CFAES’s Secrest Arboretum in Wooster is hosting a free public bird walk this Saturday, Feb. 11. (Photo: Dark-eyed junco, National Park Service.)
Month: February 2017
How to keep the barber pole worm from getting your sheep and goats: OEFFA conference preview
There’s a killer on the loose. It’s called the barber pole worm. It’s an internal parasite. It can hurt the performance of, or even cause the deaths of, small ruminants like sheep and goats. And traditional methods aren’t enough to control it, says Rory Lewandowski, an educator with CFAES’s OSU Extension outreach arm. He’ll share new barber-pole-worm-battling strategies at the Feb. 9-11 annual conference of the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association. “Co-existing with a Killer: Small Ruminant Parasite Management,” Session V, 1:30 to 3 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 11. Complete conference schedule. Presenters from Ohio State.
Also on Tuesday evening: Stone Lab’s annual winter program and benefit auction
The annual Winter Program and Silent Auction benefiting Ohio State’s Stone Lab on Lake Erie is tonight, Feb. 7, at 6:30 p.m. in Columbus. It’s a chance to learn more about the lab and Ohio Sea Grant; support scholarships for students to take classes at the lab; and hear speakers Bryan Mark, an Ohio State geography professor and Ohio’s state climatologist, and Caroline McElwain, a student in the lab’s 2016 Research Experience for Undergraduates program who studied how Lake Erie fish see underwater.
Admission is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are requested. Read more. (Photo: Aquatic ecosystems class by Lisa Rice, Ohio Sea Grant.)
Tuesday evening: Saving Alaska’s Bristol Bay salmon
Ohio State’s 2017 Environmental Film Series continues at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 7, with “Red Gold,” a documentary on the fight to save Alaska’s Bristol Bay salmon fishery from a massive open-pit mine proposed in the bay’s headwaters. An article on Outside Online called the controversy the “fiercest battle over wilderness and resources” since the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. The film has won awards at festivals in Banff, Vancouver and Telluride, among others.
Admission is free and open to the public. Get location and other details here.
Read a 2009 Outside story on Bristol Bay here.
Dig into large-scale composting
The Ohio Compost Operator Education Course, called a “comprehensive program on the science and art” of large-scale compost production, is March 28-29 at CFAES’s research arm, OARDC in Wooster. Of note: Four new professional development grants are being offered to help pay for the cost of attending. Apply for them by March 1.
Does bird feeding help or hurt backyard birds?
Bird lovers may want to take note: Putting out feeders full of seed may also attract predators that eat eggs and nestlings. But the feeders may also help satiate predators so they’re less likely to target nests. In a new study published in The Condor: Ornithological Applications, scientists from CFAES and from Cornell University evaluated the consequences of people-provided bird food on predator-prey relationships. Read the story …
The challenge? Do both: Waste less food, AND compost what’s wasted
Two key ways to manage food waste — educating people about it and composting it — seem to work at odds, Marion Renault wrote last week in the Columbus Dispatch, reporting on research by CFAES’s Danyi Qi and Brian Roe.
That is, the researchers found, people will waste more food if they know it will be composted — by, say, the restaurant that served it. But they’ll waste less if they know about such issues as filled-up landfills and the harmful methane dumped food waste puts in the air.
The challenge, Qi said in the story, is to get the two methods — education and composting — working not in conflict but in harmony. Read the story.
Out of the greenhouse, onto your table
CFAES scientists are working to keep greenhouse-grown produce, like the tomatoes shown here, as safe to eat as possible. Here’s how …
Growing with active organic matter: OEFFA conference preview
Organic matter’s good for the soil. And also for crops and water. But it’s not all created equal. At next week’s annual conference of the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, CFAES scientist Steve Culman will talk specifically about active organic matter: how it cycles rapidly, how it plays a big role in providing nutrients to crops, how soil tests measure it, what CFAES research is learning about it, and how you can enroll to have your soil tested for free in an ongoing study. “Active Organic Matter in Your Soil,” Session V, 1:30 to 3 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 11. Complete conference schedule.
You gonna eat that? Farmer-friendly ways to fight food waste: OEFFA conference preview
Food waste continues to be in the news, and a panel discussion at the Feb. 9-11 Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association annual conference will feature how farmers are fighting it.
Abbe Turner of Kent’s Lucky Penny Farm will share how she cuts food waste via animal feed and composting.
Max Slater of St. Stephen’s Community House in Columbus will discuss using the operation’s EPA Class II composting facility to process spoiled food.
Sabrina Schirtzinger of OSU Extension, CFAES’s outreach arm, will describe the successful gleaning program she helped start in Knox County.
Go to “Farmer-Friendly Approaches to Combating Food Waste,” Session IV, 8:30-10:30 a.m., Saturday, Feb. 11. Complete conference schedule.