Week 5

Monday the 27th:

Today we worked in the office all day writing the report for the Colloredo-Mansfeld project based in Chelsea Vt. In the morning we brainstormed for any further formatting of the report which was conducted by the project managers. We then we split up to work on separate sections of the report individually. The project report required much creativity and cooperation amongst the group. The report consisted of recommendations for how to manage the land by focusing on the Common Lands Concept. This concept integrates the needs and wants of the community with the characteristics of the land which ultimately links the people to the land while also maintaining and enhancing the integrity of the wildlife and natural communities that currently exist. The report components were compiled and formatted into a single document by the end of the day with only some minor things to fix before it could be complete. It was a long and arduous day well done by the LANDS crew!

Tuesday the 28th:

Another long office day for the crew. A lot of brain power and meticulous map making was in process all day. This was the day that the Burlington Parks and Recreation project was resurrected from the depths of our notebooks and the cobwebs in our minds, being that it was our first project of the summer. This project report wasn't as recommendation-intensive as the Colloredo-Mansfeld report, however, there were maps that needed to be created by our four groups which was made easier with the help of our GIS wiz, Nick Dove. There were many invasive species that were found at four out of five of the parks that we visited. We ranked the parks by priority ranging from High to Medium using three criteria. The report was mostly finished by the end of the day, with the exception of some maps that still needed to be made. It was compiled and formatted and ready for editing.

Wednesday the 29th:

The crew was ready to get outside for some physical labor after almost two weeks of office work. Today we went to the Forest Service in Burlington to help neaten the experimenting field. For the first half of the day we worked on cutting shrubs and vines off of the fence, mowing around the experimental tubs in the ground, weeding inside the tubs, and replanting any trees that had died. At lunch we ate our food quickly and then played an amazing game of volleyball with some other employees at the Forest Service. That got us ready for round two of some hard work and after our break we set out for some intense digging.

There were four tubs filled with dirt that used to have trees planted in them for experimental purposes. But since the experiments were completed the experimenters wanted to take the tubs out of the ground.

Each one contained approximately six tons of dirt and gravel. We dug out and removed three out of the four tubs in about four hours! We all felt pretty awesome after that feat.

After all that hard work we went to Leah's house (one of the LANDS leaders) and had a yummy BBQ/potluck and got to see her bee hive which produces the honey that she often gives us.

Thursday the 30th:

Today was back to the office to work on project reports again, this time we worked on the Rockville Farm report.

This report was focused on the concept of the Whole Farm Assessment. The concept of the assessment was created by our Co-Leader, Zac, for his Master's thesis and is focused on shifting the concept of valuing a farm in conventional ways which are usually based on the crops and profits which they produce. Instead, the farm was assessed using non-monetary capitals such as built, cultivated, social and cultural, and the natural capitals in order to place a whole value on the farm. We got about 90% of the report done, with the exception of editing which we planned on doing systematically on Friday.

Friday, July 1st:

Today was yet another office day for us to finish up the Rockville Farm report. We organized ourselves into two-person teams to swap any written work we had finished with someone else to get our editing done efficiently. When we had finally felt 99% done with the report we switched gears in order to figure out logistics for our journey to Mount Tabor where we would be staying at the Work Center and working for the Green Mountain National Forest Service. Near the end of our day we had to discuss our food situation and plan for any gear that we needed to pack. We found out that we would be staying at the workhouse during the weekdays and returning to Burlington on weekends and would most likely be getting one day off a week because we would be working 10 hour days. We were given an overview of our two projects and were told that they would involve mapping wetlands in the wilderness area protected by the National Forest and conducting campsite inventory for un-official campsites along the Appalachian and Long Trial in order to assess the impact made in that area. The campsite inventory is a fairly new project and this would be the second time the sites would be assessed.