Hours per Week: 6 hrs during fall semester

Job Description:
The Sustainability Office is offering a paid Garden Internship to a qualified student starting in late-August 2014 until November 2014 (the end of the growing season). The garden intern will help manage and promote the one-half acre vegetable/herb garden and greenhouse on campus. This is a physically demanding, yet very rewarding job. Work includes exposure to outdoor elements (e.g., heat, sun, rain, etc.). The student intern is expected to coordinate and organize volunteers and student work parties. The Garden Intern will report directly to our garden manager (Beth Roy) and work in close collaboration with another garden intern and other Colgate students, faculty, and staff. The student intern will gain life-long skills and knowledge in harvesting and maintaining a garden, organizing events, and supervising volunteer workers.

Required Skills and Experience

Key Responsibilities:

• Work with garden manager (Beth Roy) to plan and manage the garden during the fall season. Specific tasks may include preparing soil, cultivating, planting, weeding, and harvesting.

• Organize and supervise volunteer work parties.

• Coordinate with Green Thumbs presidents to schedule a weekly time for volunteer work parties (usually for harvest, the day before pick-up), and be at the garden during those scheduled times to supervise those work parties.

• Provide continuity for work on the garden throughout the 2013 growing season.

• Prepare for and run a weekly Farm Stand to sell produce from the garden.

Recommended Qualifications and Skills:

• Strong work ethic and self-motivated.

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills.

• Preference will be given to those with experience and firsthand knowledge in farming and/or gardening with vegetable crops; though previous garden experience is not required.

• Experience organizing and supervising the work of others.

• Tolerance for hard work and exposure to outdoor elements.

• Excitement about promoting local farming and local food production

Work Requirements and Benefits
The garden internship position is rewarding but demanding work that involves physical exertion and exposure to the outdoor elements.

Starting Hourly Rate: Fall semester – $8.50/hour (estimated because Financial Aid determines pay rate)

Supervisor: Beth Roy, Garden Manager

Key Contacts: John Pumilio, Director of Sustainability; Christopher Henke, Associate Professor and faculty advisor to the garden; Beth Roy, Colgate Community Garden Consultant

To apply, send a resume and one page cover letter to the Garden Manager, Beth Roy (eroy@colgate.edu) and fill out an application on the Colgate Portal.

The application deadline is August 15. Employment will begin on or around August 25.

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On Wednesday of last week, Ben Rich ’99, made a surprise return to Colgate. He was on his way home to New Jersey from Rochester, NY.  But that’s not all.  Ben was on the final leg of an extended road trip that took him south through the mountains of North Carolina, then out to St. Louis, Chicago, and Cleveland on an electric motorcycle!  Ben was on the road helping to promote a new movie featuring his 2013 cross country road trip called Kick Gas (click here to view the website and movie trailer).

Ben Rich ’99 charging his electric motorcycle at Colgate.

As Ben was planning his trip, he found Colgate’s recently installed electric vehicle charging station on Plugshare.com and decided to stop by to “refuel.”  This gave him about 90 minutes to have lunch with members of the Sustainability Office and explore campus.

When Ben is not riding his electric motorcycle to far away places, he teaches physics at the Montclair Kimberley Academy and is a semi-professional swing dancer.  Find Ben on Facebook to follow these and his other upcoming adventures (hint: Harley Davidson recently contacted Ben inviting him to test drive their new electric model!).

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We held our first fabulous farm stand of the season on the evening of Tuesday, July 15th! The Colgate Community Garden Team as a whole would like to give a huge thanks to everyone who stopped by our stand on the porch of 104 Broad to take a taste of our chocolate chip zucchini bread and buy a few fresh veggies and herbs.  We are extremely grateful to have the privilege to connect the community to fresh produce from our garden.  The farm stand selection included zucchini, squash, peppers, radishes, peas, exactly one cucumber, and a few bunches of herbs.  We are happy to report every piece of produce sold.  Again, thank you to those who stopped by and gave their support.  We are looking forward to having community members over to the garden this fall to help harvest! Happy gardening!

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The Colgate Community Garden team would like to give a huge thanks to all the volunteers who have been coming by to visit and lend a hand in the garden.  On July 1st, interns and professors from the SOAN department spent the morning helping us paint the greenhouse and plant a flower bed next to our herb garden.  The extra sets of hands made the work fly by like a breeze, and we were happy to be able to give a tour of the space and show how its grown in the past few weeks. A huge thanks to department head Professor Chris Henke for putting the work party together!

We’d also like to thank Kathy Harold from the Hamilton Center for the Arts for reaching out to us to do a vertical garden project with the kids at the HCA summer camp!  We had a lot of fun teaching the kids about gardening in a small space, and loved hearing about their gardens at home. We used a pallet, landscaping fabric, and chicken wire to create a standing-up space where plant’s roots can roam.

This summer we are enjoying being able to connect with the surrounding community.  If you’re interested in visiting the Colgate Community Garden, keep an eye out for volunteer hours or send an e-mail to communitygarden@colgate.edu. Happy gardening!

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Colgate University’s ChargePoint charging station for electric vehicles on Colgate’s Lally Lane.

In case you are unaware, Colgate has a ChargePoint electric vehicle charging station on Lally Lane. Since installing the system, we have seen a steady increase in the number of electric vehicles on campus! I guess it is true, “build it and they will come!”

