Cover photo / banner: Bobolink by Chris Neff
“Do you know that your tailgate is down?” Deb kindly chuckled as I hopped out of my truck. “Ugh, no, but that’s just the type of morning I’ve been having” I said sheepishly. I couldn’t believe I drove from Glen Gardner to Oldwick with my tailgate wide open! I proceeded to apologize to Deb for being 15 minutes late to our site visit; my young daughters were having an emotional morning before school, and I was waylaid tending to their needs. “Oh no!” Deb responded, “well, I picked you some strawberries.” She handed me a container full of the sweetest little wild strawberries, their vibrant red faces glowing in the sun. I immediately felt better. “Thank you so much! I didn’t eat any breakfast,” were the first jumbled words out of my mouth. Deb promptly offered me an energy bar, which I politely turned down. “Well, you can munch on those while we drive to the site in the workman,” Deb replied. She knows that I’m a working mom, and as a mom herself, she gets it.
As I gratefully ate my berry breakfast, Deb drove us through her property towards her neighbor’s place, pointing out all the new happenings and progress in her woods and along Cold Brook. Deb and her husband, Jason, run Cold Brook Farm, where they practice permaculture, grow organic grains and live a net-zero energy lifestyle. They have been restoring their woodlot and section of stream without the use of chemicals, and work tirelessly to combat invasive plants and restore native plant communities. On this particular day, we were visiting one of Deb’s neighbors, who has a hayfield with a robust breeding population of bobolinks, which is a threatened species in New Jersey. The bobolink’s breeding populations are imperiled primarily due to mowing, haying and other disturbances in fields where they nest in the spring and early summer months. Deb’s neighbor was looking for solutions to protect nesting bobolinks while also allowing haying to continue in the fields. Deb knows my interest and history working in grasslands and invited me out for support.
Deb and I toured the site with farm staff and walked though pristine hayfields to a cacophony of bobolink song. The calling was constant and steady, and the birds were busy, almost frantic. It reminded me of my morning! On our way back, I recalled how I had started this visit, slightly crazed, rushing and stressed, and how that had completely gone away. I felt corny thinking about the revelation that folks like Deb are why I do what I do, but then I realized that it couldn’t be that corny if it was true. Its not just the work and the wildlife, but the folks you get to know in private lands conservation that keep you going. You grow relationships over time and come to know them as people, and they get to know you too if you let them. And when you need it most, they show up one morning with a container of strawberries and turn your whole day around.
By Celia Vuocolo, Stewardship Project Director
