Monitor Extra September 30, 2023

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to ConcordCityCouncilorStaceyBrownas councilmembersErlePierceandByron Champlin look on as Bricchi shows off the new food pantry at the Merrimack Valley Learning Center on Washington Circle Child Care llc NE-379131

By MICHAELA TOWFIGHI Monitor staff

In acloset atthe MerrimackValley LearningCenter, teachers used tostock food items forstudents tobring home totheir parents.The makeshift pantry was an acknowledgment fromstaff that several students and their familieswere livingwith

food insecurity. Through apartnership with NewHampshire Food Bank, the ad-hocpantry has becomeofficial, offeringfresh and non-perishableitems for studentsand familiesofboth Merrimack Valley Learning Center, and CSI Charter School.

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closet for thestudents to take home fortheir families.We often received phonecalls from parents that greatly appreciateditand didn'thesitateto reachout whentheyneeded more,” saidKen Fuller,the principal atMerrimack Valley Learning Center,an alternative school for middle and SEE PANTRY 2 Home Away From Home 41 Goboro Rd., Epsom (603) 736-3393

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Debunking The Myths Around The CBD Industry

In May 2019 , the first ever NH-based retail location for Florida-based company SunFlora selling CBD (Cannabidiol) products under the SunMed brand was opened in Concord NH by Rick & Laurie Smith . “ Since opening in Concord 4 years ago, we have served more than 25,000 plus customers ,” Smith says. I can’t even put into words what we’ve seen as far as results from our customers. Our very first week, I can remember seeing customers come in 5, 7,10 people at a time with various issues and seeking information and a place to tell their story of what they were fending off .

“We open at 10am and we would pull up to the storefront to see customers waiting at the door, and we stayed open well past our closing time so we could accommodate everyone “

may help treat the symptoms of cancer or the side effects of cancer treatments.

MYTH 1: CBD ONLY COMES FROM THE MARIJUANA PLANT AND IT WILL MAKE ME HIGH .

Smith : You can get CBD from a marijuana plant but it’s going to be low in concentration.

The highest concentration of CBD and other Cannabinoids comes from industrial hemp .

The marijuana plant is high in tetrahydrocannabinol or THC , and very low in CBD . CBD is not mind altering. You cannot get addicted to it . CBD interacts with the body very differently from THC. It does not produce a “ high” .

MYTH 2:

ALL CBD IS THE SAME.

Our products come from a Colorado farm certified by that state’s Department Of Agriculture. We also use third party testing . We bounce all our products off the harshest critics.

Many companies do not show that transparency with third party testing. When we have tested other companies products we find trace amount of chemical solvents in the plant matter . We’ve seen this in many products on the market.

In a recent UCONN study , Smith said 100 CBD products pulled off of the shelves at health food stores , gas stations, vape shops , and online sites less than 67% tested out properly.

“Our approach is simple at YOUR CBD STORE “ said Smith . Education is first and foremost, when our customers have been educated on CBD properly they will then feel comfortable enough to shop. “

hemp sourced from USDA-regulated farms, and even passing the grueling test of becoming one of the first USDA organic and kosher certified products on the market are just some of the ways we have stayed true to our customers. Although the industry hasn’t called us to stand up to such rigorous standards We feel it’s a necessary standard and future benchmark that all CBD companies should have to stand up to .

Learn more about how CBD can possibly help you or a loved one by visiting N.H’s Flagship Your CBD Store located in Concord N.H.

According to the FDA website, “ This is the first FDA - approved drug that contains a purified drug substance derived from marijuana….. CBD is a chemical component of the Cannabis Sativa plant, more commonly known as marijuana “ and the website for the National Cancer Institute of Health, says “ Cannabinoids

SMITH: The fact is, industrial hemp is the correct plant to extract CBD from . Where in the plant it is extracted and the process used effects the quality. Extracting it from the flower provides the highest concentration of CBD. Many companies extract it from the seed or the stem which is an easier and cheaper process. We regulate everything from soil to oil.

