Round Lake Campus - Greening & Sustainability

www.roundlakecampus.com

A Conversation

with Peter Bullock, Director of Round Lake Campus You come to NCSTreetops with an impressive background in education and program development. Can you elaborate on your past experiences and how they will inform your role here as the director of Round Lake Campus?

Before NCS-Treetops I developed education programs for 13 years at Shelburne Farms. Primarily I worked with visiting elementary and middleschool students and their teachers, and directed summer camp for ages 6–17. My highlight each year was always several week-long overnight programs. With a passion for farm-to-table experiences, I developed two outdoor classrooms Organic Roots Winter 2018

that included open hearths, bio-char stoves and compost toilets for day and residential programming.

Since I came to education through studies in environmental issues and human ecology, I gravitated toward the constructivist theory of learning. In essence, we construct knowledge based on our prior and current experience. Vine Deloria Jr. sums this up by observing, “We may misunderstand, but we do not misexperience.” In practice this means a subtle shift in teaching; instead of discussing a topic like food webs or local agriculture, we play hide and seek or set out to make pizza from scratch.

Engaging visiting schools at the Eileen Rockefeller House will allow for that same process to unfold. The result is that we don’t merely learn

about the concept and stories, we participate in them and are shaped by the experience. These activities also pull us together: the dough team has their hands full, separating wheat berries, grinding flour, and working with yeast. It is with relief and admiration that the cheese, sauce and toppings teams arrive with similar handcrafted products.

There is an individual dimension along with a community-tending dimension.

At Shelburne Farms I also taught preschool for seven years, worked with colleges, mentored college graduates and interns, supervised up to 20 staff, served on the organizational development team, and for four years chaired the safety committee. Having previously worked with farm-based, non-profit, and for-profit subsidiary ventures

Establishing relationships with likeminded thought leaders, educators, and institutions is the most significant step at this point. That’s the reason an introduction from an alum is so helpful, because we can identify talented people to offer new programs. In the coming years we can then look to offer programs off-campus and even world-wide.

under one umbrella, the challenge and opportunity of adding Round Lake Campus to camp and school feels exciting yet familiar and comfortable.

In the last four years I was inspired to take all the good that I had experienced teaching outdoors and see it flourish in schools. I joined the Renaissance School as curriculum specialist, followed by interim head at Vermont Athletic Academy and again at the Bellwether School.

This gave me more exposure to progressive education philosophy, strategic planning and facility management. Along the way I’ve started three nature mentoring programs and assisted with a fourth at a weekly forest school. All the time I was looking for a very wild and very human learning ecosystem to live, work and raise a family—we found it here!

What drew you to NCS-Treetops? Can you describe your experience living and working on campus?

I wanted to be part of an organization that had thoughtfully balanced its needs with access to the wild and was committed to sharing that balance with the rest

of the world. It also helped that in 2001 I came to NCS-Treetops as a delegate from Shelburne Farms on a tour of best practices in the region.

We are blessed to be able to move into the Farm House. Michelle has been our stay-at-home parent since our first daughter was born; Marie is now six years old. We also have JJ, our 3-year-old son, and Annabelle, our 10-month-old daughter. Marie is now a first-grader at Keene. Michelle grew up in Pennsylvania, became a teacher, and fell in love with directing summer camp at Camp Greylock for the YMCA. She also directed after-school programs for the Y. As a family we love camping trips to state parks, day-trip bike/ swim combos, and hiking. It has been a blast to get out and about together.

Working here allows us to stay a one-car family, with inviting trails to connect to RockE, or a short bike on the road. For the last two weeks of summer I made a point to walk out to camp and easily the rest of the day would be pollinated by inspired staff, neighbors, campers, and new friends.

What is one of the most significant steps in the development of new programs?

How will this new programming connect to the mission of Camp and School?

At its core, Round Lake Campus allows for the tone, tenor, and feel of Treetops and NCS for the past 100 and 80 years, respectively, to continue.

Part of the work will be to update the mission statement, and its center will be the sentiment shared

by Helen Haskell to restore what city and suburb have removed for our children and our communities.

Walter Clark’s intention to underscore what is most important will be in there too: how we feel about ourselves, our family, other people, other animals, our work, the place we live, our planet, the stars, sky and universe.

For visiting children, students, adults and families this will mean farm animals to care for, sand and earth to dig in, trees to climb, grass to roll in, a garden to tend, and woods and fields to explore in all seasons. Farm to table and environmental science will be staples. It will all distill to an experience of what is wild, what is human, and what is the balance at the heart of the six-million-acre Adirondack Park. Visitors can bring home this balance and begin to restore city and suburb from within.

