Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues, it is 8.15, time with a visit from our friends from Cornell Cooperative Extension of Cayuga County, which means Frank Clark is here. Frank, good morning. How are you, sir?
Frank Clark: Good morning, Paul. I am doing real well. Thanks for having me on.
Paul Szmal: As always, I appreciate having you here and the month of June is an important month here in New York because it is Dairy Month.
Frank Clark: Yes, June is Dairy Month, Cayuga County is a big contributor to that. Believe it or not, in the entire U.S., our county ranks number 36th in milk production, 27th in the whole country for sales, that is county-based. So New York is a great spot for dairy. We do not have to irrigate here. We have plenty of rain. We have fertile ground. We have great farmers, farmers who adapt to conservation measures, who do the right things, and I think that stuff is being recognized with the investments from Fair Life and the Chobani factory, which rely heavily on dairy production in Central and Upstate in the Finger Lakes region of New York. So it is a good month to honor our farmers, very important contributors to the economy and food producers for all of us.
Paul Szmal: All right, let us talk about some of the events that we have coming up, starting off with a pasture walk on June 30th. That sounds intriguing. What is that about?
Frank Clark: So, yes, that is when we go to a farm that hosts us. This is going to be at Simi Valley Farm, and we essentially walk through their pasture so they are grazing their livestock, and we have an expert from Cornell, Dr. Adam Murray. He is our beef cattle extension specialist, and we see what this farm is doing, how they are doing with maintaining their pastures, provide improvement ideas for how to increase feed production through pastures, and it has been a very wet year. So the topic for this one is going to be how to recover wet pastures. Just because these are large animals, they can compact the ground a little bit. They can cause a little bit of damage if they are on the pastures for just a little long. So this is going to be a great opportunity to learn about what to do when we have extremely wet years like this.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, it has been a wet one so far. Hopefully, things will dry out here a little bit as we go along. The youth fair is coming up, and I know that you are working in cooperation with our friends from Cornell Cooperative Extension of Seneca County on this one.
Frank Clark: Yes, so we will have our 4-H youth fair. It's going to be July 31st to August 2nd at the Union Springs Fire Department. We're going to have a schedule released this Friday on our website at cckuga.org. If you are interested in registering for the fair and doing any of the events, that will close June 15th. So make sure you sign up before June 15th, either on our website or give us a call at the office. There are a few more events and some requirements that need to be done for the fair, like poultry and other animals, that can be found on our website. So anyone interested in the fair, give us a call at the office, check out the website. Any questions, reach out to us.
Paul Szmal: Frank Clark from Cornell Cooperative Extension of Kew County is our guest this morning on FLX Morning. The Outdoor Education Series is continuing too.
Frank Clark: Yep, so that is another 4-H. Anyone can enroll, anyone can participate in this. You just have to pay a little bit more, a little bit higher of a fee if you're not enrolled in 4-H. So this is going to be June 16th, 23rd, 30th, and that's going to be at our office, 248 Grand Ave at 6pm. We're going to go through stuff like wildlife identification, outdoor cutting tools, wild edible foraging, and just a lot of other fun outdoor stuff to expose the youth to and get them interested in wildlife and being outside more. And if you do sign up, it includes pizza.
Paul Szmal: Hmm, that sounds like a good deal.
Frank Clark: I agree. I like the idea too of learning about wild edibles. That's something I've always wanted to know about, never really had the chance to learn about.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, it's becoming a lot more popular nowadays. You can see it on social media. People are just interested in it, want to get back to nature, want to be more involved with the outdoors. So it should be a fun event.
Frank Clark: And speaking of eating, that usually means local produce and the farmer's markets in Cuyahoga County are up and running.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, so there's going to be one in Auburn. That's Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, 7a to 2p. One in Awasco, that's going to be Wednesdays from 3 to 7. Bravia on Thursdays from 10 to 2. The Auburn farmer's market does take EBT. And at the market, they will do a dollar for dollar match. So you essentially double your money that is being spent at the farmer's market. So let's say you use $20 of your EBT, you get $20 in tokens, and then another $20 in healthy bucks. So that's $40 for $20 to spend at the Auburn market, which is a great thing that they do. So I highly recommend checking them out, checking out all your local farmer's markets, support your local producers, and you're going to get the freshest and tastiest foods if you're getting it from around the county.
Frank Clark: Yeah, and if you're unfamiliar with these farmer's markets, the Auburn market is in the parking lot across from Curley's at the corner of 5 and 20 and State Street. The Owasco farmer's market, that's 7198 Owasco Road, that's under the pavilion. And you'll find the Moravia market in the Kennedy Drugstore's parking lot on Main Street.
Paul Szmal: That's right. And there's also a pollinator workshop that is going to be coming up here next week as a matter of fact.
Frank Clark: Yep. So this is actually a workshop I'm hosting. I'm really excited to do it. So this is going to be June 17th from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Seymour Library, which is on 176 Genesee Street in Auburn. And essentially for the hour, we're going to learn about our native pollinators, our bee species, our butterfly species, moths, and everything else that pollinates, what they do, why they're important, what you can grow to attract them and conserve habitat. Most people think of honeybees when they think of pollinators. But honeybees are actually not native to this country. So I think we need to have an emphasis on conserving our local pollinator species. Many of them are going to be ground nesting pollinators, which I think is a surprise to many people. So we're going to learn how to support them. And we're also going to talk about a bit of a research project I'm leading, which is a community science project where I'm going to have, hopefully, people monitor their own gardens and scout or look for pollinators and just track how many pollinators are coming to their garden. So if you're interested in participating in that, come on down to the event or reach out to the office and I can share that information with you.
Paul Szmal: And I didn't even realize just from you mentioning that butterflies and moths were species that were pollinators.
Frank Clark: Yep. Really, anything that's good. So flowers, they have nectar, butterflies, they want nectar. So when they're coming to get the nectar from the flowers, they're going to brush up against the pollen sources that are on the flowers. And then as they go to the next flower, some of that pollen is going to rub off onto the next flower, which is going to pollinate. And then the flower can create seeds. So really, I mean, hummingbirds are pollinators, bats are pollinators, beetles, really anything that's attracted to flowers can do some sort of pollination.
Paul Szmal: Fantastic. As always, Frank, we appreciate the information and the website again for people who might want to register or if they want to register their kids for that 4-H Youth Fair. That's going to be ccepayuga.org.
Frank Clark: All right. Good talking to you as always, sir.
Paul Szmal: Thank you.
Frank Clark: Thank you. See ya.
Paul Szmal: It is 824 on FLX Morning.
