You can still get in on this…call Lori ASAP

Facilitating Meetings and Building Teams Training

Friday December 12th from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

This is a must attend training especially for your staff in Community Horticulture and Plant or Environmental Science 4-H Youth Development.

In today’s climate we must build skill to maximize our efficiency and effective engagement of volunteers.

It is estimated that 11 million meetings are held each DAY in the US and organizations spend up to 15 % of their budgets on meetings. Poor meetings and poor teams lead to loss of money, time and most importantly morale.

This training will help your staff plan and conduct meetings so you build effective teams to maximize your county programs’ impact.

This training is at the DEC Stony Kill Farm facility just south of Poughkeepsie so county associations in the Hudson Valley, Capital District and Long Island are especially encouraged to attend but it is open to CCE staff from across the state.

Participants will walk away with new strategies to immediately apply in our extension work.

Register staff today.

Consider sending a complete team from your county including a person from community horticulture, 4-H youth development, nutritional sciences.. If you’d like to also include a Master Gardener Volunteer and/or 4-H Volunteer contact Lori (bushway@cornell.edu) for space availability.

Here’s a resource to help you and your volunteers approach those biting questions:

protocol factsheet (pdf)

Do you other resources you have found useful in address these questions? Please share in the comment section or send material to bushway@cornell.edu

Cornell Garden-Based Learning Institute

Brown Bag Lunch Series

Mark your calendars now:

September 11 * October 9 * November 13 * December 11

 

12:05 – 12:55, Rm. 22 Plant Science Building

Join us on September 11th for a lively discussion as we explore the garden – nutrition connection:

 

v     Integrating gardening with food, nutrition, and community food systems approaches.

v     Reaching diverse audiences.

v     How to connect community members from different cultures for idea exchanges.

v     Current projects offered by various departments and programs.

Who should attend?

v     Educators, volunteers, students and practitioners – anyone with an interest in the topic, willing to engage in dialogue.

v     Bring a brown bag lunch.  We’ll see you then.

For more information: Marcia Eames-Sheavly, ME14@cornell.edu or 255-1781

click here for flier

Are you thinking of engaging youth in a gardening project? Check out the fun they had with this one out of VT….

When did kale become so cool? At Burlington’s Intervale Center, the Healthy City kids are growing vegetables, becoming farmers, volunteering in their community, working a summer job and changing the world, weed by weed.

check out this video documenting their experience:

http://www.7dvt.com/2008intervale-centers-healthy-city.

Check out this Growing Green Lawns factsheet(pdf).

It was produced by the Northeast IPM community horticulture work group.

Tell us what you think of it by sharing a comment below.

Useful piece for your lawn care audience?

I am pleased to share that the 2007 CCE Master Gardener Volunteer (MGV) report is posted online in the right column of our MGV web page.

More than 2,000 active MGV spent more than 110,000 hours working to bring gardening success to New York State citizens and communities. Collectively MGV made more than 140,000 direct citizen contacts.

Lori Bushway

Leader of Adult Outreach

Cornell’s Garden-based Learning Program

Christine Hadekel, a project leader with Cornell’s Garden-based Learning Institute, attended a workshop titled “Writing Right for the Web.” She thought these items below were some of the most useful points in the workshop:

· People go to a website for two reasons

1. To find content and information that’s important to them
2. To take actions and complete tasks

· People are impatient. A website needs to be clear and concise in order to initially capture and then hold peoples attention (this needs to occur within 2-3 seconds of them visiting your website).

· Web readers are scanners. Sentences and paragraphs need to be short and broken up using subheads and bullet points.

- Paragraphs should have a maximum of 5 sentences or < 50 words.

- Sentences should have a maximum of 5 to10 words.

- Subheads should use active words.

· Blogs are a very popular and effective method of conveying a lot of information on a website. One way to do this is provide a list of topics with intro paragraphs, and then provide the opportunity for people to click to the full story if they want to find out more.

· If you use photos at the top, pair the image with a caption that succinctly captures the message of the page. Top of the page photos can distract the viewer from your primary message.

· Use “care words.” Words that are important to your audience and reflect what they can get out of the site. For example, “care words” on a university site that is trying to attract new students would be words such as: “advance your career” and “gain the skills you need”, not words that reflect the institution such as “diverse student body” or “experienced faculty.” A garden example: “find the tools and activities you need for your gardening success” as opposed “one-stop-shopping for gardening how-to information.”

· Speak to the people visiting your website – use the word YOU.

· Real stories about real people are very popular and effective at getting a message across.

· Use newspaper copy words, not frilly and fancy language.

· Use emotional language when appropriate.