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H A R V E S T W E E K E N D AT R O U N D L A K E C A M P U S Programs at Round Lake Campus kicked off in early October with “Harvest Weekend.� The event invited participants to take in the season by visiting local farms, trekking up local peaks, and sharing farm-to-table meals prepared and served at the Eileen Rockefeller House, or RockE. Brooklyn-based chef Alissa Fitzgerald (NCS 95) offered cooking lessons and also planned a menu of seasonal fare, including NCS turkey, chicken, lamb, and a cornucopia of vegetables.

Participants also enjoyed local honey, milk, cheese, and figs from other regional producers, like Juniper Hill Farm and Sugar House Creamery.

Other highlights: hiking up Jay Mountain, Pitchoff, Balanced Rocks, and Whiteface; yoga sessions with artist and filmmaker K. Tyler Johnston (NCS 93); canoe missions across Round Lake for fresh farm eggs and salad fixings; a tour of the NCS-Treetops drum composter; and roller skiing on the access road to Mount Van Hoevenberg. Of particular note, participant Moses Weintraub became a 46er during his stay. The group celebrated with homemade chocolate cake and dinner with esteemed guest Andrea Henkel Burke, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and eight-time World Champion in the biathlon.

Photos: Cornell University students at Harvest Weekend; view from RockE guest bedroom.

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PINGRY SCHOOL AT EILEEN ROCKEFELLER HOUSE: An Environmental Field Course

By John Crowley-Delman CTT 90-93, staff 95-99, 15-16

Looking at this photograph of Natalie Lifson as she cradles a week-old piglet, I see true joy. Her eyes express a special sense of wonder that comes from connecting with another living being. I see empathy, kindness, love—sheer delight.

The photograph reminds me of moments captured by Barbara Morgan in Summer’s Children some six decades ago. And it reminds me of a moving encounter with fellow creatures that I had as a camper on a Treetops France expedition. Our counselors, affected by the suffering of two

cows trapped in a river current above a mountain waterfall, orchestrated a rescue operation using our climbing rope as a lasso.

These are moments that arise from a North Country School and Camp Treetops Education. I wanted my students at The Pingry School in New Jersey to experience them too.. That’s why three Pingry colleagues and I worked with NCS teachers and administrators to plan the first-ever “short program” at the Rockefeller House in February. The six-day environmental field course, “Winter in the North Woods,” built on the strengths of both schools. Pingry supplied environmental history, environmental science, and environmental art teachers for the effort, while NCS

Pingry supplied environmental history, environmental science, and environmental art teachers for the effort, while NCS lent a farm educator, farm-to-table expert, sustainability guru, and forester.

lent a farm educator, farm-to-table expert, sustainability guru, and forester.

Through the lens of their respective disciplines, these teachers guided students to consider an essential question: How does a community live sustainably—and thrive—in the heart of the largest park in the contiguous United States?

The NCS farm and forest served as our laboratory. Pingry students participated in barn chores most mornings and afternoons. NCS children mentored them as they learned how to care for chickens, pigs, and horses. John Culpepper led a tour of campus sustainability initiatives and taught a lesson on the new, creatively engineered composter. Katie Culpepper guided students as they tapped a maple tree

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and witnessed the first sap run of the season. Carter Rowley explained that today’s maple harvest owes a debt to foresters who thinned the sugar bush a half century ago. To complete the circle of stewardship, he guided Pingry students as they each felled a non-maple, competitor tree with a hand saw.

To foster an appreciation of the school’s place within the larger context of the Adirondack Park, students participated in “challenges by choice” outside the property lines—a visit to a local dairy, snowshoeing on the Ausable River, a climb up Balanced Rocks after a fresh snowfall.

Meanwhile, the Rockefeller House became our classroom and home. Each afternoon, students and teachers prepared dinner together—often with meat, vegetables, and herbs raised on the school farm—and Molly Pytleski and Katie Culpepper facilitated discussions about farm-to-table philosophy around the dining-room table. Before bedtime, students and teachers met in the living room to reflect on the day’s activities.

Though fun, these experiences weren’t always easy. Students were expected to give to the community by working on

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the farm. Instead of snagging prepared foods in the Pingry cafeteria, they cooked their own meals and cleaned up after themselves. Natalie had to grapple with the fact that the sausage she so enjoyed at dinner had come from an animal like the piglet she had played with during barn chores—a hard lesson of the working farm.

