This Week in The Columbia Paper: "Deep Diving" by Conrad Vispo
Reflections on how we experience the natural world in FEP's next Perspectives on Place column in The Columbia Paper.
Voices of the Land: Background Exploration
The book "Voices of the Land" was edited by Jamie Crelly Purinton with
photographs by Charles Lindsay and published in 2004 by Chelsea Green
Publishing Company in White River Junction, Vermont. It has 71 pages
and by mid August 2011, there were several copies available on the
internet. We also have some books here at the Farmscape Ecology Program
which we sell for $25 to benefit the Ancram Conservation Advisory
Council (which is chaired by Jamie Purinton).
If you are interested in delving deeper into learning about the
habitats on your (or another) piece of land, we highly recommend
reading
Hudsonia's Biodiversity Assessment Manual
which was compiled by Erik Kiviat and Gretchen Stevens and published in
2001 by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and
is now only available on-line from the New York State Library. It forms
the backbone of Hudsonia's excellent Biodiversity Assessment Training
Courses which are offered at no cost to people serving on town or
planning boards, conservation advisory councils, or in similar local
government functions.
The Farmscape Ecology Program offers
a variety of ways to join us in the field, including guided walks and volunteer opportunities. If you would like to join us for an outing to see what
it is like, please contact me at
claudia@hawthornevalleyfarm.org.
If you feel you need personalized help getting started listening to your own land, you can also inquire with us at the
Farmscape Ecology Program about a site visit and joint walk-about to learn what we see (and hear) on your land.
If you are interested in exploring more the questions of how to look at
the land in a larger context, I highly recommended Karen Strong's very
accessible publication "
Conserving
Natural Areas and Wildlife in Your Community: Smart Growth Strategies
for Protecting the Biological Diversity of New York's Hudson River
Valley", which was published in 2008 by the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation's Hudson River Estuary Program
and is also available on CD or as a hard copy from the author.
If you own abandoned farmland and are considering to make it available to a farmer, you might want to contact
Marissa Codey at CLC, who manages the
Farmer Landowner Match Programand maintains a database of land that needs a farmer and of farmers looking for land.