Extension Update: April 2008 Archives

Congratulations to Val Long, Extension Specialist, emeritus, on her election as the new board chair for HNH Foundation. Val is currently the coordinator for the NH Food Stamp Nutrition Education grant, as well as an adjunct professor for the NH Technical and Community College.

The HNHfoundation's mission, which the foundation seeks to fulfill through its grantmaking process, is to help nonprofit organizations and agencies working to evaluate and promote access to quality health care insurance coverage. The Foundation was formed as a result of the merger between Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New Hampshire and Matthew Thornton Health Plan.

The latest issue of the Journal of Extension (JOE) continues to offer excellent resources, including an article on Building Wealth Through Ownership: Resident-Owned Manufactured Housing Communities in New Hampshire. One of the authors is UNH Cooperative Extension Associate Professor/Specialist Charlie French, along with UNH Associate Professor, Resource Economics and Development, Kelly Giraud, and Sociology Professor Sally Ward.

JOE expands and updates the research and knowledge base for Extension professionals and other adult educators to improve their effectiveness. In addition, JOE serves as a forum for emerging and contemporary issues affecting Extension education, and the latest issue is no exception.

"UNH - Sea to Sky: Research to Outreach" is a statewide event for all staff to learn about new programs, gain new knowledge, improve skills and interact with colleagues. The focus of this year’s conference is the current research taking place at UNH. The date is May 19, and the place is the Memorial Union Building on the UNH campus in Durham.

All staff are invited to participate in this professional development conference and I anticipate your full involvement that day. You can register at the conference Web site now.

Our keynote speaker will be Gary Hirshberg, chair, president and "CE-Yo" of Stonyfield Farm of Londonderry. For the past 25 years, Gary has overseen Stonyfield Farm’s phenomenal growth, from its infancy as a seven-cow organic farming school in 1983 to its current $320 million in annual sales.

A New Hampshire native, Gary has won numerous awards for corporate and environmental leadership, including Global Green USA's "1999 Green Cross Millennium Award for Corporate Environmental Leadership." He was named "Business Leader of the Year" by Business NH Magazine and "New Hampshire's 1998 Small Business Person of the Year" by the U.S. Small Business Administration. Gary’s company seeks to deliver a product with a purpose (organic yogurt for healthy people and a healthy planet), not unlike UNH Cooperative Extension’s mission to deliver a product with a purpose (education to improve the lives of New Hampshire citizens).

The Awards Committee is preparing special presentations at our lunch session, including the Maynard and Audrey Heckel Extension Educator Fellow Award. Plan to arrive in plenty of time for check-in and refreshments, the registration table opens at 8:15 am outside the Granite State Room of the MUB. The conference starts promptly at 9 am and concludes at 3:45 pm. Lunch, and an ice cream social during the raffle of our beautiful baskets at the end of the day, are all included.

We ask all staff to complete the online form even if they are presenting a workshop or are excused from attending the conference. We are offering eight dynamic workshops in the morning and five inspiring tours in the afternoon. Space is limited in several of the tours, so sign up early to get your first choice. Workshops and tours are on a "first come, first served" basis.

Register by May 8. Please pay special note to the parking information and a map on our conference web site.

The UNH Bookstore will again offer all conference participants a 10 percent discount on books (non-textbook), clothing, and gift items if you are wearing your Extension name tag.

Special thanks to the Conference Planning Committee for its excellent work in designing this educational and fun-filled event. Members are Wendy Brock, co-chair, Sue Cagle, Darrel Covell, co-chair, Tim Fleury, Michele Gagne, Lynn Garland, Gail Ramsey, Thom Linehan, Deb Russell and Holly Young.

Those large green heads of broccoli familiar to most of us are actually newcomers to the vegetable world. Broccoli looked a lot different before plant breeders in the mid-twentieth century selected for large, uniform heads suited for commercial production. The parent plants of modern broccoli produced many small shoots, rather than a single head. Many varieties were also biennial and required a cold treatment, or vernalization, before making sprouts.

