Paul Szmal: Good morning, it's 8.38, it's FLX Morning, it's the Thursday edition, and in person I've been calling it Old Friends Reunion Week here because we've got a lot of people we haven't talked to in a little bit. Abe Botters here from Seneca County Cooperative Extension, welcome back. Good morning, Ted.
Ave Bauder: So we've got farmers market season's about to begin, so there's still some vendor slots open at the three markets in the county. We certainly still have vendor slots open for all three of our farmers markets in Seneca County. Just a reminder, the Waterloo farmers market is going to be Thursdays from 2 to 6, starting June 12th and running to October 9th, so anybody who's available for Thursdays. The Seneca Falls market will be Tuesdays from 2 to 6, that's starting a little bit later in June on the 24th and then running through October 7th, and we can really use some vendors down at the Ovid farmers market, which is going to be switching to Saturdays this year from 9 to noon, starting June 28th and running to September 27th.
And like I said, especially everybody knows what's going on with Ovid, with the fire, we are really doing our best and the people with the farmers market and the people of the whole community really trying to do their best to like, let's maintain some normalcy, let's have some, you know, the park is right across the street from where the Big M was, so you could still get your fresh fruits and vegetables. And I will also mention, Extension was going to be trying to do some help with that, but I'm not sure how many people realize that last week the AmeriCorps program was defunded by the federal government.
We had two AmeriCorps people that last year, through Wayne CAP, it was what that program was, and we had two people that were assigned to us last year that helped keep the Waterloo farmers market going. We had them go to the produce auction in Romulus with the Amish, and then the next day they would sell that produce at the Waterloo farmers market. We were going to do the same thing this year with the Ovid market to help them along, and so now we're reassessing how we might be able to do that down to people that would be able to normally do that.
Paul Szmal: Does anybody track traffic at the markets and how it's been doing over the last few years? There seems to be more and more interest in getting good, fresh, locally grown food.
Ave Bauder: Yeah, and that is the case. We've always had very strong markets in Seneca Falls. We can track emergency benefit, EBT stuff. In terms of economic impact, wow, especially Seneca Falls, admittedly the other two markets struggle a little bit more, but there are lots of people using the farmers market as a regular place to get their fresh fruits and vegetables.
Paul Szmal: It's also greenhouse time for a lot of people. My wife's going to do a greenhouse trip today, and the Master Gardeners are doing their plant swap at Oak Island. That'll be a week from Saturday, 9.30 to 10.15. Great chance to pull up what you don't need and bring home what you do.
Ave Bauder: Exactly. And this is very popular, and Tricia wanted me to be sure to tell everybody, set up is between 9.30 and 9.45, and at 10 o'clock sharp, everybody starts swapping. And it's done by 10.15, so don't get there late if you want to do this. If you don't have a plant to swap, but you want to pick up some, bring some canned goods that we then donate to the local food pantries. So nobody's left out. If you want to work on your garden this summer or this spring, you can go ahead and get some of those, but just if you don't have anything to bring, bring a can of beans.
Paul Szmal: Sounds good, and of course the Master Gardeners are ready to help you with your bug problems and your various rots and molds and whatever else you might be experiencing. We have a great, great group of Master Gardeners. They are really active, they're really excited. They've been doing a lot of stuff with the Seneca Falls, well it's in Seneca Falls, but the Seneca County community garden that Tricia also works on, our horticulture program person. They are doing a seedling swap as well, and they'll be doing, I'm sort of out of order from what I gave you, sorry, we were on the subject, and the Master Gardeners will be doing a container gardening workshop on Saturday the 17th from 9 to 11 at the Seneca County community garden.
I think we'll have some information about that on our website shortly, it isn't quite there now. There'll probably be a registration, there won't be a registration fee to my knowledge, and probably people can also just show up that day as well.
Ave Bauder: So when you're talking container gardening, are we talking about like putting things in little, like those little cardboard things and then putting them in the ground?
Paul Szmal: Yeah, probably the container garden is actually going to be, because they would be starting your seedlings and things, and we're probably past that point, even I can remember, I kill things quite regularly. But if you don't have space in the yard, if you're in an apartment on a second floor, you can put it in containers, especially things like tomatoes and all those sorts of things, so it'll work really well in containers, so that kind of container.
