With another summer wrapping up, it’s time to say farewell to the fantastic summer students who joined us this year and reflect on the past three months.
Even though Emma and Connor only joined us for the summer, they were a huge part of the team and jumped straight to action! Starting during week one, they hit the pavement and began our annual door-to-door campaign, chatting with residents about farmland protection and sharing farmland stories. Over the course of twelve weeks, they knocked on 569 doors, which resulted in 211 fantastic conversations. Emma and Connor were also the face of Ontario Farmland Trust at 22 farmers’ markets around Southern Ontario. They invited people to share their farm stories and get excited about local agriculture. They brought a passion for farmland protection and an unceasing sense of humour to every market they attended and every day in the office. We wish them all the best as they move on to new adventures!
Summer is also the season for site visits here at Ontario Farmland Trust. Every year we visit each of our thirteen easement properties to ensure they remain permanently protected. It’s also a wonderful opportunity to visit the properties we’ve worked hard to protect and see how they progress each year. Some of the highlights from this year’s monitoring visits are: trudging through a surprisingly swampy forested area (it was a wetter summer than usual but it’s hard not to laugh when you’re ankle deep in mud), gazing over rolling fields of crops, meeting a friendly barn cat, and hearing the song of a field filled with bobolinks. Each site visit serves as an opportunity to remind us of why we do what we do.
With our site visits behind us, we’re looking forward to a busy autumn conducting ecological assessments on some of our current easement projects and preparing for our 2020 Farmland Forum.