· The right-hand column of a page is now used as the place to list visible calls to action – i.e. opportunities to get involved, connect, interact, contact others, etc…. Use imperative action words that tell people what to do (i.e. Interact!)

· Limit the use of PDFs – especially ones that were initially print publications. Reformat these PDFs into an online friendly or blog format.

· Avoid low contrast between colors of text and background.

· Use a consistent font and format throughout your website. Verdana, Arial, and Calibri are the most popular fonts for websites.

· White space between lines is very important.

· An organization’s mission statement is written primarily for the internal community and therefore should not be featured prominently at the top or beginning of a page.

· Title tags are important ways to be ranked higher by a search engine. Title tags should include the main heading of a page.

· To ensure maximum search engine visibility: use common keywords, ensure no broken links, ensure good title tags on every page, ensure good content and body copy on every page.

· Check all links on your website to make sure there are no dead links. Dead links inhibit a high search rank.

This message is from

Eric Harrington
Assistant Director for Occupational & Environmental Health
College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, Dean’s Office

Cornell University e-mail: eh22@cornell.edu

I would like to remind Cornell pesticide applicators of issues concerning using and recommending “home remedies.”

The Environmental Conservation Law (specifically Article 33) requires a commercial pesticide applicator when performing the commercial application of pesticides to apply a pesticide product that is registered by both NYS DEC and US EPA. Article 33 also allows a commercial applicator to apply a pesticide which has been specifically exempted from registration by the US EPA (25b list of exempted materials). Since a “home remedy” is neither a registered or exempted pesticide, a commercial applicator is prohibited from commercially applying a “home remedy.” As a certified commercial pesticide applicator, it is not a good practice to recommend “home remedies.”

If you have any questions or concerns about this, please let me know and I would be happy to discuss it further with you.

Eric

--

=========================================================

Eric Harrington
Assistant Director for Occupational & Environmental Health
College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, Dean’s Office

241 Roberts Hall (US Mail) 607-255-0485 (Office)

204 Rice Hall (Campus Mail) 607-254-6569 (Fax)

Cornell University e-mail: eh22@cornell.edu

Ithaca, NY 14853 USA http://oeh.cals.cornell.edu/

This article from Hort Technology January – March 2008 reveals that in MN gardeners most often obtain their garden or plant related information from friends and neighbors.

…what this says to me is that our county community horticulture educators and volunteers are absolutely critical to our role in getting Cornell research based information to NYS citizen. The number of NYS citizens who view you as friends and neighbors far excessed anything Cornell University could gather.

Keep up the good friends/neighbor work. You are the faces of our successful CCE educational system.

Lori

Here’s the full research article and please share your perspectives with a comment.

article.pdf

Programs are held at the Agroforestry Resource Center located at 6055 Route 23 in Acra, New York. Pre-registration is required for all programs by calling Cornell Cooperative Extension 518-622-9820 or emailing greene@cornell.edu

Project Bud Break

Date: Saturday, March 8 Registration deadline: March 6

Time: 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Cost: Free

Presenter: David Weinstein Assistant Research Scientist Cornell

Climate change is bringing warmer temperatures to this region. These changes are undoubtedly already accelerating the timing of the spring opening of flower buds and leaves, the summer growth of fruits, and potentially delaying the autumn coloring and drop of leaves, events called “plant phenology.” These shifts in timing could greatly affect the local survival of many native plant populations by disrupting their needed synchronicity with pollinating insects. The range of these plant populations may be rapidly advancing northward. Associated with a national effort, a network of citizen scientists, established through Cornell University, observes the timing of flowering, leaf development, fruiting, and leaf drop in populations of common native trees and herbaceous species. This program will explain how to become a part of this study including learning about the individual plants we will be monitoring and a web site that will help observers understand how to enter their data on the timing of important plant events through the growing season.

Invasive Species and Gardening

Date: Wednesday, March 19 Registration deadline: March 17

Time: 11:00 a.m. Cost: Free

Presented by: Ben Murdock, Catskill Center for Conservation and Development

Join members of the Catskill Regional Invasive Species Partnership (CRISP) for an informative presentation and discussion on the threat of invasive species in the Catskills and this partnership’s current and ongoing efforts to prevent them. Join us to learn more about existing and encroaching plant and animal invaders, and learn what you can do to stop or limit their spread. This talk is designed with gardeners in mind, and will cover invasive ornamental and garden plants, removal and replacement options, as well as various other plants, pests, and pathogens that pose a threat to habitat and biodiversity in our region and beyond.

For more information about our programs and the Agroforestry Resource Center,
check out our website! http://agroforestrycenter.org

FLIER (word doc)