Ave Bauder: Now Cooperative Extension will be making an appearance at the Taste of Spring United Way fundraiser, and I'm sure Rhonda will be on to talk about that at some point in the near future. Thursday, May 15th at Del Lago, you've got Wagner's Blush Grape Juice. It's wonderful to work with our wineries, and actually the United Way reached out to us and said, hey, do you guys want to come this year? We haven't, gosh, we haven't been there since I've been there, and I'm not sure if before that we ever did, and we said, well, we thought about what we could do.
There are going to be lots of wineries, lots of breweries, those sorts of things, so we're offering a non-alcoholic alternative for anybody who wants that, and an ability to showcase Wagner Vineyards, one of our great wineries, and a great partner with us.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, I had a great time visiting them recently on the tour.
Ave Bauder: Yes, yes, the tours, and we worked out a thing with their grape juice, and it is, I've always said this before, it's wonderful to be the Executive Director of Cornell Cooperative Extension in Seneca County. I get to promote great wineries, great breweries, great produce, all those sorts of things. It's a good gig.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, very good. We have coming up the Outdoor Education Field Day. It's for Seneca County 6th grade students at Seneca Lake State Park. So what kind of education are they getting, and who do you partner up with to put this together?
Ave Bauder: This is a great program that has been running forever. This is our 56th annual. I can remember when I was in, at that point it was 7th grade, when I was a 7th grader at Border City School, Greg will know where that was, and I remember going to the Outdoor Education Field Day that was held at that point down near Sampson, and I think I wrote the winning essay for Border City, and got a subscription to Conservationist Magazine that year.
But any, long story short, we are now at Seneca Lake State Park, and we partner with a variety of environmental groups and agencies to teach 6th graders, every 6th grader in the county, about some outdoor skills and environmental things. For example, the Ontario County Soil and Water is going to be coming and talking about protecting your watershed as a workshop. What happens is we have stations. They run about 18 minutes, or 15 to 18 minutes, kids rotate through, and we try to emphasize that things are pretty hands-on with the kids, because they're 6th graders, and they don't need to be lectured to for 18 minutes.
Paul Szmal: That was the other thing I learned a whole lot about on the last Ag Tour, was dealing with water and preserving it and capturing it off the roof, and not dumping fertilizers and things into it, and all that farmers go through to do all those things.
Ave Bauder: Exactly, and this, they've got a great watershed model that shows all of that. It's like, okay, you put, this is what it should look like when it runs down, well what happens when you drop this into the drain, and you see it end up in the lake on the model. It's very cool.
Pollinators and Their Favorite Flowers by Petra Hafker. I think she's a student down at Cornell, actually. There was a connection we made when we did our annual Let's Garden Day, and she was doing pollinators and things, and we went, hey, this would be great. Pollinators are crucial, we've got bee die-offs and all of those kinds of things, you can't get fruits and vegetables unless you have somebody pollinating them, so they'll learn about pollinators, what are the best flowers, and actually they've got a cool exercise, they're going to have the kids act as the hummingbird, let's say, and trying to figure out how you're getting different proboscises, so they'll have to get water, but it's like, well one will be a long spoon with a little, and all sorts of things, it looks very cool.
The Finger Lakes Institute is doing an invasive species scavenger hunt, Seneca Pure Waters is going to talk about the Seneca Lake food web, everything from zebra mussels to lake trout and how that all affects the health of the lake, the Finger Lakes National Forest is doing Jeopardy, wildlife conservation-focused trivia for the kids, Trisha's doing Recycling 101, so we can talk about what can you recycle in Seneca County, how do you go about doing that, the Montezuma Audubon Center is coming to talk about the National Audubon Society, give them an introduction to that, environmental conservation officers are coming to talk about wildlife and environmental quality crimes and investigations that help stop poachers and polluters, and then Ryan Stachok, our environmental guy, but who is also the timber sports coach at FLCC, is going to bring his students to talk about timber sports, and everything logging.
Paul Szmal: I just replayed his talk with Walt Aikman. I heard that this morning, yeah, we were able to do that last week, it was excellent.
Ave Bauder: So May is here, I can't believe, you know, it's the old cliche, I can't believe it's already whatever time it is, but that means Celebrate, Commemorate, you're hearing the ads already, and that means the Culinary Tent on May 24th and May 25th, with a lot of education, of course the Junior Iron Chef Competition.
