During one of our Outdoor School classes we had the opportunity to participate in a workshop ran by Chris Earley. The workshop took place at the J.C Taylor Nature centre, in the Arboretum. We learned about bird calls and participated in some hands on activities, involving bird tagging.

After spending some time inside learning the basics about birds, we headed outside to set up some ground traps in the hopes of catching a bird. However, after waiting for a good 15 minutes we were met with empty traps.

With hope starting to dwindle we switched our sights from catching and tagging to birding. However, we decided to check the traps once more.

To our surprise we found a small Dark-eyed Junco trying to escape from one of the ground traps.

We were directed back into the nature centre, where Chris taught us how to properly tag the Dark-eyed Junco, and how to properly record the physical description of the bird – to input into the online data base.

Finally, our very own Jaedyn completed the honourable task of releasing our Junco ! 🙂

 

Written by: Brett Studden & Narda D’uniam.

Volunteering at Martha’s organic farm has been one of the most humbling experiences I have had the pleasure of partaking in this fall. A one-woman team who built a successful farm from the ground up, is just the inspiration  I needed to thrive this semester – even this whole school year!:) Not only was she a pleasure to work with, she was also highly knowledgeable in essentially anything to do with horticulture, and was always eager to teach us a few things on the topic.

My volunteering experience began during the hotter days of the fall, where I was stationed at the greenhouses’ to water all the plants. Instead of the imagined water hose one might think would be used to water such large areas of growing plants, we used cute little water pots to individually water each plant. The little watering pots were filled from larger water cylinders that were placed in each greenhouse. While working in the greenhouses’ during a hot day, it can be anywhere as 10 degrees hotter inside the green house than outside. This made watering the plants quite strenuous after a couple hours, making me question how on earth Martha can do this every week for hours on end.

The rest of my volunteering days consisted of pulling a variety of weeds from the ground – which was actually very therapeutic! A group of classmates and I took on the challenge of  clearing out several rows of land that had been infested with weeds during the spring time; revealing healthy & soft soil.

 

Pulling weeds was actually a little trickier than I had originally thought. In order to effectively remove the weed and ensure that it doesn’t grow back, we had to make sure the whole weed was removed, including the root. This was made difficult when we worked on some weeds that had roots deeper than 8″, which would have to be removed using a pitchfork; and a couple of extra hands!

 

Some weeds were small and very prickly (thistle weeds). In order to remove these, thick leather gloves were essential.

 

The last thing I did while working at Martha’s farm was washing, & sorting carrots. This consisted of dipping our hands into freezing cold mud water, pulling out a carrot, washing the carrot in the same freezing cold water, and sorting it in one of two containers: Good or bad carrots. Any carrots with signs of bug inhabitants or dark spots were the unfortunate ones who got placed in the bad box. The best part of this was finding the deformed carrots- since it’s such a rare sight at conventional grocery stores!

 

These past few weeks of school have been a little stressful given midterms, and assignments- but spending a few hours alongside Martha every week was truly something to look forward to. It gave me an escape from the books, & reminded me of the humble process of cultivating food, and enjoying time outdoors. Martha made this experience so enriching for me, that I will definitely be returning every Thursday to help out. Plus we get free organic food!!