It goes without saying that not all CBD products are the same,” Smith said . Our Policy is transparency and excellence. Consumers deserve to get exactly what they pay for and we want to teach our customers what to look for so that they can feel confident and get consistent results when finding their way with CBD. Double lab testing, proper extraction in an FDA registered lab,

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Some of the Your CBD Store customers who believed in the product so much actually decided to open their own store.

“We’re now the largest brick and mortar CBD outlet in the world “ Smith states “with 500 plus locations in the US and stores overseas’

New permanent Penacook pantry

high schoolers. “This food pantryallowsus theabilityto continue tosupply thesefamilies throughout the entire year.”

As Fuller began to clean up aroomjust offtheschoolgym used to store supplies, he noticed thatthe tiledfloors and electrical outlets could serve a better purposethan storage space forforgotten items. Now equipped with a refrigerator,freezer and threestorageshelves, the spaceis hometo theschool’s food pantry.

Inthe fridge,freshvegetables, saladkits andeggs are available. Oats,pasta, rice, pancake mix and milk linethe pantryshelves. When students come tothe pantry, they can leave with a full meal that has allthe ingredients, said Tracy Bricchi,the Penacook representative on the Merrimack Valleyschool board.

A lotof timeswhatwill happen isif theyget boxed macaroni and cheese,if fami-

lies didn't have milk at home thenwhat wouldtheydo? They’dmake itwithwater. That would beterrible, she said.

Bricchi knowsthe needsof students in the school district.

For 35years shewas aneducator, spending over two decadesin theclassroomin Merrimack Valley. As a young teacher, she never thought thattherecould beacatch-all reason asto whya student wasn’t paying attention in class or lashingout. Now, she realizesthat oftentimesthese students were just hungry.

At the time, food insecurity wasn’t commonly talked about within schools.While working at CSI Charter School, Bricchi started a localchapter of End 68 Hours of Hunger, a national nonprofit that addresses food insecurity in schools.

The 68 hours represents the time betweena student’s last meal in school on a Friday afternoon and thenext available on Monday morning. One in six householdsin New Hampshireare facingfoodinsecurity, according to the New

Hampshire Food Alliance from the Universityof New Hampshire. Most of these households have children.

Althoughthe localchapter has since ended, the pantry will continuethe workBricchi started yearsago – bringing awareness to childhood food insecurity.

“The morethat wecan bring itforward foreverybody to talk about,it’ll only make things betterfor allthe kids here," she said.

Through the partnership with New Hampshire Food Bank, Fullerwill beable torestockthe pantrythroughan online portal. It’s like placing a grocery order, he said.

A donation of backpacks to the school willalso allow for students to bring items home.

The pantryopening coincides with Hunger Action Month, a national campaign fromFeeding Americaeach September. Throughoutthe state, eventslike theConcord Police Department’s Stuff a Cruiser drive on Sept.15 and 23, willbenefit New Hampshire Food Bank.

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A debate on how often to mow

Pollinators or pristine lawn? The decision is getting complicated

Ihave a confession to make: I really like the look of a mowed lawn. But I’m trying to kick the habit.

I know the classic suburban lawn has the ecological value of a parking lot, that the model of a weekly-mowed monoculture contributes to the alarming decline of butterflies and wild bees and other pollenspreading beasts, and that keeping our yards pristine wastes water, fertilizer, time and fuel for noisy machines. Messy is better when it comes to ecosystems, even small ones.

But when I do get around to mowing my yard, reducing my haphazard non-monoculture to a level height, I think it looks a lot better. I’m not sure if this is because of my suburbia upbringing or some ancestral memory of the East African plains where humanity evolved, but I m definitely not alone.

“People like their lawns. I totally get it,” said Dr. Susannah Lerman, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern

Research Station, who admits to kind of enjoying cutting the grass. “You start something, you finish something, you get to see the result. It’s satisfying.”

