Layered Bed Near CMN Greenhouse - by Lloyd Frieson

Layered Bed

     In this particular area we exercised layering newspapers, weed tops, top soil, compost and manure. We began prepping this area by clearing away all of the weeds and grass. Second, we soaked the ground really good before laying the newspaper on the wet soil. Third we cut the roots from the weeds and began placing the weed tops on the newspaper. Laying out the weed tops evenly will ensure equal soil distribution. Next is a four inch soil and compost mix. Level out the soil to the best of your ability or to your plan and have your starter plants ready for bedding. The best time to transfer plants is in the morning or evening, when the sun is not as hot or at its peak. Doing this will reduce the strain on the plants as you begin to introduce them to their new home. Once you have placed the plants where you want them, make sure to water them to give them a sort of boost.

Plants in the bed consist of Yellow Sweet Corn, Mohawk Beans and 1,000 year old Squash.

In the dark brown area in front of the bed is a row of carrots 

A Day In The Internship - by Lloyd Frieson

Lloyd Frieson

6-15-12 ( Oneida Farm )

It was 6/15/12 on the Oneida farm and was very excited to finally get to visit a place where I had only heard about through hearsay and my uncle who works there. The day was pretty basic, we had to feed and water the chickens, cows and plants. I helped worked on a hay baling machine and chased an escaped baby cow for two hours. The hay machine was bought at a very low price and the staff was wondering why these people sold this piece of equipment so cheap? We found out why when they started the machine and tried to make a bale of hay. The machine started smoking and making a high whining sound. They raised the back of the machine where the hay bale is deployed and we seen why the machine was so cheap. All of the belts that rotate the hay into a bale were crossed. Looking at the machine with this kind of malfunction was sobering but it only looked hard. With the loosening of three bolts we were able to realign the belts and the machine worked perfectly. Fixing this machine took a little time but we gotter done. It was a half hour before lunch and I got to seed corn. This is when the corn that has been dried and is now ready to be processed by removing the kernels and placing them into a bucket to be washed and later packaged. This is Oneida’s main product. Grabbing a corn cob and twisting your hands like you were giving someone an Indian burn was the easiest way of cleaning the cob. When picking a corn cob there were some that had blotches on the kernels, those kernels were discarded along with the cob in a completely different bucket. I forgot to ask what they did with the bucket, if they fed these kernels to chickens or did they completely throw them away. I will have to remember to ask them about the waste when I return later this week.  I had a chance to observe their plant beds and how different they were from each other. One of the areas for example was flat with weed guard and holes for the seeds in the top. I asked, what was the purpose of this technique and does this way solve your problem of erosion because the area was on a slight hill?  One of the workers answered that this was just the layout that was suggested and did not know if it was designed for combating erosion. I explained why I asked that question, because I seen raised beds in between the rows that looked like they had been used the year before and they were pointed in a different direction. Besides the flat crop bed there were a couple of other beds, one was a three-sisters garden which contained about seven mounds and the other was a tobacco garden that had twenty plants. I had the honor of watering these beds for one of my tasks of the day. I asked Jeff Metoxen, if they were planning to use composting as a system of fertilizing the plants? He replied he really didn’t know if they were but if I had some ideas I could share them with him and he would try to make composting part of the farm duties. As we were fixing the hay baling machine I noticed that the corn, Oneida’s money maker, was not doing well at all. I asked if they had a plan just in case no rain comes this way because the corn looked really dry. One of the workers said that they would call the fire department and use the truck to wet the crop down. I am guessing that doing so would cost a great deal of money and that the farm would want to stay away from spending. We returned from lunch and it is time to water the cows again because it was pretty hot that fine day. One of the workers had turned off the live wire to move the cattle and all went well except for a new born calf that was only a day old. This little calf ran between the wires and headed for the highway, at least that’s we thought. We were running around asking people did they see a cow on the road and we got some real funny looks from most of the people. I even flagged down an officer of the Oneida Police Department asked if any calls came in concerning any livestock, he smiled and called it in and still no one saw anything. All of this running around and worrying that this baby calf was going to get hit by a car or even killed made us look even harder. The reason no one seen this calf is because when the calf crossed the street into the bushes, we assumed that it kept going, the calf stopped as soon as it got in the bushes and was lying there watching us scamper around whooping and hollering. It was probably thinking, weirdos. My uncle found the little lady lying in same spot she went in. That was a big relief. We got the calf back to her mother and all was well so we thought. As we approached the chicken coop, there were twenty chickens dead of heat exhaustion. Earlier that day a hawk spotted a chicken that looked wounded and was circling the coop, stirring up the other birds. An organic chicken is about fifteen dollars per bird and all of those chickens were already sold to someone. The chickens looked as if they were trying to get out of the sun because they were all in the shadows of the cooler and along the fence line. I know the boss will not be pleased. This wraps up my report for day one at the Oneida Farm.

About Deidre and the Water Quality Internship

My name is Deidre Ann Wolfe.  I am 29 years old and the proud mother of an amazing and beautiful girl named Nevaeh Boyd and the significant other of Jerred Caldwell. I am also a member of the Lac Courte Orellies Ojibwe Nation.  I have obtained associates’ degrees in pre-nursing and biological sciences from College of Menominee Nation (CMN) and am currently working on a bachelor’s degree in education.  My current goals and intentions for my educational journey are to provide the best life I can for my family and to work for a Native American tribe.  My teaching goal is to help inspire Native American children to reach their full potentials and continue on into higher education.  I also want to incorporate my love of sciences into my teaching and open up children’s eyes to the possibilities, creativity, exploration and opportunities that science brings. 

