 |
|
       
|
 |
This year the ESF-SAF chapter encouraged member involvement in efforts of importance to the community. From the ESF campus, to the Memorial Grove, from Skaneateles Lake to Cortland County, our volunteer efforts and projects have helped enhance the landscape of our state, and promote forestry awareness and appreciation. For other years, please click buttons to the left.
Top row: Jeff Dietrich, ?, Ian Freeburg (Memorial Grove Chair), Katy Wallace (secretary), ?; Middle row: Sharon Pailler, Mike Tripodi (Campus relations chair), Heather Engelman (webpage), Jen Caron, Mike Cargill (treasurer), Dr. René Germain (advisor). Front row: Nan Davis (Chair, standing); Coraline Falco (councilor, Community Involvement chair) , Emera Bridger, and Farrah Fatemi. Missing: Samuel Urffer, Bill O'Neill, Dani Frederick, Lise Comartin, Denise Keele (Listserv manager) . Absent: Vice Chair Jesse Richie.
Memorial Grove Maintenance , May 7 More planting, staking, and this time, tree
tubing! What a great day to get outside, get our hands
dirty, and let our brains absorb and connect all the material we've been
reviewing for final exams. B&B Mill Tour , May 4 One more tour before final exams begin!
B&B make hardwood flooring, pallets and some grade lumber too.
Year-End Pizza Blowout , May 3 After a brief final business meeting, we headed to Varsity Pizza to celebrate the end of classes & upcoming graduations.
Community Service Project, April 30 -- Tree Planting at Alverna Heights The sisters of St. Francis thank us for planting the area around the Franciscan Nature Center that serves as both their residence and a retreat open to the community. Back to top.
Tour of Saratoga Nursery, April 21 Retired nursery manager John Solan, Sr., led a tour of bareroot seedling processing and packaging; seed collection, processing, and storage; containerized seedling; and lifting. He also described the activities in the 2-3 year cycle necessary to produce the 44 species of trees and shrubs that are used for planting throughout New York and New England. Dr. Russ Briggs was on hand all day to answer soil management questions. We stopped in historic Saratoga Springs en route back to campus for a a brief historic walking tour and bite to eat. Back to top.
Clockwise, from upper left: Mr. Solan, with beds of white and Norway spruce in the background. Lifting. A slice of Norway spruce seedlings with healthy root systems. Seed storage--they still use the same glass bottles of old, although they are shifting to polyethylene bags as their stock of bottles dwindles. PA containerized red spruce tubling, air pruned and ready to plant. Photos taken by Mike Tripodi.
New Officers take office, April 19 We thank our outgoing officers for a job well done: Chair Nan Davis, Vice Chair Jesse Richie, Secretary Katy Wallace, Treasurer Mike Cargill, Councilor Coraline Falco. Committee Chairs were Ian Freeburg (Memorial Grove), Mike Tripodi (Campus Relations), and Coraline Falco (Community Involvement).Back to top.
Tree planting for the Diaz family, April 16-17 Lots of boring, planting, and enjoying the spring weather, with a little break to watch our seniors get recognized at the College's annual Spring Banquet and dance the night away. I must say--we clean up well, and cut a fine rug. Back to top.
From boardfoot to foodboard: a tour of Harden Furniture , McConnellsville, NY, April 8 We started the tour where boards are cut into smaller defect-free pieces that are matched, glued, and planed into larger pieces suitable for high quality furniture. We followed these pieces as they were shaped; routed; carved; combined into tables, chairs, desks, dressers, beds, armoires, and more; sanded; distressed; and finished. We also observed the upholsterers apply their craft, before heading into the display room to see a sampling of finished pieces. We then joined one of Harden's foresters for an impromptu dendrology quiz on the log yard (we passed with flying colors, although it had been awhile since any of us had seen a butternut log!). He then escorted us through debarking, turning the logs into cants, and cutting the cants into boards. The boards are then sorted by size, stacked and dried, then sent to where we began. All scraps are chipped for use in heating the facility. Unfortunately, the staff were camera shy, so action photos are limited. Back to top.
Photos, clockwise from upper left: Freshly debarked black cherry. Cants en route to re-saw. Matched and glued cherry boards. In the finishing room. Lathes are used to shape legs. The underside of a table. Photos taken by Heather Engelman.