But she, like most ecologists, knows that we have overdone our worship of flat, green spaces surrounding our homes and would like to see us dial it back.

Lerman knows because she led a 2018 study about the frequency of law cutting. She and other researchers cut the laws of 16 homes around Springfield, Mass. on three schedules – weekly, every other week, every three weeks – and then studied the results for plants and bugs. They found that waiting two weeks to mow instead of doing it weekly resulted in a significantly higher pollinator abundance but that waiting three weeks didn’t improve it mostly because a lot of our natural pollinators are tiny, as small as a grain of rice, and tall grass can hide small flowers.

The study also confirmed people’s preferences for their surroundings, if confirmation was needed.

SEE LAWN 3

The great pollinator mowing debate

“When we’d come to the house after three weeks, the householder would run to our car while we were still getting the mower out, saying I m so glad you’re here, my neighbors were getting upset and offering to come over and mow the lawn!” she recalled.

I thought of this research because of a story last week out of Somersworth via Foster’s Daily Democrat. It concerns a woman who has been ordered to cut her lawn since parts exceed the town ordinance height of 8 inches. The ordinance is taken from the International Property Management Code, a set of guidelines adopted in part by many communities.

This section of the code says “premises and exterior property shall be maintained free from weeds or plant growth in excess of (jurisdiction to insert height). Noxious weeds shall be prohibited.

Weeds shall be defined as all grasses, annual plants or vegetation, other than trees or shrubs provided; however, this term shall not include cultivated flowers and gardens.”

Violators can be fined or, depending on the community, the town can cut your lawn and charge you for it.

Concord has also adopted this part of the code, setting a height limit of 10 inches. Code Administrator David Hall says he knows of no enforcement against any homes, and only one issue with a business that was not maintaining their landscaping. That issue was resolved with a letter.” Note that this doesn’t cover private homeowner associations, which are infamous for their Draconian approach to making everybody’s lawn an interchangeable green mat.

A decade ago, the Somersworth argument would have been a slam dunk in favor of

lawn-mowing but things have changed. There is growing concern about the decline in pollinators and increased awareness about our surroundings as the climate turns feral, while droughts out West are contributing to the anti-green-lawn trend.

You may have heard of “no-mow May,” a push to leave lawns alone for a month when many bugs are hungry from winter, and about creating “pollinator gardens” with a mix of local flowers, which are often not very showy and go under the general title of weeds, to attract native bugs.

Most people, however, still like the look of lawns consisting entirely of short grass of a single species that stays green in winter (meaning it’s probably not native here).

They argue that this look preserves property values and keeps out ticks, rodents and weeds. Peel back the arguments, though, and you’ll find

they’re based on “I like the way it looks.”

For their part, pollinator fans argue that we’ve gone way overboard in making our properties look pretty. We’ve turned vast swaths of America – NASA estimates lawns cover 49,000 square miles throughout the country, about five times the area of New Hampshire – into herbicideladen wastelands.

That argument is gaining sway. The state senate in Maine, for example, recently passed a law that seems to undermine town ordinances about grass height, saying communities cannot put an unreasonable limitation on low-impact landscaping if the property owner owns or has the right to exclusive use of the property and maintains and regularly tends to the low-impact landscaping.” There are exceptions that I suspect will generate a lot of arguing. For her part, Dr. Lerman is delighted with the new attention to lawn ecosystems but fears it can go overboard and

generate too much pushback. “For no-mow May, the intent is lovely but what I’ve heard it changing to ‘Oh no May’ , ” she said. “This summer with all the rain we’ve had, lawns are going crazy, and no-mow May kind of boxes everybody in.

She argues for “reducing maintenance throughout the entire growing season” and increased tolerance for something other than Kentucky bluegrass or whatever commercial seed type you’ve spent big bucks on. Variety is the spice of ecosystems.