Continuing on with my education has opened many new doors, challenges, successes and triumphs into my life.  I am honored and appreciative of the fact that my newest educational opportunity was receiving a summer internship through the CMN Sustainable Development Institute.  I was granted the Water Summit intern position.  This position is the second half of an internship that was initially completed by Ben White in 2010.   Ben helped coordinate and plan the Great Lakes Land Grant Tribal Water Resources Summit. The purpose of the summit was to: identify priority tribal water resource issues of the Great Lakes Area Tribal communities, develop collaborations to address the priority issues, and to increase the understanding of potential resources to address the issues and increase the understanding of the cultural importance of water to tribal communities.  In addition to the summit, Ben also conducted a Great Lakes Tribal Water Resources Inquiry in order to, according to the Great Lakes Tribal Water Resources Inquiry Executive Summary, “obtain information that related to water resource issues and determine appropriate paths to develop relationships between the 1862 Land Grant institutions and Tribal Colleges as well as leverage research resources to address water resource issues and improve tribal water quality.”  I now have the privilege of working alongside Ben to complete the second half of the Water Summit internship.  We will be researching and compiling information of water resource related materials pertaining to local Native American communities to promote a better understanding Tribal water quality issues.  We will create a research poster and presentation of our findings combined with information from the Great Lakes Land Grant Tribal Water Resources Summit and the Great Lakes Tribal Resources Inquiry.  We will then travel to the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota and the Bay Mills Tribal/Community College in Michigan to present our information obtained.

My personal goals for this internship are in the areas of Community involvement, public speaking and learning more about water quality from a Native American Community perspective.  I am looking forward to stepping out of my comfort zone to build up my communication skills and become more confident in my public speaking.  I also want to become more involved with in environmental issues in my community, and this is a remarkable way to introduce myself to the coordination, planning and presentation of issues important to Native communities.  I am also excited to learn everything I can from Ben White and everyone in the Sustainable Development Institute.  I appreciate this opportunity and know it will be an amazing experience.

About Ben and the Water Quality Internship

Pictured: Ben White talking with Arthur "Butch" Blazer, Deputy Under Secretary, USDA

Photo captured 06-06-12

My name is Benjamin White, l am a decedent of both the Menominee and Stockbridge Munsee. I am currently studying nursing, and would like to finish my degrees in biological and physical science, and sustainable development after completing the nursing degree. I enjoy gardening, sailing, skiing, boating, volleyball, and playing with my basset retriever.  Last year I had the privilege to travel to china and study mandarin for a month, this opportunity offered me the chance to observe how other cultures view and utilize their environment as well the challenges they face. This trip also provided firsthand knowledge of geography’s impact on cultures.

My expectations for the internship are to use the information collected at the summit to deliver water resource information in a culturally pertinent format. I expect to research and compile information on the tribal water resource issues identified at the summit, and develop management and educational material through the lens of the local tribal cultures. Native people realize their lives as being connect closely to the world around them.  I anticipate this knowledge will bring exciting challenges and insightful epiphanies.

My goal of the internship is to have a beneficial impact on the knowledge base of youth and adult tribal community members as it pertains to their water resource needs. My goal for the communities is to understand more about how water is impacted by the actions of humans and how that translates to the everyday activities of those who interact with it. A goal for me is to learn more about the best practices in educating other native people in the field of science. It is my view native persons instinctually view the world in a more holistically and thereby will benefit from educational material developed in this format.

I foresee this internship encompassing further research-identified water resource concerns and developing appropriate curricula for tribal communities. My other responsibilities will include working wand sharing information with the other intern Deidre Wolfe. I am excited to work with Deidre to learn more about traditional ecological knowledge and have the chance to share the information I have had the privilege to learn. I am also excited to have the opportunity to visit other tribal communities and gain firsthand knowledge of these geographic areas and attributes of these areas effects on the environment.

About Lloyd and the Gardening Assistant Internship

     Hello, my name is Lloyd Frieson, aka Boobie. I was born in Chicago, IL in 1970 and was raised in Mobile, AL from 1976 until 2004. In 2004 I moved to the Menominee Reservation to get away from the humid heat and mostly this is my mother’s home. I began gardening at the age of twelve years old and have been doing it since. My father’s father was the one who introduced gardening into my life. He would come by every Saturday morning and it was expected that the grand children help in the family garden. I did not want to go work the garden the first year but my father was pretty strict about following the orders of your elders. After awhile the plants began to sprout and bloom and something inside of me lit up spiritually.

     Receiving this internship for the summer is a great opportunity to try different methods of gardening and finding out new information on growing crops. One of my projects I am now working on is maximizing the least amount of area to raise crops. I have made a twenty foot strip by one foot wide and have planted corn, squash, beans and peas. Soon I will introduce some sunflower plants and some herbs into that same area utilizing the total area for foods. My ambitions will be that this area of 20’x1’ will create a wall of vegetation. I am also working on another project that will involve the high school students and clearing out the CMN design by the water tower. I will also be traveling to the Oneida farm and gathering information on how they are sustaining their crop yield. As I understand I am to work while I am there to get some hands on experience which will be great. These are considered valuable teachings and I will treat them as such. The Creator has gifted me this opportunity to be the best I can be. I will also like to talk to some elders on how gardening was back in the earlier times and document those meetings for reference. I would like to thank the SDI board for giving me this opportunity to grow in a field that I am really passionate about.