Thanks to the hands and hearts of many, the Williston Community Garden has been planted for the 7th consecutive spring. We have high hopes for a healthy harvest to help the hungry. Both the Sustainable Life Club and the class of 2019 planted fall crops that are “good keepers”, a request of the Western Mass Food Bank who will be the recipients of this year’s harvest.
The garden gets rebuilt!
After six years of producing crops in both the spring and fall seasons, the boxes surrounding the raised beds behind John Wright Dorm were becoming part of the soil. With the help of student Ben Chmielewski through the Work for Williston program, new boxes were built in time for this spring’s planting.
Students in the class of 2019 added compost to the soil in each of the beds and then planted seeds and seedlings in hopes of growing a healthy harvest to help the hungry served by the Western Mass Food Bank. We look forward to sharing a variety of nutrient-rich potatoes, winter squashes, carrots, and Brussels sprouts.
There are some exciting things we have coming up on Williston Earth Day, which is this Thursday. Tuesday was the true Earth day, but because we don’t have classes that day we decided to make Williston Earth Day this Thursday. On Thursday at 2:45 we plan to open up the garden for the first time this spring and anyone can come and help out. Also on Thursday the school store will be offering a discount on re-usable items like water bottles, re-usable shopping bags, and re-usable mugs. This Sunday Mr. Lorenzatti will take students on a hike up Mt. Tom.
These activities will encourage people to appreciate the environment that we live in. The water bottles and re-usable items will encourage the use of more re-usable items and mindfulness of the waste we create. The hike will show people ways that we can enjoy the world we live in. All of these activities will educate people about the ways that we as a community and as individuals can make a difference. Our goal for Earth Day is to create good sustainable habits and teach people how to give back to the Earth.
The Sustainable Life Club is going to go bird watching this Saturday! As a part of the Great Backyard Bird Count, we will be spending about an hour outside counting how many birds we see. The purpose of the Great Backyard Bird Count is to create and record an annual estimation of the abundance and distribution of birds across the country. Each participant, or group of participants, will count the birds and then report the amount of birds they saw. The Great Backyard Bird Count is a simple and easy way for people across the country to get outside, see nature, and help contribute to a study.
We will be leading a bird count of our own on campus this Saturday 2/15 at 11:00 am. We will be meeting in the dining hall, then walking around campus counting birds until about 12:00. All are invited! By participating in the bird count, we hope to give students the opportunity to appreciate nature and be scientists, recording their observations in a natural setting.
As Green Cup Challenge continues on these weeks, a noticeable amount of energy has been saved, and still continues to be saved for the joint effort of Conant and Sawyer. So far, they are roughly using 30% less energy compared to their three week baseline based off of the last three years, here’s why.
They are trying! Lights off, heat low, no useless plugs lying around! But, as Sustainable Life Club members have recently found out, there is also a new heating system that uses gas instead of electricity in Sawyer. This nifty new device has helped out a ton this cold season by saving on heat and electricity! Also, because Sawyer has not been opened for students in the past 5 years, the baseline for the buildings of Sawyer and Conant are a bit low (of course, Sawyer still used a minimum amount of electricity in the past years to keep the pipes from freezing). But, as every building has their perks, Conant and Sawyer now have there’s as well. The readings this year will help create a baseline that is more realistic for next year, as they do for all the dorms. One thing to keep in mind: this is an international school competition, and hopefully this new heater along with everyone saving electricity, Williston can try to earn its way up the ladder for the competition. So keep up the good work! Especially as these weeks start to come to a close, with about one more meter reading left, since it ends on the 12th. Stay Green!
