AdkAction’s Adirondack Pollinator Project has announced its second Pollinator Plant Sale. With the assistance of Cook & Gardener Nursery, these native pollinator plants and cultivars have been selected to thrive in the Adirondacks.
The plants have been sourced or grown from seed to ensure that they are free of neonicotinoids, a class of systemic insecticide that research shows is a major factor in Colony Collapse Disorder and loss of pollinator biodiversity. » Continue Reading.
AdkAction and Tupper Lake Central School District have announced that 50 eligible student films have been submitted to the first ever Beyond the Peaks Student Film Festival, representing seven school districts in the Adirondacks. » Continue Reading.
AdkAction is set to offer Sustainable Winter Road Maintenance Training Workshops for Departments of Public Works and Highway Departments in Clinton, Essex and Franklin Counties during the week of April 8-12, 2019 as part of their ongoing Road Salt Reduction Project.
Registration is required and open to town, county, and state road maintenance crews and there is no fee to register. Lunch and coffee will also be provided free of charge. » Continue Reading.
Students are invited to submit films before the April 10th deadline of the Beyond the Peaks Student Film Festival.
This event is designed to offer a red carpet showcase of student creativity and talent. All middle school and high school-aged students in the Adirondack region are eligible to enter films and win prizes. Community members are welcome to register to attend the festival as well, free of charge.
AdkAction’s Farmacy project, a mixed-use healthy food retail storefront located in Keeseville Pharmacy, is seeking to replicate the model in the second location in Essex County.
Local businesses who are interested in a partnership with AdkAction to incorporate a small farm store into their existing storefront can be nominated between now and March 1st to be considered.
Labor Day in Saranac Lake is festival time when the annual Farm 2 Fork and Hobo Fest go back to back to bring farm to table fresh food and live music to Riverside Park. Originally the brainchild of Adirondack Green Circle founder Gail Brill, the Farm 2 Fork Festival was taken over last year by a small group of volunteers. Their goal keeps with Brill’s mission, to provide a farm to table meal and recipes to demonstrate the versatility of local Adirondack produce.
According to Danielle Delaini, one of the festival organizers, the goal is to continue to see the Farm 2 Fork tradition thrive. She acknowledges the number of volunteers to keep the event running. » Continue Reading.
AdkAction has announced a free lecture, “Monarchs in a Changing World,” by Dr. Karen Oberhauser on Friday, August 10 at 6 pm in the Flammer Theater at The Wild Center.
Monarchs, like many other organisms, are facing the challenges of a rapidly changing climate. Their capacity to cope with these changes remains uncertain. Climate also affects monarchs indirectly, by altering the habitats and plant species on which they depend, or the distribution and abundance of their predators and parasites. Dr. Oberhauser will explain her work using climate models to understand how these direct and indirect inputs might affect monarch in the future. » Continue Reading.
The second Keeseville Plein Air Festival is taking place this week, June 20 to the 24th. The arts festival is showcasing the work of 25 artists as they paint Keeseville’s mix of natural beauty, historic architecture and emerging agricultural scene.
AdkAction developed and launched the inaugural Keeseville Plein Air Festival in 2017 in an effort to bring the attention of talented artists to the hamlet of Keeseville, and aid in community revitalization efforts. The first year of the event included over 60 artworks created by 21 participating artists. Over $8,000 in artwork was sold, benefiting the artists and local community revitalization efforts. » Continue Reading.
Lake George Waterkeeper Chris Navitsky has called road salt “the acid rain of our time.”
Now, a newly-completed study of Adirondack wells claims that most wells that receive runoff from state roads are contaminated with salt.
The study conducted by the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute comes on the heels of an earlier study that argued that 84% of the contamination of surface waters by road salting could be attributed to state practices. » Continue Reading.
On June 11 and 12, 2018, the Adirondack Pollinator Project is set to host two free public lectures by Kim Eierman, an environmental horticulturist specializing in ecological landscapes and native plants.
Attendees will have the opportunity to learn how to create habitat for pollinators in their own backyards. After the lecture, a one-hour reception will give guests the chance to ask questions and begin planning their own pollinator gardens. Free packet of wildflower seeds will be distributed and there will be a limited supply of pollinator plants for sale. » Continue Reading.