In England, heirloom sprouting broccoli varieties have increased in popularity in recent years. Traditionally planted in late summer, they grow very slowly during the winter months. When temperatures start climbing in February, the plants start to grow again and produce prolific amounts of small purple florets on long, bright green leafy stems. Unlike broccoli rabe or rapini, the shoots are mild-flavored, even sweeter than typical broccoli. These shoots are harvested from March to May, when other fresh local vegetables are in short supply and high demand.

So if it can grow in England, why not in New Hampshire? Our winters are more severe than those in England’s mild maritime climate, but Dr. Becky Grube, UNH Cooperative Extension Sustainable Horticulture Specialist, thought these varieties might do well here if given a little protection.

To cope with a short growing season, many of our farmers and gardeners already create warmer climate zones by constructing low-cost, unheated greenhouses (called high tunnels) or cold frames. Grube’s research results this spring? Delicious! She has shown that purple sprouting varieties can overwinter successfully in unheated greenhouses in Durham and produce very early spring crops. She is evaluating which varieties do best here, and what growing practices are best for the crop. Most taste-testers are eagerly waiting for more shoots.

Currently, seeds of these varieties are available from only a handful of companies (Thompson & Morgan, Bountiful Gardens, to name a few), but Grube expects that to change as their potential here is demonstrated (and New Hampshire growers clamor for more seeds.)

Shown in the photo are Purple Sprouting Broccoli 'Claret' overwintered in a tunnel, ready for harvest in April.

Volunteer NH! and NH Governor John H. Lynch invite you to attend the annual Governor’s Conference on Volunteerism, May 13, at the NH Technical Institute in Concord.

There's still time to register for the conference, which features an exchange of best practices, professional development training and inspiring new ideas from New England's leading practitioners. Over 30 dynamic workshops will be offered for all levels of volunteer management.

Presenters from Cooperative Extension include:
4-H Youth Development Educators Larry Barker, Debbie Cheever, Nancy Evans, and Kathy Jablonski. Also presenting are Wendy Brock, 4-H Program Leader, Ann Reid, coordinator, Great Bay Coast Watch, and Marcy Stanton, NH Master Gardener Coordinator. UNH faculty and staff presenters include Kathleen Grace-Bishop, director of Education and Promotion at UNH Health Services, Lisa Ciccotelli, program coordinator with the UNH Office of Community Service and Learning, Kate Hanson, Associate Professor at Thompson School of Applied Science, Ginger Hobbs Lever, adjunct faculty, Daniel Innis, Dean, Whittemore School of Business, and Erika Mantz, director of UNH Media Relations.

An added feature to this 25th annual conference is a partnership with the StarMight Foundation. The 2nd Annual Youth Conference will run concurrently. Keynote speaker for the youth will be Divine Bradley, executive director of Team Revolution, a non-profit organization he founded at the age of 17.

Registration is $65 and the deadline is May 2.

New, more useful links and resources have been added to the UNH Cooperative Extension Civil Rights web page.

Take a moment to review our Civil Rights policies, the responsibility of all Extension employees. USDA plans a Civil Rights audit of UNH Cooperative Extension in August.

May is right around the corner, and that means the annual 4-H Foundation Golf Tournament. On May 16 at Canterbury Woods Country Club, my team will be playing in the newly-renamed Tom Fairchild Golf Tournament, Friend of NH 4-H. Many of Tom's friends are sponsors and I invite all of you who enjoy golf, whether a beginner or fine tuned player, to come and join this great cause. The 4-H Foundation has set a goal to raise $30,000 at this event. If you aren't a golfer, you might enjoy the silent auction. For the first time, the auction will start on-line beginning in early May. You may learn more about the golf tournament and auction by visiting the new 4-H golf tournament Web site.

For more information about the Tom Fairchild Golf Tournament, Friend of NH 4-H, contact Wendy Brock at 603-862-2187 or wendy.brock@unh.edu

Dick Mallion, former Coos County Advisory Council member, was one of three Granite Staters honored Tuesday in Boston when the Environmental Protection Agency presented the 2008 Environmental Merit Awards.

