Category: Wake SWCD (Page 3 of 12)

If you know of a past or current student with GIS skills, some
Environmental Education and outreach talent, and a desire to serve as an
AmeriCorps member, please pass this information on to them.
There are students/graduates who want to serve and contribute to our world.
We just need to help them and let them know about various opportunities.

https://americorps.hiringthing.com/job/20508/fire-education-and-prevention-coordinator

Fire Education and Prevention Coordinator (Dry Hydrant Project)
The AmeriCorps member will collect technical field data from rural sites
and communities. This data will help Wake SWCD to implement a new dry
hydrant project that will help improve fire safety for rural landowners.
Water bodies in rural Wake County may or may not qualify as a source for a
dry hydrant.

AmeriCorps member will help map (GIS and GPS work), locate, and document
qualifying factors for potential water bodies. Duties include mapping,
documenting, calculating, and creating report for collaborating partners to
move the project into additional phases.

Qualifications
ArcGIS
Have valid NC Driver’s license
Have environmental or natural resources background

Essential Functions/physical demands
Proficient with computer (office programs)
Must be able to walk distances – through wooded locations

http://projectgeos.blogspot.com/

Thanks,
Dale

Dale Threatt-Taylor
District Director
Wake Soil & Water Conservation District
Agricultural Services Building
4001-D Carya Drive, Raleigh, NC 27610
919-250-1068 work, 919-669-8596 cell
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dalethreatttaylor/

North Carolina’s Capital Conservation District…
Protecting Wake County’s Natural Resources since 1965

From:
Sheila B. Jones
Environmental Education Specialist
Wake Soil & Water Conservation District
4001-D Carya Drive, Raleigh, NC 27610
Office: 919.250.1065; Fax: 919.250.1058
E-mail: sbjones

Hello High School Teachers, Envirothon Advisors, Environmental, FFA and Key Club Leaders, Guidance Counselors, and Scout Leaders across Wake County!

It’s time for teens to apply for summer camp!

Rising seniors, juniors and sophomores are encouraged to apply for a full $475 scholarship to attend the 2015 Resource Conservation Workshop June 21-26 at NCSU!

High school students representing 100 counties across NC spend a week outdoors with professionals in several natural resources fields.

Students also have an opportunity to win college scholarships and/or cash awards on the culminating exam.

Last year Wake District sent four (4) Wake County students with one earning a high score on the exam, and another highly recommended for the Grady Lane College Scholarship.

A video can be seen at this web link: http://www.ncagr.gov/SWC/educational/RCW.html

Deadline is Friday, March 6, 2015.

To apply, students complete the attached sign up form with 250 words explaining their interest in natural resources conservation, why they’re the best candidate, plus 1 letter of reference from an adult (teacher, youth or church leader, or other adult besides parent.)

Application is sent to my attention
by email (sbjones),
or FAX (919-250-1058),
or by snail mail: Wake SWCD, 4001-D Carya Drive, Raleigh,NC 27610.

Please let young people know about this opportunity. Thank you!

Sheila B. Jones
Environmental Education Specialist

RCW Promo 2015.pdf

RCW Info Letter 2015.pdf

RCW Application 2015.doc

Registration for the NC A&T State University’s 2015 Small Farms Week is now open!

Please register and forward this email to all of your contacts, farmers, friends and colleagues.

Small Farms Week is March 22th through March 28, 2015.

· Click on this link 2015 Small Farms Week Registration Form

OR

http://www.ncat.edu/academics/schools-colleges1/saes/cooperative-extension/sfw2015.html

The deadline for registration is March 16, 2015.

From NC A&T State University, Cooperative Extension Program

Please direct questions to the Cooperative Extension Program: (336) 334-7956.

Happy Ground Hog Day!

February 2nd is also Happy World Wetlands Day!

• So it’s perfect timing for Chief Meteorologist Greg Fishel to announce the Top 5 "Wetlands Are Wonderful" posters that he’ll showcase on WRAL-TV 5 the week of March 2-6, 2015 during the 5 o’clock News. Congratulations to Kaeleigh, Natalie, Luke, Emily, and Jennifer — your posters have TV star appeal! Many thanks to Greg for coordinating this prime-time spotlight!

1. See the schedule for which poster will be shown each day of the week. NOTE: Winter weather, severe weather and breaking news can pre-empt our posters from being shown.
2. Visit the World Wetlands Day website of The Ramsar Convention, an international organization that encourages wise use of wetlands and intergovernmental cooperation on wetland issues. http://www.worldwetlandsday.org/ Make a wetland pledge, download teaching materials, and if you’re age 15-24…you can enter a wetland photo contest for a chance to win a flight to a wetland anywhere on Earth! Enter between February 2-March 2. Good luck!
3. Mark your calendar for our special "Wetlands Are Wonderful" field trip:

Sat., April 25, 2015
10am-12pm
Walnut Creek Wetland Center
Raleigh, NC

Sheila B. Jones
Environmental Education Specialist
Wake Soil & Water Conservation District
4001-D Carya Drive, Raleigh, NC 27610
Office: 919.250.1065; Fax: 919.250.1058
E-mail: sbjones

Posters on TV with Greg Fishel 2015.pdf

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!

Poetry Contest ross andrews 2015.docx

Shelby Stephenson has been selected to be NC’s newest poet laureate.

Stephenson said he hopes to pursue three projects during his tenure:

• writing workshops in assisted living and retirement communities;
• raising awareness of local archives and family histories, and
• promoting writings about farm life in North Carolina.

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?

Conservation Newsletter Dec 2014

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

Click here for a full size map of this picture.

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.

Cultivate Announcement.pdf

Jenna Wadsworth hopes to keep serving on Wake’s Soil and Water board

BY SAMANTHA GILMAN

sgilman@newsobserver.comJune 10, 2014

story link –

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