Today marks the final day of the Mountaintop Summer Experience program! I am grateful to have had a lot of time to focus on the project and enhance the space. We faced a lot of challenges, but persevered. I am excited to get back in the fall semester and improve the space even further.

Continue reading “Week 10 MTSE Blog” →

1. Pathway
   1. This week, I expanded on the work of the pathway and completed half of the area surrounding the herb spiral. I did this by digging several inches into the ground to smoothen out and define an actual pathway. Afterwards, I laid down wasted cardboard that Julie and I retrieved from loading zones behind academic buildings, the bookstore, and Warren Square D. Finally, I laid down a thick layer of wood chips that have been sitting at our park for over a year. 
   2. We will be finishing the remainder of the pathway around the herb spiral and in the fall semester, we will be extending it down to the sidewalk. 

Virtual work 

1. Chipdrop 
   1. I found a service called Chipdrop that can fulfill service requests for wood chips. Julie signed us up and put in a request. We are hoping we can have fulfillment soon. I attempted to call Bethlehem Composting Center to see if they could also deliver any wood chips and they denied. If this does not work in the next few days, I will contact BrightView for a drop-off. 
2. Website 
   1. A lot of this week was dedicated to cleaning up the website. It is now much more navigable and content is way easier to find, as well as upload. With all the updates that were very much needed, wordpress is much easier to use and fix. I began to fix and revise the plant profiles and did a major revision of our main menu, adding more services, our partners, etc. 
3. Social media 
   1. This week, I handled social media. I developed all of the new posts and content as well as the interactions we had with audience members. Our mulberry tree post attracted interest immediately by an individual who is building a permaculture homestead at his new home. He picked up the tree this week! I also developed content for promoting the expo and for Earth Overshoot Day. Both brought in good traffic on our page!

Expo 

1. Thursday afternoon, we presented at the Lehigh Summer Research Expo. We had some really great conversations with some of our current partners, and we also met some new people that were very invested in our project. I spent a lot of time editing and fixing that poster, so I was very proud and happy to have received such incredible feedback from people. The expo really helped to bring people interested in environmental issues together. The relationships we made will be great for the future of this project and the feedback will truly carry us forward to make our project blossom. After the expo, we won first place for the best poster in the environmental sustainability category!

We made solid progress at the park this week. We first kicked off week 8 meeting with Jennifer Mack from the Penn State Extension. She provided us with some great input on how to carry the park forward aesthetically and productively. From her input, I began to carve out the structure for the pathway around the herb spiral. Starting here will be way easier and look better than in the middle of the grass. By the end of next week, weather permitting, the pathway around the herb spiral should be completed. 

 

Beyond the pathway, I carried through a lot of the general maintenance tasks that needed to be done. I worked a lot in the annual beds, putting more seeds down (corn), thinning out our new cucumber plants, and weeding A LOT. I also worked on pruning the tomatoes so there will be better growth and more of the plant’s energy will be focused on the fruit that is already growing. I also pulled a lot of snakeroot out of the herb spiral, sifted out the rest of the compost, and got fresh compost in the orchard, by the luffas, and scattered elsewhere. 

 

Last week it was extremely hot, making it difficult to stay outdoors past 11am. With that, the team worked a lot more virtually. I was able to dedicate more time figuring out how to navigate the website and the downloaded theme. I spoke with a web analyst and we tried to fix the site together, but it would keep crashing on us and nothing would upload correctly. He said that through all his years of work, this is by far the most difficult website he has ever worked on. This is extremely frustrating since we have a lot of material in dire need of updates and one of our major goals is to expand ourselves virtually so people can use us as an educational tool. Even when taking every correct step, there is a wall of failures. With the goal in mind, I will keep working on the website beyond mountaintop. 

 

Lastly, I read through more literature surrounding the policy of parks and green spaces in Bethlehem and began to upload useful information for future teams to use. From our Rodale trip during week 7, we received a pamphlet discussing the benefits of different plants and their healing uses. Several of the plants are already located at our park, but many others can and will be planted in our petal beds that we are working on redesigning. This content will be tremendously informative for the future as well as for the fall 2023 urban permaculture class.

This week was jam-packed with a lot of work at the park and filled with some great community engagement opportunities! During the front half of the week, the team did a lot of general maintenance on-site, splitting up a lot of the tasks. The second half of the week was very community engagement heavy, tabling at the Bethlehem Farmers’ Market and taking a field trip to Rodale Institute’s Annual Organic Field Day. 

Continue reading “Week 7 MTSE Blog” →

Week 6 MTSE Individual Blog

 

Coming back from Hawaii, I was very excited to see how the park was holding up and what progress has been made. I was happy to see so many annual plants flourishing and producing fruit! This week, I jumped back into a lot of hands-on work to help speed up the process of the park maintenance. 