This year's competition drew approximately 77 nominations from across New England. "These awards are among the highest honors EPA can bestow to recognize environmental accomplishments," said Robert W. Varney, regional administrator for EPA's New England Office. "The work of these individuals, organizations and businesses reflect the best attributes of New Englanders, working to find solutions to environmental issues. I offer my gratitude for their extraordinary contributions in protecting the environment." The merit awards, given out since 1970, honor individuals and groups who have shown particular ingenuity and commitment in their efforts to preserve the region's environment.

Dick received the Lifetime Achievement Environmental Award. He is well-known in New Hampshire as a tireless advocate of the environment. As a member and recently chair of the Whitefield Conservation Commission, he has led efforts to create a town-wide inventory of natural resources, worked to protect the town's water resources and built coalitions with neighboring conservation commissions. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Pondicherry Division of the Silvio Conte National Wildlife Refuge.

Dick also played a lead role while serving on our advisory council in Coos County and the Weeks State Park Board of Directors. He chairs the board of the Nature Conservancy's New Hampshire chapter, working to clean major blowdowns from trails, carrying heavy timbers to construct bog bridges and monitoring the forests condition. He is as willing to share his ideas as his labor.

Our congratulations to Dick on this award!

The Leadership Team approved a new policy drafted by Steve Judd, David Foote and Hugh Christian regarding the purchase of Internet Domain Names.

A domain name or host name is a name that when entered into the address box on a computer’s WWW browser points/forwards a computer to a specific server on the Internet. For example, our domain name (extension.unh.edu), when typed into the address field in Internet Explorer, points the user’s browser to our web server and our home page appears.

A few staff have purchased domain names which point/forward to specific pages on the extension.unh.edu Web site as a way to have shorter web addresses to use in marketing the site. An example is the NH Coverts domain name, nhcoverts.org that points/forwards to http://extension.unh.edu/Wildlife/NHCovrts/NHCovrts.htm

This policy will standardize and centralize domain name purchases, help our Business Service Center and ITDE staff manage domain name accounts, and help insure our domain name registrations won't expire unexpectedly and be bought by other individuals, organizations or companies.

Anyone who has previously purchased a domain name must transfer the domain to the centralized UNH Cooperative Extension GoDaddy account (instructions are in the attached policy). If you are interested in purchasing a new domain name, please refer to the policy.

For the past 18 months, UNH Cooperative Extension has worked with a wide range of residents, youth, educators, judicial officers and service providers across Carroll and Coos counties to create strategic plans in response to growing juvenile justice concerns.

A 2005 report from UNH Justiceworks identified a need for professionals in Carroll and Coos counties to review their juvenile justice issues in the context of their own regions. Each county was experiencing a disproportionate number of youth being sent out-of-county for costly services.

In Carroll County there was also a higher rate of court petitions for youth involved with alcohol and drug violations, while Coos County had a substantially larger percentage of their younger youth finding their way to the courts.

Through a variety of strategies, including focus groups, key informant interviews, and asset mapping, collaborators prepared to draft a strategic framework for changing these unsettling trends. Carroll County also benefited from youth input gathered by well-trained Teen Peer Educators.

These county-wide collaborative projects were supported by grants from the NH Dept. of Juvenile Justice and the U.S. Dept. of Justice. Extension Educators Ann Hamilton, Dotty Burrows, Larry Barker and Sue Buteau provided county leadership and support to the projects. Michele Gagne helped the teams with community focus group design and facilitation, and Paula Gregory served as project director.

As the projects come to an end, the community partners have formalized plans to continue as county-wide collaborative groups committed to carrying out their ambitious strategic plans with a vision for stronger families and communities able to meet the needs of youth.

The Carroll County project has received significant three-year funding from the Annette Schmitt Foundation and will continue as the Carroll County Collaborative. The Coos County Juvenile Justice Project is continuing as a project of the North Country Health Consortium and the Coos County Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention.

