By: Kevin Brown, Ag Team leader
Enough said, right.  The Troy Fair.  The biggest event to hit Bradford County since (I don’t know, dinosaurs??  LOL).  We have rides and animals and attractions and (oh yea) FOOD.  It is not an official count, but I think we have been going at this for just shy of 150 years.  That is a long time.  The fair is an enjoyable time for whatever reason you go.  There will be cattle and sheep and chickens and whatever animals you can think of.  We will have the normal- fish, snakes (I hope.  I have to catch them yet and NO these ones in the picture are not the ones that I will have at the fair!), critters, and educational stuff.  I hope to see you there.  If you are a regular reader, you can feel free to stop in and tell me what a wonderful job I am doing, or that I have lost my mind and don’t have a clue what is going on out there in the real world.  Either way, I will enjoy the conversation.

By: Kevin Brown, Agricultural Team Leader
Are you one of those homeowners that have very difficult areas to mow?  A bank?  A ditch?  A wet area?  Around trees and obstacles in the lawn?  Have you evaluated all the alternatives (not that there are really that many) to deal with this?   We could still find a way to get it mowed.  This alternative keeps it looking good, but it takes some effort.  We could just let it go, and who wants to do that?  It looks ugly (to us), right?   Or we could just spray it and kill what is there.  That sounds like the easiest way to deal with it.  No hard work.  You only have to do it once (probably).  However, do you understand all the ramifications with this option?  I am not going to get into the debate of whether sprays are harmful to the environment or not.  That is for another time.  What I do want to do is give you some cold hard facts about some of the results of doing this.

By: Dan Rhodes, Education Coordinator
In many cases, we here at the Conservation District frown on making blanket statements that describe surprisingly beneficial native wild plants as weeds when they often have important roles to play in the environment. A ‘weed’ plant after all is simply a plant growing on the landscape where it’s unwanted from a human perspective. Many beneficial wildflowers such as goldenrod, New England Aster, jewelweed, ragweed, boneset, Joe-Pye weed, daisy flea-bane and many others, are often removed by private property owners without hesitation in favor of ornamental flowers and plants they deem to be more aesthetically pleasing. The problem with this kind of thinking is that these so-called ‘weed’ plants are incredibly important sources of highly nutritious food for wildlife like deer and as sources of nectar and pollen at critical times for pollinators like honeybees. This all being said, there are dozens of species of invasive plants that are NEVER going to be beneficial in any scenario if they are found growing in Bradford County.