Penn Soil RC&D Council

Tourism: to increase tourism opportunities for our region, we co-hosted and planned the 7th annual nature art showcase & sale event, to recruit a record number of 76 artists and display 142 art pieces representing the natural and recreational assets of northwestern pa, through diverse media, which were displayed and available for sale. We also helped to secure a new host organization for the warren county winterfest event, a family friendly winter festival to provide recreational opportunities with winter sports and help raise funds for the salvation army. We completed a project to raise funds for the development and installation of a storywalk trail along a popular hiking trail in chapman state park. A storywalk trail is a way to combine physical activity with literacy; this may seem like an odd mix, but it's an innovative way to get people of all ages out walking while reading children's picture books. Pages of a book are transformed into signs that are then laid out on a trail inviting families, children, caregivers, teachers and others to follow the path of pages. We also partnered with the allegheny outdoor club to reprint interpretive signs in need of repair along self-guided nature trails at timberdoodle flats recreation area in the allegheny national forest and the big bend recreation area at kinzua dam. The purpose of our work is to utilize available natural and historic resources within our region to improve tourism opportunities and the local economy.

Economic development: we partnered with the association of warm season grass producers to conduct a marketing campaign that highlights the economic and environmental benefits from usingwarm season grass and how using these alternative crops adds to the sustainability and profitability of Pennsylvania's farms and farm communities. Warm season grass performs better than traditionally used materials such as bedding straw or sawdust for example. The association of warm season grass producers launched a marketing campaign throughout Pennsylvania's farming community to educate and promote the many economic and environmental benefits of warm season grass usage, will help farmers begin using warm season grass in their farming operations, will develop a catalogue of growers and sellers in each county in Pennsylvania, and will present the project's marketing results and grass producer's catalogue to the farm community. The project was so successful that we developed a second phase of the project to design and build a mobile poultry bedding processing machine that could be demonstrated and used on multiple farms for producers to harvest and produce retail packages of poultry bedding for small scale producers. We also served as a fiscal agent for the toy shoppe of warren, pa senior citizen volunteers who produced 1500 handmade wooden toys and distributed them free of charge to disadvantaged families and children's service providers in our region with funding support through grants and donations we received for the project.

Soil and water conservation: we hosted several public educational meetings for livestock producers to help them manage their grasslands more effectively to improve Soil health and profitability of their farming operations. We also provided consultive assistance with livestock producers from a paid consultant and numerous educational presentations to help producers better understand management of stockpiled grazing forages and management of their animals. The results of this effort will increase opportunities for private landowners to manage their lands better, protect the environment, improve water quality management, and increase economic returns from their lands. We also partnered with the association of warm season grass producers to raise funds and implement an on-farm field trial of improved warm-season grass varieties. This project will evaluate the establishment and yield of new switchgrass and big bluestem varieties on three separate farms in Pennsylvania. This will include measurements of seedling density, mid-season sward heights, and fall biomass yield. Promising new varieties of both switchgrass and big bluestem are being released with greater yield and greater disease resistance. Little is known about the performance of these new varieties in the Pennsylvania ecoregion. Because re-establishing perennial grass fields can be slow and risky, this project proposes to evaluate the early sward vigor and biomass yields of six new varieties. These variables will be evaluated using a strip-plot design with two replicates per farm on three farm fields provided by members of association of warm season grass producers. We partnered with the us forest service to advance the study of carbon modeling in forest management studies in pa and md. We also partnered with the central electric cooperative to provide support to improving rural fire protection network through installation of two dry hydrants in ponds for volunteer fire departments in our area to increase emergency response time. We also partnered with the conewango creek watershed association, warren county conservation district, western pa conservancy, and pa dcnr to conduct a clean water day event at chapman state park where volunteers helped clean up chapman lake and learn more about protecting our natural resources.

Project grass chapter support - we provide technical assistance in support of carrying out an information and education program to promote the benefits of grazing management