Our State Advisory Council gathered yesterday to learn more about geospatial technologies, along with a review of the latest Strategic Plan accomplishments. The council met at the NH Higher Education Assistance Foundation Conference Center in Concord.

Following a County Round Table with reports from advisory council members, Extension Specialist Shane Bradt talked about Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the types of GIS data available in New Hampshire, what makes GIS work and how council members can create GIS data. He also reviewed the satellite-based navigation system known as Global Positioning System (GPS), the types of GPS units and what makes them work.

The council received a progress report from the Strategic Planning Implementation Team, which included the decision to fund two full graduate assistantships each year to Extension staff working in partnership with UNH or UNH Manchester faculty members, and the awarding of the first round of Significant Issue Grants. (Please see related story in my Extension Update this week.)

The Strategic Planning Implementation report also noted plans for an Outreach Seminar series and public value training for staff.

The next State Advisory Council meeting is October 16.

Three high-quality, outcome-driven proposals focused on priority issues facing New Hampshire and its residents have received approval of the Leadership Team.

These projects are the result of a recommendation from the Strategic Planning Implementation Team, which had recommended a process through which significant resources would be dedicated to a small number of issues. These proposals respond to significant issues and reflect new initiatives or vastly different approaches to something Extension is currently addressing.

Recipients include Alice Mullen, Extension Educator, Family & Consumer Resources and administrator, Family Home and Garden Education Center and Tim Fleury, Extension Educator, Forest Resources, who received $25,000 for their project,“Energy Answers.” The Energy Answers project will plan and conduct needs-assessment forums with three stakeholder groups: consumers, industry/utility stakeholders, and energy-related state agencies and nonprofit representatives. Long-range project outcomes include increased energy conservation by consumers leading to reduced environmental impact.

Ken La Valley, Assistant Extension Professor/Specialist, Commercial Fisheries, Charlie French, Associate Extension Professor/Specialist, Community & Economic Development, Catherine Violette, Extension Professor/Specialist, Food & Nutrition and Faye Cragin, WWW & Media Specialist, received $25,000 for their project, “Connecting Seafood Consumers with Fisherman: Integrating Direct-to-Market Industry Capacity with Consumer Health and Environmental Sustainability."

Although the fishing industry in New Hampshire is relatively small when compared to other resource-based industries, it is by no means insignificant. In fact, the identity of New Hampshire and the region is linked to the image of the working waterfront. The very character of the state, and the sense of community in New Hampshire towns, is shaped, in part, by the rich history in fishing.

The project will address the fundamental need for a model of how Cooperative Extension can work with industry and consumers, or better connect consumers and industry, to sustain the cultural, social and economic value of that industry to the region. This assessment will be linked to the fishing industries emerging need to market their catch directly to consumers by developing marketing guidelines that will help the local industries understanding of consumer and retailer needs and by supplying direct-to-market practices that are currently unavailable.

Malcolm Smith, Extension Associate Professor/Specialist, Family Education & Policy and Suzann Knight, Extension Professor/Specialist, Family Resource Management, were recipients of a $50,000 for their project, “The New Hampshire Work/Family Balance Assessment.”

This project proposes to unite UNH Cooperative Extension, the UNH Carsey Institute and Dept. of Family Studies, the NH Dept. of Employment Security and the NH Legislative Task Force on Work and Family to conduct the first-ever comprehensive assessment of work/family stressors among New Hampshire families. A two-year, multi-method design will be used to gather both qualitative data and a representative qualitative sample of New Hampshire families to better understand significant variables that attribute to family stress related to work environments. The project will help inform Extension staff on key issues in family stress and key delivery methods to reach working families, inform law makers on potential opportunities for policy implementation to strengthen New Hampshire families, and business leaders to help develop family-friendly environments.

Cheers for Peers provides a way for UNH Cooperative Extension staff to simply and immediately acknowledge the positive contributions co-workers make to each other, the work place, our clients, the organization and the University.