Project Learning Tree Workshop, Mar. 28 & Apr. 4 Resource professionals are often called upon as informal educators regarding an array of environmental questions. With this in mind, we asked NYPLT facilitators John Graham (NYDEC, Cortland) and Heather Engelman (ESF graduate student and member of ESF-SAF) to share with us fun, interactive, age-appropriate, inexpensive activities that we could use to share what we do and why we do it. And since teachers look for ways to make their classes more active and interactive without breaking their budget, we are very pleased that parent volunteers and teachers from 7 local schools were able to join us. We thank NYDEC for releasing John early each day for his trip to campus, University Police for their assistance with parking, the Syracuse and Central New York Teacher's Centers for posting the information to their members, John Wagner for arranging CFE credit, NYPLT and ESF-SAF for snacks, and especially NYPLT for subsidizing $10 of each person's registration/materials fee. Back to top..
Tri-Society Meeting, Liverpool, NY, Feb. 3-4 We interacted with students and professional members of the New York Society of American Foresters and the New York Chapters of the Wildlife Society and American Fisheries Society in presentations on and discussions of Watersheds: Prevention, Restoration & Management of our Landscape. Back to top.
Coraline Falco and Katy Wallace with NYSAF Past President and ESF Professor Emeritus Hugh Canham.
3rd Annual Thanksgiving/December Holiday of Your Choice Potluck Supper, Nov. 29 Denise and her housemates provided the turkey, and everyone else contributed the fixings. Back to top.
Chainsaw Seminar, Nov. 15 Brian Lepine, Oregon Cutting Systems, discussed why a square cutter cuts faster than a round cutter, the difference between filing achain and sharpening a chain, and what "kerf" is. Attendees enjoyed pizza and learned a great deal. Back to top.
Student Conservation
Association Information Session,
Nov. 8
Dinner, Oct. 25 Since our members are in so many different programs and class levels and our meetings and outings are all business, we don't always get to know all the members as well as we'd like. To remedy this, and to celebrate a successful first half of the semester, we met at our regularly scheduled meeting time and place for a purely social dinner featuring take-out from a local restaurant, with bake-sale leftovers for dessert. What a lovely evening! Back to top.
Apple Picking, Baking, and Selling! Oct. 23 & 25 Ah....nothing says fall in Central New York like a cool afternoon admiring the foliage with the smell of sweet, crisp apples, and the promise of fresh baked treats. After all, New York is one of the nation's largest apple growers. 25 million bushels of apples per year (on average) are grown in New York, of more commercial varieties than anywhere else in the nation. Apple growers were among the first to practice Integrated Pest Management. For more information about growing and eating one of NY's premier non-timber tree products, please visit The New York Apple Association. For more information about breeding apples or apple rootstock, visit the New York State Agricultural Station. We picked the fruit at the locally owned and operated Abbot Farms, Baldwinsville. We later joined Denise and Katy at their home to peel, chop, and turn the bounty into fritters, cookies, muffins, and caramel apples. The resultant goods were sold, and fresh apples were given away, at the SAF information table on the next business day. Someone was on hand all day to answer questions about SAF and the benefits of student membership in this national professional organization.
Clockwise, from left: Coraline and Joe Falco, Farrah Fatemi, Nan Davis, Maggie Saia, Emily Cloyd, Emera Bridger. Emera baking up a storm. Emily enjoying one of the fruits of her labor.
Freshman Field Trip/Memorial Grove Mulching, Oct. 16 This trip to Heiberg Memorial Forest had two parts: Memorial Grove maintenance included mulching around individual seedlings, and staking of seedlings that were still unmarked. The First Year Students pitched right in, and were a great help. Afterwards, members demonstrated the use of d-tapes, prisms, clinometers, and increment corers to the new students, who then cruised nearby portions of the forest. Click Memorial Grove link for photos. Back to top.
Brushwork at the Floyd's, Oct. 9 We moved at least 10 cords of wood and cleared 180 feet of brush down the fence line. The Floyd's thanked us with awesome chili, homemade salsa, cider and brownies. Back to top.
Pizza Gathering, Sept. 29
Nan Davis- Introduction (below, left) |
|