Continue reading “Week 6 MTSE Blog” →

Week 4 MTSE

This week, I have begun my family travels to Hawaii for a destination wedding. With a time difference of six hours, it has been challenging to maintain consistent contact with the other team members, but we have been very active in communicating updates and progress reports on a day-to-day basis. Despite being away, I have been able to progress in some time intensive virtual work that will benefit the project. To learn more about the progress of the team, read here. 

While away, I have been reading heavy literature on all-things permaculture. Sepp Holzer, a very established permaculturist who has made the practice profitable, has a guidebook to how he scaled up his farm and how others can do so. Thus far, I have read through a lot of scientifically heavy informational content that will be helpful to practice at our park space and also to write about on our professional page. The content I am reading will hopefully help to enhance our website and media content and also be good tools for the development of our park. 

I am also in contact with two website designers that are strong-suited in using the WordPress platform. I will be working with them to learn about how to enhance our site aesthetically and also make it much more accessible via search engine platforms through improving our SEO. We will also be working with them to make the page much more user-friendly and readable, since a lot of the content is currently messy and dense for the common reader. 

Last week, we began discussing plans for writing a case study. After speaking with professor Jackson, she sent us several large case studies to learn from and use as models for our own. While I am away, I will continue to read and dissect these, as well as other content I am finding on local policy, community gardens, permaculture, etc. 

Lastly, during midweek the team received a disheartening email from Risk Management mentioning that the future of the Permaculture Park will be demolished. There is no definitive plan or date, but the property will be developed for further use by Lehigh. This is beyond frustrating, especially that Lehigh will be demolishing a student-led initiative that is for learning and community-building. To take away the park it is taking away an educational playground. I am horribly disappointed by hearing this and now we are so uncertain about the future steps we were envisioning to take to enhance the park space. We have been planning for a major redesign by including a pathway. This will require a lot of time, energy, and financial resources in order. However, if the future of the space will be no more, I am sincerely questioning if it is even worth investing all of these resources into the park space. This will be an uphill battle of figuring out the next steps of how we want to further progress with the space and the future of the project as a whole. Perhaps some form of action to petition development of the park can help to preserve the landscape, but the team is uncertain about how we will be progressing with this new information.

Week 3 MTSE Individual Blog

This week, I spearheaded several items on our large agenda which progressed very well. For one, I drafted up a substantial general plan for park maintenance and we executed everything this week. There were also several community engagement/ professional development items that we worked on throughout the week in meetings and as a team. To learn more about what we did this week as a collective, read here. 

Park Maintenance 

• We accomplished a great deal of maintenance tasks this week, ranging from building a lavender “hedge” at the top of the park to building terraces for plants to have better access to water. After last week’s research on if a lavender hedge would be effective for deer management, we decided to test out our optimistic predictions. We will be testing it out on only the top side of the park first to see how well the plants hold up in the climate and soil conditions. I am excited to observe the progress of the hedge and how it impacts the overall natural system and aesthetics of the park. 
• We also accomplished several other tasks including prepping our rain barrels for harvesting. This is an important tool and prime example of how we practice the principle of catching and storing energy. Our goal is to utilize as many natural resources as possible, and through harvesting rainwater we will be able to nourish our plants without using city water. 
• On a smaller scale, we accomplished several tasks including planting luffa seeds, improving the conditions of the three sisters garden, transplanting bushes, and sprinkling marigold seeds as another form of natural deer deterrent. We also began to map out our ideas for dissolving the petal bed structure and making the park much safer to walk around. 

Farmers’ Market

• Last week, I reached out to Deb Martin, head coordinator of the Bethlehem Farmers’ Market to plan a meeting with the team about obtaining a booth. This past Tuesday, we had a very successful discussion and layed out the dates for when we will be at the market. Additionally, Deb asked us to potentially table for local fruit farmers that were unable to find staffing for the market. She noted that there has been a high demand for more produce products, yet barely any booths are showing up to provide any for the Bethlehem community. With our help, we may be able to help provide nutritious fruits and vegetables to the community grown by local farmers, as well as spread knowledgeable information about permaculture!

New Bethany & Bethlehem Area School District 

• I also began to network with local organizations and institutions about potential partnerships with the park. As for New Bethany, they had a sinkhole in December that damaged their gardening spaces. With a lack of volunteers, we are planning to assist with the maintenance of the newly established garden beds. 
• This week, I also began to network with personal contacts who work within the BASD. Students are required to have a certain amount of community service hours in order to graduate. With a sincere need of extra helping hands at the park, we are hopeful that a partnership can be established so students can get credited service hours for helping us at the park! 

Research 

• As for research, I am very excited to begin taking a deep dive into literature surrounding permaculture philosophy, community garden space and policy, Bethlehem’s historic land history, etc. The team is determined to develop a case study talking about community garden spaces and how permaculture philosophy can be implemented, as well as policy within Southside Bethlehem as the demand for green spaces rises. Throughout the upcoming weeks, we will be using our team and individual blog prompts as tools to draft our case study. 