AdkAction has announced the grand opening and ribbon cutting of the “Farmacy” fresh food retail space in the Keeseville Pharmacy on Friday, November 17th from 4 to 6 pm. A reception with sweet and savory snacks and wine and beer will be held following the ribbon cutting at the Fresh and Fancy Bakery across the street. The ribbon cutting and reception are free and open to the public.
Keeseville is a hamlet that has had long stretches without a grocery store. The most recent has lasted about four years after Mac’s Market in the heart of downtown Keeseville closed down in 2013. In the center of Keeseville’s downtown is an empty 8,000 square foot grocery store that serves as a gnawing reminder that the closest grocery store is about 20 minutes away by car. Despite the limited access to fresh food in Downtown Keeseville, there is a budding agricultural community developing on the outskirts of the hamlet. A 40-acre organic vegetable farm, a grass-fed dairy, and a sustainable beef, pork, and chicken operation have all grown over the past few years. » Continue Reading.
You’ve probably been to fund-raising events where artwork has been donated. This is a tradition that many artists feel is an important way to show their support for an organization or cause. Sometimes art is also used as a publicity tool, with pieces created specifically for a purpose or cause. Many historians have credited Frederick Church, and other 19th century artists, with helping promote the creation of the National Park system, through their paintings of places like Yellowstone and Yosemite. Hudson River School painters shared with the world the beauty of the Adirondack and Catskill regions.
AdkAction just hosted the first Keeseville Plein Air Festival, to draw attention to the historic community, the beautiful Ausable River, and flourishing area farms, and to raise funds for a downtown revitalization project. It was very successful.
This August, during the 2017 Adirondack Plein Air Festival (August 14-19), there is a new cause that we will be drawing attention to through art. The Friends of Eagle Island, who now own the beautiful and historic camp on Eagle Island, in Upper Saranac Lake, have big dreams and a huge renovation/restoration task ahead of them. » Continue Reading.
AdkAction will host Dr. Christina Grozinger, associate professor of entomology at Penn State University and the director of the Penn State Center for Pollinator Research at The Wild Center and View Arts on Wednesday and Thursday, July 19th and 20th for a lecture titled, “The Global Pollinator Crisis.”
Receptions will be held at 6 pm, and the lectures will begin at 7 pm. The Wild Center lecture requires an RSVP, both lectures are free and open to the public.
Grozinger will explain the importance of pollinators such as bees to agricultural production. She will also discuss the various reasons for the global declines in pollinator populations that have been documented in recent years, including pesticides, parasites, viruses, reduced genetic diversity, poor management practices of managed pollinator populations, and habitat destruction. She will highlight ongoing research at Penn State University, where scientists are seeking to better understand the impacts of these factors on pollinator health, and to find solutions that could be implemented locally, nationally, and globally. » Continue Reading.
Pollinator Week may be over, but efforts continue to educate on the global and regional importance of pollinators and to show people what they can do to help.
Events will be going on throughout the summer to educate the public, including lectures by Dr. Christina Grozinger, Director of Penn State University’s Center for Pollinator Research, July 19 at the Wild Center in Tupper Lake and July 20 at View Arts in Old Forge; showings of the film “More Than Honey” about why bees are facing extinction; gardening and beekeeping workshops and opportunities for learning to identify and monitor pollinators. See a calendar of events here. » Continue Reading.
ADKAction has spent the past three years helping spread the word out about the importance of milkweed. With the distribution of over 20,000 free seed packets now Adirondack roadsides, gardens, and community parks are thriving with the Monarch butterflies only food source.
According to ADK Action Executive Director Brittany Christenson, the organization began the Milkweed project at the time when the plight of the Monarchs was also receiving a lot of national press. At the time, some people couldn’t even recognize Monarchs, let alone understand that milkweed was the only plant where Monarchs laid eggs.
“The timing of the project was perfect,” says Christenson. “After talking with people we feel that we were able to help get the word out. People are aware of the Monarch’s issue and know what they can do to help. Now we are focusing our attention on a broader range of pollinators.” » Continue Reading.
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