As any person who has attended a tree colloquium will tell you, field trips are often the high point of the conference. The gathering of 2023 NYSAAC conservationists in Tompkins County was no different. Offerings included an E-bike ride to Lighthouse Point Restoration Project at the southeastern end of Cayuga Lake, a visit to Honeybee Embassy to learn about bees and sample some of their raw product, and a tour of Cornell Botanic Garden to learn about its efforts to reduce climate emissions, create biodiversity and increase biological services.
A visit to 3-Story Farm demonstrated the overlap between arboricultural efforts and those dedicated to pollinator gardens and green corridors. Agroforestry is central at the Farm, which employs swale-berm water management and alley cropping to sustainably raise chestnuts and hazelnuts. Participants enjoyed the glorious weather. The fragrance of wildflowers was incredible.
Seven rows of Chinese chestnut saplings were capped at the end by plantings of English walnuts.
Bradford Smith, one of three founders of 3-Story in 2018, spoke about the efforts to revitalize the production of chestnuts. Restoration agriculture, he said, is critical, “working with natural forces rather than against them.” Prior to their efforts, the site had nothing but “acres of Asiatic honeysuckle.” Before the honeysuckle, said Lisa Ripperton, another founder, the property “was in hay.” They “started on bare ground, with no infrastructure,” said Smith. Last year was the first the trees produced a crop.
He provided some history. “One hundred years ago, chestnut would be foundational. A massive, productive source of food and an economic engine. Twenty percent of all trees on the East Coast were chestnuts. They were carbohydrate-rich, like rice growing on a tree.” The bounty was ended, of course, by chestnut blight. “What would life be like for you without an apple?” he asked rhetorically. “People from a hundred years ago would say the same thing about chestnuts if they suddenly disappeared.”
Passive irrigation is key to cultivation at the farm, a convergence of “where the water wants to be and where we want the water to be.” A pond ringed with cattails irrigates the whole site with its runoff. “The area we’re farming would not have any water aside from rainwater,” said Smith. Bulldozers were brought in to create the berms, and water collects along and under each one. Ripperton told the group that “the ducks love the swales — the mallards in particular.”
3-Story has not only planted chestnut but hazelnut and bur oak, butternut and shagbark hickory. A nursery makes surplus nut plants available to the public, along with cuttings of currents and elderberries.
Nasturtiums thrive in the compost.
Inevitably, some of the crop gets eaten by voles, some by deer. An exclusion fence is in the works.
“What will you do if animals eat the hazelnuts?” asked Jenny Lippmann, who attended with her daughter. “We’ll figure something out,” said Smith. Asked, “How boring do you find trees and plants,” the student did not pause before responding, “Not too boring.”
“We’re trying find an economically viable way to grow crops that’s good for the community,” concluded Smith. “It’s agriculture that brings economic advantages to the people who are working the land. I think of this as going to the office, and it’s the best possible office, so that you can earn a reasonable living.”
After this immersion in the chestnut groves, participants walked to the award-winning EcoVillage Ithaca nearby. Solar panels offer most of the community’s electricity, though it is not totally off-grid.
Caitlin Cameron, Project Director of Thrive Ithaca, the educational arm of the complex, said that EcoVillage was founded in 1991 after a more traditional development went belly up. The goal: “mainstream, suburban housing that would be sustainable. We flipped the paradigm,” she explained, with three neighborhoods (named FROG, SONG, TREE) and one hundred homes, “creating our own zoning with limited development, ninety percent open space and ten percent built.” The privately owned homes have shared resources, and residents are encouraged to cultivate their own gardens and trees.
3-Story Farm Visitors had a fun and interesting experience.
Another field trip focused on a venue called Marshy Garden, located at the Soil Factory – originally intended for the creation of high-quality soil for golf courses and now part of the WEAVE community and a staging space for art projects.
Flowers bloomed in abundance in the warm weather just before the Autumnal Equinox. Day trippers appeared happy.
In 2020-21 the group looked out to an expansive lawn and asked, What can we do here to offer benefits for both pollinators and people? Earlier, the site had been used as a dumping ground for a local farmer. They’ve found chunks of concrete as they’ve put in flowers. They stopped mowing, then planted some rushes and sedges to encourage greater diversity and a richer habitat.