Paul Szmal: Yes, we will have the Junior Iron Chef Competition, if you've ever seen, if you're not quite sure what we're talking about, if you've ever seen Chopped and or Iron Chef, you get the general idea. We go out and we'll grab some, we'll probably have some local produce kinds of things, whatever is up there, it's usually, hi, what can you do with asparagus, because that's, or rhubarb, because that's in at that point, but, and then we get some of the food from some of the vendors, and say, okay, so how do you take this corn dog, and this asparagus, and make something that you would want to eat, and that is healthier than just the corn dog. We're looking for teams for that, middle or high school students who want to do that, and just get a hold of us at the office, and we'll get you set up, and that will be on Sunday from noon to four, that's the time block we have, so we'll, to do that, but we'll start on Saturday, get people kind of warmed up for the parade, that happens at 11, but we'll have the blender bike, making healthy smoothies, that's always fun. You can make your own breakfast, so to speak, and we are right in the center of Lafayette Park, you kind of can't miss us when we get going.
From 1130 to one, after the parade, we'll have dairy, milk, ice cream, butter, cheese, and yogurt, and we'll have some dairy samples, we'll talk about our dairy in the classroom program, our grant that we have, that we are, again, doing really cool trips with kids, we're coming into classes, talking to them about not only all things dairy, but it's like, well, what about dairy careers, what can you, we've had kids that have gone to go to see Pursuant's dairy down in Interlaken, and have walked away going like, now I know what I want to do, I want to be, you know, I want to work with cows, kind of thing, it's very cool, very cool.
One to two is we'll talk about our farm to school program, and I will take this opportunity to thank the school districts in Seneca County, because last year we were able to move from being dependent on grants to do the farm to school program, to each school district agreeing that this is an important program, there's a lot of great things that Cornell Cooperative Extension provides for us to give our students better meals that are more locally based, and in addition to all sorts of the other things we do, and so each district has now given us some of the money directly to make sure that we can keep doing this, we don't have to depend on where the money's coming, flowing from from above. That's how you know you're doing it right, when people step up and say, okay, yeah, we'll fund this.
Ave Bauder: Exactly, and actually, that is the way that places want to operate when they give you money, it's like, how can you make this sustainable, eventually, and each one of the school districts have been more than happy to do that.
Paul Szmal: So then, 2 to 3.30, we're going to do food preservation, or some of our master food preservers are going to do some examples of everything from how do you make freezer jam, to dehydrate things, they're working all that up, they just met to figure out what exactly they're going to do during that time, and then to end the day on Saturday, 3.30 to 5, we're going to do how to make baked goods more nutritious. So all those things that we've talked about before, you know, the beets, beet brownies, all of those kinds of things, we're going to be talking about from 3.30 to 5 on Saturday, and just before Iron Chef on Sunday morning, how to rethink your drink, all that, it's really amazing when you actually put all those sugar cubes into a glass to figure out how much was in your Mountain Dew.
So we've got a couple of minutes left, I've been catching up on all my news this week, so what's the latest with the redevelopment of the Willard property?
Ave Bauder: The latest on Willard is a couple things, A, the Willard Task Force continues to meet monthly, and also it's going to be, the Willard redevelopment is going to be the focus of the county's LDC that it just formed. I'm vice chair of that group, and actually we're meeting today and we'll be going over the highest and best use study and some of the other questions that some of the other members of the LDC had. What's looking right at the moment, the county has put in a request to the state to get ownership of the property, it's currently still under the ownership of DOCS, there was not a master developer that was identified when we did the RFP, what's now close to probably a year ago, and so the county is looking to get ownership of it, which will make things much easier.
Paul Szmal: Admittedly, that might be about a year-long process. There must be some things you have to show the state before that'll happen.
Ave Bauder: Yeah, that you're going to be able to, that you have a viable plan for what you want to do with it is basically it. And I think where we're going, where things seem to be going really is that retaining some kind of control ultimately over whatever development happens. There's a lot of good models out there of whether it's a municipality or a non-for-profit that has been able to, yeah, okay, we're getting the hotel built, but the hotel developer doesn't get whole hog on what they want to do with it. And so it's just a great site, then the highest and best use study I think points us to some really good directions from everything from housing, which is a desperate need in Seneca County, to the, you know, the resort on the lake that's going to bring in money and people and boost the economy.
Paul Szmal: All right, very good. Thanks for all the CCE updates and the economic development at the same time, and appreciate the visit as always.
Ave Bauder: Thank you so much, Ted, it was great to see you today.
Paul Szmal: All right, it's 8 55 now, FLX morning.
