Helping Protect the Natural Resources of Wake County, NC
four categories: grades K-5, 6-8, 9-12, and adult
Deadline is March 31, 2015.
Entries are judged by high school English teachers.
Contest is sponsored by The Center for Human-Earth Restoration (C.H.E.R.) which is led by retired WCPSS high school science teacher Randy Senzig in
memory of his colleague Ross Andrews.
What a great way to nurture a love for language as a way to express a love for nature!
Shelby Stephenson has been selected to be NC’s newest poet laureate.
Stephenson said he hopes to pursue three projects during his tenure:
On his homepage, Stephenson says most of his poems come out of his farm background, “where memory and imagination play on one another. I have written many poems about the mules we worked until I was in the seventh grade and, after that, the tractor. “The trees and streams, field, the world of my childhood – all that folklore – those are my subjects.” www.shelbystephenson.com/
“The choice of Shelby Stephenson is a delight for everyone in the state,” said poet Anthony Abbott of Davidson, who was on the selection committee. “He is the earth, a true North Carolinian, a wonderful poet and a splendid human being.”
Stephenson, who is 76, said in his “Letter of Interest” to Cultural Resources Secretary Susan Kluttz that he believes “poetry exists in every living thing.”
“My poetry connects the local and the universal and is grounded in memory of the land and people of North Carolina,” he wrote to the secretary.
Maybe the Friends of Wake SWCD has a friend in Shelby Stephenson.
“October Turning”
Published in Finch’s Mash (1990)
Shelby Stephenson
Fog lies on the cotton blooms.
Horizon opens like a mouth with moist lips.
Over the brown corn, doves sail safe until noon
from hunters’ guns and the glimmer of ground coming up
broken.
Poplars pierce the wind
,rustle a crow yawing his shoulderblades
centering the windowpane.
The humpthroated fishhawk circles the farmpond
indecisively, letting go the dream under feathers
settling in a halfmoon, his eye
stranger than masks fixed in cornshuck
brooms in a world hanging onto days
a little color at a time.
October burns on cornleaves
ready for the brush and slide of pickers and wheels,
for fathers waiting for boyhoods
to forget this place aflame:
this red howl in the dog’s throat,
the first morning of ice and wind;
ragged, yellowing leaves on the beans,
the pods bulging knots before winter
blows down the chimney to the hearthstone.
“The Farm That Farms New Houses”
Published in The Hunger of Freedom ( 2008)
Shelby Stephenson
Beside the poinsettias
Blowing out of the graveyard,
A bull, forsaken,
Suns among the granite.
Fields brown the dozer’s tread.
Wood, nails, cement, a pile of bricks −
With every hammer’s fall, a cul-de-sac.
My farmboy throws up his hands,
Hoes his row, blows his nose, rubs his neck.
Freckles forlorn his shoulders round.
Hill upon hill, ridges, mounds,
He works through hail and hell.
Streetlamps leap his face’s glow.
He roaches his hair.
The sweet surround crowns his scars.
Delusion weighs brick entrances, cars,
Moneyed ease his red neck
Wreathes, chainlinked.
They are farming houses right up to the creek.
No more skipperbugs skating and fish rolling in shallows.
The forkedtailed channelcat, pumpkinseed, rockbass, horsefish, suckers − gone −
The upsidedown leaves, limbs surfacing reflections, the little yellow and white
Butterflies bouncing at my feet!
What of this place I keep?
How shall my body
Leave the creek’s throat in my bones?
The Wake Soil and Water Conservation District’s 49th Annual Conservation Awards celebration was held last week at the Farm Bureau in Raleigh. About 200 people came out for a wonderful evening of dinner and fellowship to honor the 2104 Conservation Award winners.
Agricultural Economic Development Award – Courtney Tellefsen – The Produce Box
The Dan Wilkinson WRAL Conservation Communication Award – NC Forest Service
Conservation Partner of the Year – Theodore Feitshans, J.D.