She also says that signs help. Putting up a beefriendly” notice or the like lets neighbors know you re not a slob who avoids yardwork. You’re making an active choice for your property.

That argument is echoed by Donna Miller of Canter-

bury, a Master Gardener who serves on the Pollinator Garden Certification committee. She notes that the certification includes a number of conservation practices, some as simple as leaving clippings on your yard when you mow, but most are concerned with creating areas of plants favorable to native pollinators.

One possibility, Miller said, is mowing by stages – mow a bit this week, another bit next week and so on, so that it never looks entirely ragged but still leaves time for small flowers to grow amid the grass. Another is to tidy up the front yard but leave the back yard wild. She s even got a name for that last one: mullet gardening. “It’s business in the front, party in the back!” That’s my new motto. I’m not mowing, I’m mulleting!

HOMETOWN HERO

From birds to blooms

Warner’s Susi von Oettingen built an impressive career helping save endangered species

By SRUTHI GOPALAKRISHNAN Monitor staff

Susi von Oettingen is always on the lookout for endangered species. Take her to a river, and she ll look for mussels. Bring her to a wetland at dusk, and she ll watch for bats in the sky. On a sandy beach, her focus shifts to scanning for plovers along the shoreline.

“Every time I spot endangered species, it puts me in a happy place,” said Von Oettingen, a retired endangered species biologist who formerly worked with the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service. “It’s just such a great feeling to know they’re out there still, and that people are protecting them. I just get this warm and fuzzy feeling.” Von Oettingen, a Warner resident, began her career in biology nearly four decades ago, sparked by her fascination with frog development during her high school years. At the age of 27, she began her professional career as a botanist before transitioning into the role of an endangered species biologist. She focused on protecting and recovering species like the piping plovers and roseate terns, a bird recogniz-

able by its white body and black head.

She has earned recognition as a 2021 Recovery Champion for her leadership in the recovery efforts for the roseate tern population in Northeastern North America.

“I love roseate turns because they are just beautiful and delicate and tough to try to recover,” said Von Oettingen. Over the years, she has contributed her expertise across five different states, collaborating with various wildlife agencies. Her illustrious career culminated in her retirement in February, having served as the Northeast regional point person based in the Concord office for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

FORESTER/ Monitor staff

Biologist Susi von Oettingen looks up at a canopy of trees where the sun canshine onthe smallwhorled pogoniathatinhabit herback yardin Warner onWednesday, September 6, 2023.As a perennialmember of theorchid family, the small whorled pogonia,it grows in both New Hampshire and Maine. SEE

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Warner Hometown Hero spent her career helping endangered species

One of Von Oettingen’s notable achievements was her pioneering work alongside her supervisor from New Hampshire Fish and Game. They were the first to discover piping plovers nesting and successfully initiated protective measures at Seabrook Beach and Hampton Beach State Park, employing the use of fencing.

However, these efforts were not without their challenges. Von Oettingen often found herself in tense situations and even faced threats from individuals who opposed the installation of fences in economically important and frequently visited areas.

“I think my biggest challenge was just facing people and it’s just not one incident but it was year after year, month after month,” said Von Oettingen. “We didn’t have the training that we do now for negotiation.”

Reflecting on her early

days in the field in 1985, Von Oettingen remembers that there weren’t many women who were endangered species

biologists. It was a male-dominated field, she said. “It was challenging to be a woman and accepted as an

equal and that was before we knew about inappropriate behavior in the office,” explained Von Oettingen.

“But I am so grateful that things have changed in that because so many women have entered the field.”

As she enters the next chapter of her life, Von Oettingen remains dedicated to her cause. She will continue to volunteer in monitoring plants, bats, and roseate terns

because that’s where her heart truly lies.

“It’s a tough field but if you’re passionate about it, it’s not a tough field,” said Von Oettingen. “I’m still learning to listen and not be polarized. You have to work within the law, but look for common ground.

GEOFF FORESTER PHOTOS/ Monitor staff