met the second artist/storyteller on a vegetated median space across from the beach. Homo sapiens? flotsam and jetsam is a work in progress. Next to Homo sapien is a blue receptacle for debris found on the beach. Artist Jeffrey Seeds will incorporate these materials on Homo Sapien throughout the summer and the tale of environmental impact will unfold on his website.

Encounter number three almost didn’t happen. I went to the site of “Fist: A Self Portait” near the beginning of my walk and found only some disturbed earth, but something pulled me back at the end of my walk, and that’s when I met artist Alexandra Martin. On this day, her story was about what happened to her art. The once upright fist is now a horizontal installation in two pieces with a new sign that reads, “The object of unfocused Anger” If her art evoked an angry response, she was going to explore that emotion further.

For me, part of the social commentary is that we still have a lot of work to do to cultivate an appreciation and respect for the arts. Especially public art, which is as accessible as it is provocative. I’d like the next Fist in Asbury Park to remain upright, invite conversation, inquiry, and exploration. In this way, our commons (both the grounds and art) will flourish as a community canvas.

Here are a few other splashes on that community canvas that caught my eye last Saturday:

Nostromo by artist Quinn Stone

Inspiration by artist Deborah Jean-Weinstein

Gyre by artist Clifford Blanchard

Cakes by artist Chela St. Onge

You can experience Sculptoure from now until October 18.

Over the next few Mondays, we will hear accounts from several teachers who recently made the journey to Mexico with the Monarch Teacher Network. The first story comes from Mary Lenahan, a fourth grade teacher at Leeds Avenue School in Pleasantville, New Jersey.

View from Sierra Chincua (Mexico) butterfly colony as storm moves through

By Mary Lenahan

My journey to Michoacán was the journey of a lifetime. Never has a place touched me as much as this beautiful region in southwestern Mexico. The breath-taking mountains, the cool, verdant valleys, the kindly people, the rolling countryside in contrast to the bustling cities, and of course the multitudes of monarchs, all spoke to me in ways I never expected. I have done a great deal of traveling, mostly in our United States. Traveling abroad for the first time was an adventure in itself. Mexico is a much different place than I ever imagined. From the moment we started our adventure in Mexico City, I knew this would be a very special trip. I had no way of knowing just how life-altering it was going to be.

Mexico is a place of many peoples. Despite being conquered by the Spanish in the 1500’s, the indigenous Mexican people are numerous and varied. Our group of educators learned much about these native people, especially the Purépecha. The Purépecha are a proud group who strive to keep their history alive by teaching their language and culture in their schools. Our group visited a bilingual school on Isla de la Pacanda, situated in the middle of Lake Pátzcuaro. Students learn vocabulary, mathematics, science, geography and history in Spanish and in their native Purépecha language.

Students at Pacanda School

The Purépecha have a great appreciation for the land and its inhabitants. Our group visited two of the overwintering colonies of monarch butterflies in the Transvolcanic Mountain Range, west of Mexico City. Here at elevations of 10,000 feet, the monarchs gather in magnificent clumps on the branches of the oyamel fir trees. Millions of monarchs migrate to this region to rest for the winter. The Purépecha people have a close relationship with the monarch and understand the importance of protecting this delicate ecosystem. Learning about the Purépecha way of life has made me realize the importance of keeping one’s culture alive. The Purépecha people do just that by instilling in their children an appreciation for the mountains, the land and the creatures that coexist there.

Leeds Avenue students learning about monarch butterflies

The excitement that I felt upon returning from Mexico and the knowledge I gained was evident to my students and staff at school. My students were very interested to learn about Michoacán students and that they studied in both their native Purépecha and Spanish. The teachers were so excited about my journey that several of them decided to take the Monarch Teacher training that summer. As a result, our school contracted “monarch fever.” Our students and teachers raised and released more than 300 monarchs at a school-wide release ceremony, with the school superintendent in attendance as well as the local media. The joy that students and staff felt when the monarchs were released was obvious and overwhelming. Each person felt a special attachment to the monarchs that were released, and our collective hearts flew away that day on a journey to Mexico and the oyamel fir trees high in the mountains of Mexico.

I have been teaching almost 20 years. Our butterfly release was the first time I witnessed anything that got all students and staff connected and working towards a single goal. The experience made our school feel more like a large family. It was a joy to watch, and an even bigger joy to experience. Since then, the teachers who participated in the monarch training have continued to spread their monarch fever, and it has been contagious with many other people.

As another school year comes to a close, my students continue to ask, “When are we going to raise more monarch butterflies?” I smile to myself, pause and reply, “Let’s go check the milkweed patch.”

Mary Lenahan is a fourth grade teacher at Leeds Avenue School in Pleasantville, New Jersey. Ms. Lenahan was chosen as the 2009-2010 Teacher of the Year for both her school and district. Mary is a New Jersey Volunteer Master Naturalist and a Certified Interpretive Guide for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. She volunteers at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville, NJ. Be sure to check her fourth grade class blog!

Earlier this week, I received the Edmund W. Stiles Award for Environmental Stewardship, presented by the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association at their Annual Meeting.

Whatever I did to deserve the award pales besides the accomplishments of the man it is named after – but that’s not the point.  The point was it gave us all a chance to remember Ted together and, for a few moments, to have our own lives invigorated anew by his example.

Ted was a biologist, a Rutgers professor, and a citizen activist.  Early in my time at Dodge I had the pleasure of canoeing in the Pinelands with him, and I realized right away I was in the company of a natural teacher.  He conveyed knowledge, to be sure, but specific knowledge fades.  More important was his attitude, his way of knowing and being, which left an indelible impression on me and on thousands of others.

Ted backed up his love of the natural world with patient, persistent activism in the civic sector.  He chaired the Stony Brook Millstone Board.  His relation to the Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space is something like that of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln combined to the United States. He played key roles in the work of the Hutchinson Memorial Forest, the Hopewell Township Environmental and Open Space Commissions, and the D&R Greenway Land Trust.

At Ted’s memorial service over three years ago, hundreds of people gathered wearing his signature plaid shirt and told stories of Ted’s love of family, the land, music, life.   I know I was not alone in thinking, “This is how I want to live my life – so people might feel something like this at my death.”

When I accepted the Ted Stiles Award, I read a paragraph from an essay by Paul Raskin in which he envisions a sustainable world.  He writes as if he were in the year 2084, and he is looking back on the “Great Transition” that took place in the 21^st century, most notably in a shift in dominant values.  One of those shifts was from “domination of nature” to “an ecological consciousness.”

Raskin describes the mindset of people in 2084:

With their highly evolved “ecological sensibility”, people today are both mystified and horrified by the feckless indifference of earlier generations to the natural world.  Where the right to dominate nature was once sacrosanct, people today hold a deep reverence for the natural world, finding in it endless wonder and enjoyment.  Love of nature is complemented by the humility that comes with a deep appreciation of humanity’s place in the web of life, and dependence on its bounty.  Sustainability is a core part of the contemporary worldview, which would deem any compromise of the integrity of our planetary home as both laughably idiotic and morally wrong.

If we have any chance of getting from where we are today to something like what Raskin describes, it will be because of organizations like Stony Brook-Millstone, and people like Ted Stiles.

I feel honored to be associated with them both.

And it strikes me you don’t have to be a nonprofit organization with an Annual Meeting to create a vehicle for remembering someone who inspires you and reminds you of your deepest values.

Who would you name an award after?