If you are a new electric vehicle owner, congratulations! Here are a few tips and basic rules of etiquette that we expect you to follow:

• Internal combustion cars (the old technology!) should never be parked in one of our electric vehicle spots. Never! If you need a charge and the spot is occupied by an internal combustion engine, leave a firm but otherwise nice note. Inform the occupier what they did (sometimes it is an honest mistake). Write down the make, model, and license plate of their car and give to Campus Safety. Let the car owner know that you did this and let them know that their car may be towed if it happens again.
• Charge only when necessary. If your battery is nearly full and you only have to drive five miles to get home after work, then leave the spot open for someone who may be in more desperate need. This best practice will likely benefit you someday.
• Charge up and move on! It is bad practice to occupy a charging spot after your car is fully charged. Once your battery is full (or you have enough charge to confidently reach home) then unplug and move your car as soon as possible. Most electric vehicles will add about 25 miles of range per hour of charging. Download the ChargePoint app. It will notify you by text or email once your charging session is completed. Now that’s cool. As a reminder, anyone can charge their electric vehicle on campus for free for the first 5 hours.  After 5 hours, it costs $2.00 per hour.  A good deal!
• Never unplug another car. Never! Unless, of course, you know the owner and have their permission.
• Treat the ChargePoint charging station with a little tender loving care! Carefully and neatly replace the cord when finished charging. Neatly move the cord out of the way and tuck it in so people will not trip on any excess length, or drive over it.
• Here are a few tips and a short video that explains easy charging.

Read more. Do you have any additional tips? Let us know in the comments below!

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With a new herb garden installed, plants in the ground, and a cover crop of buckwheat successfully sprouting in the back corner, the community garden has been progressing beautifully.  On June 18th, we held our first work party of the season.  Approximately 30 attendees helped plant herbs including chives, oregano, mint, and creeping thyme among others.  After an hour of work, we had nearly all of our paths mulched, the rows of tomatoes prepared with straw to hold in moisture, and the rock floor of the greenhouse weeded.  The event finished with a dinner including Oliveris pizza and a “potluck” salad to which community members added their own veggies and dressings.  We are so grateful for the assistance and enthusiasm provided by the volunteers and look forward to inviting them back to the garden for another event in the near future!

Click here to learn more about this event.

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Chances are you or someone close to you enjoys watching birds. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, an estimated 47 million American’s birdwatch (making it one of the most popular pastime activities in the country). Take a walk through the Colgate forest on any given spring or summer day and you will notice that our trees are alive with some of North America’s most beautiful songbirds: warblers, thrushes, grosbeaks, tanagers, indigo buntings, orioles, and many others.

Chances are you or someone close to you enjoys drinking coffee. According to the National Coffee Association, over 600 billion cups of coffee are consumed each year making coffee the most popular beverage in the world. Take a walk through Colgate’s offices on any given day and you may notice the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Students in Prof. Chris Henke’s Fall 2012 Community-Based Study of Environmental Issues (ENST 390) conservatively estimated that we (students, faculty, and staff) consume around 350,000 cups of coffee each year at Colgate. That’s a lot of coffee.

At this point, you may be asking: what do birds have to do with coffee? The answer: plenty! The songbirds breeding in our forest often winter in Latin America, the same region where most of our coffee comes from. In recent decades, millions of acres of tropical forestlands have been converted to industrial coffee plantations. These huge monocultures provide us with the inexpensive coffee found in our homes, offices, and restaurants but they have destroyed millions of acres of tropical bird habitat in the process. This is one of the reasons why many songbird populations are in decline.

In the mid-1990s, I participated in a long-term field study in the West Indies where we compared the biodiversity between industrial “sun” coffee plantations vs. more traditionally grown “shade” coffee plantations. We discovered that while shade coffee plantations produce about 30 percent less coffee (making shade coffee slightly more expensive), they contained about 90 percent more bird species when compared to sun coffee plantations. The coffee plant grows naturally under the canopy of native trees. As a result, shade coffee plantations can mimic an intact, ecologically functional forest that supports numerous plants and animals. I was amazed at the vast number of “our” songbirds that spent their winter in shade coffee plantations. Some of the individual birds we were tracking had returned to the same shade coffee plantation for nine consecutive winters!

The American Redstart breeds in the Colgate forest and winters in Latin American coffee farms.

Since those days, shade-grown coffee has become more popular and thousands of acres of coffee plantations have been reverted back to the more traditional method of growing coffee under the canopy of other trees. This is not only good for birds, but produces a higher quality coffee without all the chemical applications necessary in a monoculture.

So, if you want to support bird conservation while also enjoying your morning cup of joe, there is something we can do. Buy shade-grown coffee! You can purchase shade-grown coffee from many outlets including your local grocery store including Hamilton Whole Foods, Roger’s Environmental Education Center here in Sherburne, or order online from Birds & Beans. Look for the “Bird Friendly®” seal of approval from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center to help assure that the coffee you choose meets Smithsonian’s rigorous certification standards. And, if your office has a Keurig machine, you have the option of purchasing a reusable “My K-Cup” and filling it with your favorite shade-grown, bird-friendly coffee.

Hope you always enjoy the songbirds in our forests and the coffee in your mug!

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