Big Sweep Excellence Award – Parnell Bell / Blue Phoenix of NC Group
Community Conservation Award – Randy and Iris Senzig / The Center for Human-Earth Restoration
BC Raynor Friend of the District Award – NC Sustainable Forestry Initiative & NC Forestry Association
Conservation Farm Family of the Year – Dan Moore & Family
Agriculture and Forest land in Wake County
Light green is ag land / dark green is forest land
Hello High School Teachers across Wake County!
Here’s a chance for your sophomores, juniors and seniors to harvest lots of
great crop science information and stay overnight at NCSU!
Only $40 for the entire weekend of Oct. 24-26, 2014!
Deadline to apply is Oct. 17, 2014.
See details below and on the Cultivate website at
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1obXJVmdZOkjYpWTE4gsTqHg_JsH2Z52cJdXCviyNsyk/viewform.
Jenna Wadsworth hopes to keep serving on Wake’s Soil and Water board
BY SAMANTHA GILMAN
sgilman@newsobserver.comJune 10, 2014
RALEIGH — On a Tuesday in mid-May, when temperatures soared above 90 degrees, 25-year-old Jenna Wadsworth was clambering through brush in boots and jeans, her waist-length light brown hair loose and her shoulders bare.
A member of Wake County’s Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors – and North Carolina’s youngest ever elected official – sometimes her job takes her into the field to do “spot checks,” periodic checkups on conservation projects funded by the board. Continue reading
We had a great event this morning touring Adams Vineyards, Wake County’s first Vineyard and Winery! Supervisors Thomas Dean and Patrick Johnson, along with Associate Board members Quincy Adams, David Adams, and Marilyn Grolitzer joined many others for breakfast and a Wake County Agribusiness Council spring farm tour. Council members counted over 60 people in at one point!!
All local food was used in breakfast! Quincy received many questions out in the field on the tour. Looks like they really enjoyed the tour.
Everyone went home with fresh picked strawberries from our Wake County farmers.
WakeGov TV recorded lots of footage, including interviews with Commissioner Matthews and Commissioner Coble on farmland preservation. Senator Burr, Senator Hagan, and Representative Elmers office were present. Sheriff Harrison came out to support us also.
All around great outreach for Wake County agriculture, agribusiness, conservation, farmland preservation, forestry and farms! Special thanks to everyone who made it out to the farm this morning.
PURPOSES OF THE WAKE COUNTY AGRIBUSINESS COUNCIL:
The next State Fair is months away, but the fairgrounds will host the Got To Be N.C. Festival with carnival rides and North Carolina-made food and drink samples. There’s also a barbecue cook-off, a show called Gator Wars and an expanded flea market. And if newer things are your thing, Let’s Shop Local will host handmade arts and crafts vendors in the Graham Building.
10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday, N.C. State Fairgrounds
We had a wonderful time at the Busy Bee on Tuesday night. Saw lots of Friends, made new Friends, and made plans, plans, plans for conservation in Wake County. Check out the pictures care of Bill Sandifer.
Thank to you we are sending a Wake county high school student to the week long summer Resource Conservation Workshop again this summer. Let’s start now and send more next summer Send a kid to Camp
Thank you to the Busy Bee for sponsoring ‘Beer with Friends’
https://www.facebook.com/friendsofwakeswcd
http://friendsofwakeswcd.wordpress.com/
from Sheila Jones:
Hello Big Sweep Zone Captains and Community Partners!
(Please forward to your volunteers, family, friends and colleagues who may
be interested!)
In 2013, North Carolina Big Sweep provided gloves and trash bags to 17,628
volunteers who removed 376,427 pounds of litter from the mountains to the
coast.
Now it’s time to raise funds to buy another 17,000 pairs of gloves to keep
volunteers safe and more trash bags to contain tons of debris! Anyone who
volunteers for Wake County Big Sweep has been the beneficiary of these much
needed cleanup supplies!
Next week on Thursday, April 24th, North Carolina Big Sweep is hosting
their 7th Annual Golf Tournament at River Ridge Golf Club in Raleigh.
If you know anyone who LOVES GOLF and HATES LITTER…please let them know
about this event!
An individual golfer can play for $150 and buy a Mulligans Package for $25
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