Pingry teachers simply can’t offer such experiences on our home turf, and our students took their new lessons to heart.

As eighth-grader Chris Ticas said, “The way North Country School is reducing its carbon footprint and impact on the environment gave me an entirely different outlook on how Pingry can change.” Upon returning to school, he and others presented their recommendations at an all-school Earth Day Assembly.

“Winter in the North Woods” was the first course of its kind at the Rockefeller House. My hope is that it will serve as a model for the expansion of the programming that North Country School and Camp Treetops already do so well— intentional education deeply rooted in the natural world, fostering empathy, and developing emotional well-being.

WASTE NOT:

photos: Audrey completing her compost work job; measuring the internal temperature of the compost.

HOW INNOVATIVE COMPOSTING IS CHANGING THE NORTH COUNTRY & TREETOPS LANDSCAPE

By Becca Miller

It is 7:15 on a grey morning when three students push open the wooden door below the Main Building kitchen.

They are there to retrieve eightgallon buckets teeming with apple cores, eggshells, chicken bones, and other assorted scraps from the previous day’s meals. In many places, these leftover bits of food would be tossed into the trash, but at North Country School and Camp Treetops, the concept of treating waste as a resource is woven into the fabric of everyday life on campus.

Since we opened our doors more then 80 years ago, our community has been doing its part to ensure leftover organic matter does not join the tons of garbage headed to landfills each year. But it is only recently that that process has become an innovative venture with impact on the greater community. When Director of Facilities and Sustainability John Culpepper received a grant from New York State to build a more efficient composting system than the previous one, which involved turning open piles, he believed that our campus could both improve our own procedures and provide a model for other similar-sized organizations.

The new system—a rotating drum designed to fit inside a 40-foot shipping container—has transformed a process that once took up to eight months into one that produces nutrient-rich compost in just 25 days.

The dramatically reduced timeline has allowed NCS/CTT to be able to take in food waste from other businesses and events around the North Country,

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reducing trash production in our greater Adirondack Park and helping to preserve the natural integrity of this majestic place. To date, NCS/CTT has produced 28,222 pounds of compost with the new system, with an anticipated 32,000 pounds produced by the end of the school year. This process will aid in the reduction of both landfill waste and the amount of methane gas released into our shared atmosphere when the organic matter in those landfills decomposes.

The students assigned to the compost job for this chore rotation push the garden-cart loaded with buckets down to the compost shed. There, they add wood pellets to the scraps before loading the mix into the 20-foot-long plastic drum. As they take temperature readings, switch on the rotating machine, and collect the final, earthy product sifted out of the opposite end of the drum, they are active participants in the system of converting waste into nutrient-rich amendment. This will be applied to our gardens, feeding the seedlings that will become next year’s

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SINCE WE OPENED OUR DOORS MORE THEN 80 YEARS AGO, OUR COMMUNITY HAS BEEN DOING ITS PART TO ENSURE LEFTOVER ORGANIC MATTER DOES NOT JOIN THE TONS OF GARBAGE HEADED TO LANDFILLS EACH YEAR. meals. And our students and campers are involved in every step of the process, able to leave this place carrying with them the knowledge that what they may have once considered waste is in fact a life-giving and valuable resource.

Reading the Landscape: Forest Management at NCS & Treetops

By John Foppert

“Reading the Landscape” is a synopsis of a talk given by John Foppert and Director of Facilities & Sustainability John Culpepper at Friends’ Weekend 2016. To read the institution’s forest management plan in its entirety, please visit “Farm and Garden” on the NCS website.

To understand the forests growing on and around North Country School and Camp Treetops today, and to consider what these forests could be in the future, it is useful to look back over the history of the land. And that story, the story of the land here, is long and deeply layered. page 19 Organic Roots Winter 2017

An ancient granite bedrock remained flat for ten million centuries before being thrust up—rudely, but so beautifully—to form the Adirondack High Peaks just twenty million years ago. Again and again, milethick glaciers plowed through the land, grinding down mountains, filling in valleys, and then feeding shifting rivers and short-lived lakes as they retreated. Soon the first seeds blew in, adding shades of green to the newly exposed landscape.