Looking Forward

Over the next two weeks, I will be working virtually due to a scheduled trip to Hawaii. Throughout that time, I will be diving in on understanding permaculture philosophy at a higher level, as well as understanding the critiques of the practice as well. I will also be researching the history of Bethlehem’s landscape, policies around community gardens, and drafting up ideas for the case study. I am also excited to begin breaking down and revamping our website, since a lot of the information is outdated and is in need of being reframed. We have decent website traffic, but we need to make sure what we are publishing is accurate and credible for people to learn from. Lastly, I will be (hopefully) trying to visit a permaculture farm in Hawaii to see how the philosophy is being actively implemented on a larger, profitable scale. Being able to see how permaculture is being used as a business model is a great tool for envisioning the potential future of our project. Also, noting any differences of using the design philosophy due to the difference in climate is worth actively checking out.

Emma Clopton 

Week 2 Blog MTSE

As we close off the second week of Mountaintop, I feel much more confident about the project as a whole. I feel like I have never had this much clarity about our goals and overall mission, which has made me overwhelmingly excited to begin the substantial transformation process of the park. To learn more about the team’s accomplishments from the past week, feel free to read more here. 

This week, we finalized a major plan for making the park more accessible to the community and creating a safe space for enjoying nature. We have designed plans for a pathway, a natural deer repellent “hedge”, converting our Hugelkultur mound into a raised community garden bed, and maximizing growing space by moving our seating area under shade and building a new Hugelkultur in the sun-exposed spot. This will require a lot of heavy lifting and work, but I am excited to be a driving force in this transformation and take responsibility for improving the space. 

Throughout the week, the team has done substantial research as to how to maintain the use of permaculture techniques while making changes the space. It has been really interesting to learn how natural systems work with and against each other and how putting certain plants or natural materials can make major differences. For example, while studying how to build the best Hugelkultur mound, I discovered a list of trees that are suitable for the mound. I would never have thought that a certain type of tree would make a substantial difference to the efficiency of the mound, but there is such a contrasting difference between every species. Additionally, learning about companion planting and how to best support pollinators while serving as a barrier to deter deer from strong scented plants has been such an interesting thing to learn about. 

One of the most profound aspects of personal growth I’ve experienced at the Permaculture Park is the recognition of my role as a caretaker of the Earth. The park has provided me with a platform to actively contribute to environmental regeneration and to educate others about the importance of sustainable living. The team often comes to me for guidance about park maintenance info and what to do, which has built my confidence as someone who is deeply interested in the science and philosophy of permaculture. I feel like over the course of the project, I have really aligned with the ethics and sustainable practices. I have always seen food as medicine and firmly believed that when nature is cared for, it will reciprocate with significant healing powers. Being able to have the opportunity to learn from the Earth and care for it while being a full-time student has been such a unique experience I never thought I would have in college. 

 

Emma Clopton

Project: The Southside Permaculture Park

This week has been incredibly productive as the Mountaintop Program has finally launched? I am very excited to see the transformative impact the Southside Permaculture Park will have on the community as we continue to transform the space and vision of the park. My team and I have been actively involved in mapping out plans for the duration of the Creative Inquiry Program, which you can read more about here. 

Returning to the project, we are faced with a significant maintenance challenge. Due to the severe drought, the park has been completely overrun by a weed forest. Unfortunately, we are unable to remove the weeds until we receive a proper rainstorm since they provide coverage for our other plants and help retain moisture. Additionally, during our two-week hiatus prior to the program, the intense May heat caused severe temperatures inside the greenhouse, resulting in the loss of many thriving seedlings. However, we are determined to salvage and recover as much as possible to ensure abundant yields during the summer and fall months.

This first week at MTSE has been particularly eventful for the SSPP project thanks to the heavy smoke that has affected the area. With hazardous air quality, the team had to put a pause on general park maintenance and recovery efforts for several days. In light of these unprecedented circumstances, we shifted our focus towards planning and conducting substantial housekeeping of documents and content dating back to the founding date of the park. We are now entirely reorganized and have improved virtual conditions for us and future teams. Furthermore, we have begun the process of analyzing our website, with a goal to better communicate our purpose and become a valuable educational tool for permaculture philosophy and urban agriculture/gardening. 

As we continue to plan out the project and cultivate new visions for the park, I am excited to be actively involved in driving the impact the permaculture park will have on the Southside community. My hope is that this park becomes an outlet for peaceful escape, learning, inspiration, nourishment, and play. I am aware that the park and program, as a whole, is situated on controversial land. However, our team is dedicated to working diligently to heal the wounds of the past and truly create a space that the community can take part of and call their own. My hope is that the park can foster inclusivity and the Southside community can finally feel recognized rather than pushed out from Lehigh’s expansion. 

On a personal level, I am excited for the growth and development that lies ahead as a student, individual, and “entrepreneur” as I further embark on this project. There are many opportunities for personal and professional growth that lies ahead. I am also excited to work on my strengths and my weaknesses, step outside of my comfort zone, and ultimately become a better individual. I am eager to tackle the challenges that may/will present themselves and embrace them as I continue to work hard to make a positive impact on the Southside community.