On February 2, I attended the Northern Indiana Grazing Conference in Shipshewana, Ind. I went because Sarah Fleck was giving a workshop called the Art and Science of Grazing. She has a farm in Northern Vermont and is a consultant for grazing farmers. Her particular expertise is working with 100% grass-fed animals.
Every three years, I take a class of Goshen College students to the plains and mountains of northern India to study the ecological foundations of human sustainability and the stress that modernity puts on them. It is a place of unparalleled diversity, density and beauty.
Carol Good-Elliott and Katie Stoltzfus of Merry Lea’s Environmental Education Outreach Team spent February 7 and 8 visiting Kinderforest programs in Tennessee and Georgia.
“Nature journaling is about noticing: colors, where the moon is rising, the contour of a leaf or antler,” Carol Good-Elliott told the dozen people who attended Merry Lea’s nature journaling workshop February 2.
Students in Merry Lea’s Master’s in Environmental Education program discuss vexing social problems in their Environmental Issues and History class. They prepare presentations on topics like micro-plastics and nuclear disasters. All the same, students say they find hope in the course.
In December 2018, John Mischler and I attended the Perennial Farm Gathering hosted by the Savanna Institute in Madison, Wis. The Savanna Institute is a non-profit organization that supports the development of restorative, savanna-based agricultural systems.
Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College hosted the Michiana Regional Seed Swap January 19 at Goshen High School, Goshen, Ind. Despite snowy weather, eleven vendors, over a hundred guests and thousands of locally adapted seeds came from as far away as Indianapolis and South Bend.
Children at the Goshen College Lab Kindergarten are now participating in monthly kinderforest sessions similar to those that happen at Merry Lea.
Merry Lea’s master’s students encountered the complex science and muscular equipment behind the flush of a toilet January 9. The visit to Goshen’s Wastewater Treatment Plant was part of an environmental issues course taught by Dr. Joel Pontius.
Mandira Panta, a junior sustainability studies major from Kavre, Nepal, chose Goshen College partly because she wanted a liberal arts education. In her country, it is typical to plunge directly into a specific field, but Mandira wants a future that includes both science and social science perspectives.
