ATFE Hosts Annual Seed and Tree Giveaway

The annual event was as big as ever over the weekend. The Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment held their giveaway at the St. Regis Mohawk Seniors Center and the Generations Park pavilion. The event was to get underway at 9:00 am, but people were lined up well before the trucks even arrived with the trees and seeds.

To go along with the seeds, the inside of the Seniors Center was filled with booths on how to grow and maintain the seeds that were picked up.

Special guest presenter Richard Gast of the Franklin County Cornell Cooperative Extension gave a talk on gardening and the different container gardening or raised beds. His slideshow featured many useful and creative ways to make a garden box with ordinary house and yard items. Using discarded or broken items like soda cans, shelves, or grain bags, you can hang them on a fence with a good irrigation system and it will brighten up your yard or patio.

He said window boxes are popular and attractive but a tip he gave was not to plant directly into the soil of a window box but rather put the plants in planters so they can be moved around.

Caring for cold weather crops was one of his points and growing crops in your raised beds while the snow is still on the ground is possible.

Another useful tip for novice gardeners is to estimate how many plants you are going to put in. He said many people plant too much and it gets too big a project to take care of all the plants.

The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe's Environment Division had a booth and they were recruiting for their Brownsfield Program. They asked the publics help in looking for old and abandoned houses on the territory. As they decay they can pose a hazard for the area, like pests who move in or old water and sewer lines which can cause damage to the local environment. When project funding comes in they will identify the problem for remediation. At the Seniors Center they had a list of abandoned houses in Akwesasne which fit this criteria.

The United States Department of Agriculture had a representative on hand with information on Farm Loans, (Equipment and storage), Crop Protection Assistance, Conservation, Beekeeping and Microloans. Microloans are for miscellaneous items for any of the other loan applications.

The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe's Environment Division's Air Quality Program had staff on hand and they were showing what they do. Taylor Smoke is starting a project called "Investigation of Dioxins in Household Dust."

When funding is locked down their project team will go into a house and measure how much dioxins and dioxin-like chemicals are in your house, which you are breathing. These dioxins come from fossil fuels burning, trash burning, car exhaust and many other sources and the SRMT program's goal is to find out how much is in your house.

Angela Benedict of the same program has been writing articles for the SRMT Newsletter on air quality and those articles were on display at the Seniors Center.

Outside of the Seniors building at Generations Park the Tree Giveaway was packed. Along with the usual varieties of young trees they gave out useful information about planting, caring for and yearly pruning. Door prizes were apple trees and the winners were excited about receiving them.

For the children there was a booth featuring Solar Bugs. They are a solar power cell mounted on top of a piece of wood with pipe cleaners attached for the legs and when the sun powers the cell a little motor mechanism made the legs move. But before the kids were given a Solar Bug they had to do some activities and hand them in. When they did get their bug they were all excited.

The ATFE gave out the trees and the information on how to take care of them, and now it's up to you to make sure you have a beautiful yard to enjoy for the summer.