In the past dozen or so millennia, since the last glaciers left, a growing cast of characters has fought for

space here. Birches were joined by spruces and then hemlock, other hardwoods, and pines. As the climate warmed or cooled over the centuries, or as it grew wetter or drier, the mix of trees in the forest shifted, and with it the suite of other plants and animals. In places—at the base of Trouble Mountain, for one—the soil grew increasingly rich, as leaves and dirt tumbled down steep slopes. Elsewhere, layers of sour muck slowly built beneath swamp conifers growing on deep, wet sands or in abandoned, silted-in beaver ponds.

To this ever-changing environment, add ice storms, hurricanes, landslides and windstorms, and a clear picture emerges of an ongoing ecological drama not bound for any concluding stasis.

There was, of course, one player who provided a plot twist. While Iroquois and Algonquin hunters, trappers and warriors, and those who came before them, must have had an intimate knowledge of the Adirondacks, their effect on this rugged borderland was far less than it was in the St. Lawrence and Mohawk valleys. Even the opening of early roads and the establishment of frontier industry in the early 19th century had only a limited impact. Substantial, landscape-scale change did not begin until the 1840s, when farm families began to settle the region in earnest and mines, forges and charcoal kilns popped up everywhere.

The stagecoach line from Westport, on Lake Champlain, to North Elba (Lake Placid) opened in 1858, running right in front of what would become Camp Treetops and North Country School. The Farmhouse, built around this time, still stands, having watched a century and a half of traffic pass by. The Big Barn, which now shelters the horses, was originally built to accommodate an impressive herd of dairy cows. Much of the land was cleared by the late 1800s, with the more easily worked bits cultivated for cropland and the rest—too steep or rocky to plow—kept as pasture.

The fire that swept across much of the High Peaks in 1903 burned Porter, Cascade and Pitchoff Mountains, among others, and may have charred portions of what would become the NCS-Treetops property. Within ten or fifteen years of the fire, the property was heavily

logged again, though most of the fields were allowed to grow back up with trees.

Mountains, glaciers, climate, soils; clearing, farming, fire, logging: these are the factors that had shaped the land when Camp Treetops acquired it in 1923. The young forest went mostly unmanaged, slowly growing and changing but largely unnoticed, other than as an attractive backdrop. The hurricane of 1950 and the ice storm of 1998 mostly missed the forest here, but the effects of acid rain, beech-bark disease and climate change have not.

Over time, a number of people have worked together to consider the challenges and opportunities of owning more than 150 acres of diverse forestland and to explore how thoughtful management can contribute to the well-being of the community . In the early 1990s, Director of Sustainability and Facilities John Culpepper put forth a plan to manage the forest in a more intentional, sustainable way. Board Member Sumner Parker (NCS 41, parent 77-82, CTT 37-40, parent 73-79, trustee 77-present) led the board’s support of John’s conservation plan, which was made possible by the generous support of donors like Bob deCourcy (CTT staff 42, parent 55-65) and The Baldwin Foundation. Today, North County School and Camp Treetops are recognized by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation as a leader in the area of sustainable forestry.

This past year, a new forest management plan was developed, building off earlier efforts. It defined overarching goals for the forest—fostering ecological integrity, enhancing recreational and education opportunities, and sustainably producing wood and maple sap—and prescribed specific management activities to accomplish them.

At the heart of the management strategy is the recognition that the landscape is dynamic and always changing. With care, we can steer that change in a positive direction, working to keep the landscape healthy, biologically rich, ecologically dynamic, and

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Reading The Landscape: Forest Management at NCS & Treetops naturally beautiful. The forest should be attractive, accessible and conducive to reflection and exploration, which is especially important for the curious children (and adults) of School and Camp. At the same time, we can garner wood for building projects, carbon neutral biomass energy for heat, and sweet maple syrup. When the forest can provide these things today without compromising its ability to provide them in the future, that’s sustainability.

When the forest becomes more diverse, complex and resilient, not in spite of but as a result of providing these things, that is true stewardship.

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Dr. Michael Farrell completed a master’s thesis on campus in 2003 titled “North Country School/Camp Treetops Appraisal and Recommendations for the Forest and Natural Resources”. Dr. Ken Baker led a Treetops Expedition in 2006 titled “Baseline Ecological Data for Developing a Forest Management Plan for North Country School of Lake Placid, NY”. Dr. Baker’s work provided the basis for our first forest management plan, which was developed in 2007 by the Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks (Dan Gilmore, Forester). NCS and CTT’s second forest management plan was adopted in 2016 and is written by John Foppert of Pekin Branch Forestry.

Photos, top to bottom: our woods before sustainable thinning; 2016 sign designating NCS and CTT as a nationally certified tree farm; our woods after sustainable thinning

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