Ash Ferlito, an artist who was one of the Garden’s organizers, told the group that trees had been employed when wood was dragged from a nearby creek bed to assemble a sizable brush pile, sprinkled with white millet to create an inviting space for wildlife.
The organizers are just now planting river birch and are hoping to incorporate a line of willows into the Garden area.
For now, there is plenty of clematis, raspberry, virginia creeper and other plants. And plenty of happy insects.
“We had a lot of fun and put in a lot of love hours here,” said Ferlito. “It’s truly buzzing with activity – seeing a hummingbird on something we’ve planted makes my heart soar like a hawk.” Ferlito said that her work focuses on birds and moths; she creates “mothing events” in which she places a light to attract Lepidoptera, inviting spectators as an art event.
Spider webs abounded as well, including one woven by a black-tailed red sheetweaver.
Moving toward the Soil Factory hangar used as a display and gathering space, visitors examined a handful of biochar, which Neil Schill, another Marshy Garden/Soil Factory organizer, explained “has a lot of surface area, providing space for micronutrients to thrive.”
Other innovations including an outdoor urinal.
Inside, art. “You can see the art and science coming together,” said Schill.
Taughannock State Park offered visitors another field trip. Max McCune, a Landscape Restoration Specialist with New York State Parks, Finger Lakes Region, helps manage the natural areas with a team of gardeners dedicated to native plant installations across the region.
Their projects range from small pollinator gardens to full-on habitat restorations and everything in between; always with a focus on ecological principles and regionally native plants. The goal of the Landscape Restoration program is to blur the line between wild and manicured while improving ecological function in the human spaces of the Parks.
Half a million plus tourists visit Taughannock every year.
McCune took guests on a tour of the rim directly across from the majestic 215-foot-tall waterfall as turkey vultures soared overhead. “This was an ocean four hundred years ago,” he explained.
Now, trees share the spotlight with pollinator beds. Standing on permeable pavement, McCune explained that “there was a vole infestation, so lots of roots got munched.” Redtail hawks, he said, roost on the branches here, just waiting for the voles.
The beds are now dominated by black eyed Susan.
Milkweed, too.
McCune told the group that “one of the biggest challenges in the park is letting people know what’s happening, so educational signage is important. Otherwise they’re like, This is just weeds.”
McCune has been on the job here six years, and in that time “peoples’ negativity has decreased, as native landscapes have gotten more exposure,” with positive results. For example, he said, “Milkweed has grown popular, because everyone wants to save monarchs – but planting milkweed helps everything.”
He held up a stem of golden alexander.
“These are hosts for black swallowtails.”
It’s not all about the flowers at the Park. McCune detailed the tree plantings that have been undertaken in the last five years: serviceberry, Eastern redbud, staghorn sumac, chestnut oak and other species. The trees planted in the parking lot in have been protected from motorists parking their cars.
Taking the North Rim Trail that extended away from the falls, McCune shared a vintage photo of the site some years ago, when it had a more cultivated park-like setting as part of a hotel built in 1850.
The hotel burned down in the 1920s, after which the property was bought by the state. Efforts are now being made to “let it go natural.” White oaks from that earlier era dominate the landscape, with some specimens probably two hundred years old.
When the site was a picnic area, it grew “super compacted, so the ground was air spaded and they pumped holes full of compost, then converted it to a wild meadow area.”
The group also saw some handsome sweet birch and Eastern hophornbeam along the trail.
One challenge, McCune suggested, is the level of hazard posed by declining trees in so public a location. Reports are done every year based on how many people pass beneath, so while he is hoping “to leave some snags because they’re an epicenter for life,” it’s not always advisable.
Finally, the MV Teal took passengers on a relaxing and educational boat ride on Cayuga Lake.
Exhibits provided passengers with background on local fauna.
Some were more interested in relaxing at the close of the NYSACC meeting.
The passing scenery on this mellow afternoon included plenty of bird life. Cormorants, the group learned, had arrived fairly recently to the lake, and their excrement was not a positive development for the trees they roost upon.
All in all, the boat ride offered a pleasant conclusion to a NYSACC Conference that was chock full of information, field trips and networking opportunities for dedicated environmentalists.