Recognition from co-workers for a job well done is especially valuable and can reinforce good work and build collegiality. Cheers for Peers is for all UNH Cooperative Extension staff, including support staff employed by a New Hampshire county.

To recognize someone, go to the Staff Recognition page to learn more about the award in the Supporting Documents section. Follow the instructions for Cheers for Peers listed in the Recognition Award form box. Click the award form to see what the award looks like, and while you are there, recognize one of your peers. Your recognition will be sent, by email, directly to the person you select and his or her supervisor. Once each quarter, two recipients and two nominators will be selected randomly to receive a $25 shopping spree in our "recognition store."

Our winners, chosen at random from all names accumulated in the January, February and March quarter are Peg Boyles and Dot Perkins. Congratulations also go to Kathy Jablonski and Mary Tebo for being randomly selected from the list of those who sent a Cheers for Peers card to a colleague. Contact Holly Young for your reward.

Congratulations to Paula Gregory, this year's recipient of the Maynard and Audrey Heckel Extension Educator Fellowship Award, for her Children, Youth and Families At-Risk (CYFAR) program efforts in New Hampshire. Paula receives a $1,000 award to "support/enhance the continued work of the chosen fellow within UNH Cooperative Extension" as designated by the Heckels. During the May State Extension Conference, Paula will highlight the program for fellow staff.

As project director of three five-year cycles of CYFAR projects, Paula has provided both management of the CYFAR community-based projects, and statewide leadership to build our capacity in six areas identified by CSREES as critical components of organizational change needed for CYFAR work.

New Hampshire’s CYFAR efforts since 1990 have already enhanced both our capacity to work with at-risk audiences, and the capacity of communities to create and sustain collaborative programs. All four previously funded CYFAR programs are sustained. Manchester’s Y.O.U. is now YMCA managed and has expanded to other city schools. Boscawen’s B.E.S.T. program has expanded enrollment and added a before-school program through the Concord YMCA. Claremont’s It’s Your Future! program is managed by Claremont School District and has increased enrollment to 1,380 youth in five schools. Haverhill’s CREEPY program expanded to the full middle school with a $150,000 annual budget, and has just had $66,000 put in the 2007-08 school budget by the school board.

Congratulations, Paula!

The Forestry and Wildlife Program offers many program opportunities - providing quality and accessible education to all our constituents. In March alone, our programming reached hundreds of natural resource and industry professionals, municipal and community leaders, and private landowners. Here are a few highlights:

The interest in the annual Black Fly Breakfast held March 13 at Canterbury Woods Country Club was so great we had to rent additional chairs to accommodate the foresters, loggers and industry professionals that wanted to attend. The packed agenda included updates on New Hampshire forestry events, market challenges, a primer on combating climate change with carbon, and new wood energy projects in the state.

Christmas tree growers, foresters and landscape professionals gathered March 19 and 20 at Keene State College for the biennial Christmas Tree Pest Management Course. The 73 participants learned from 17 industry and research professionals in two day-long sessions aspects of diagnostic skills and pest management techniques for growing healthy, marketable Christmas trees.

Municipal and community leaders toured New Hampshire facilities using wood biomass for their heating systems. The NH Wood Biomass Heating Project, a partnership of federal, state and private agencies, promoted the use of biomass heating systems in municipal, county and school buildings. From March 25-27, community leaders visited Hanover High School, Lyme Town Garage, Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center in Greenfield, and Merrimack Valley High School in Penacook to learn about conversions to wood heating systems. Interested participants have the opportunity to develop a proposal to help fund a feasibility assessment examining the possibility of conversion to biomass heat in their building or district.

Educating landowners about the wildlife habitat on their land has resulted in a new series of publications produced with support of the NH Fish and Game Department and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. The NH Wildlife Action Plan: Habitat Stewardship Series brochures include practical information with pictures and text explaining how to identify habitat types, describe the major threats to the health of those habitats, and offer information about wildlife species that depend on each habitat. Initial response to these brochures has been very positive, and requests from landowners continue.

The result of these programs is a growing network of people informed about the importance of forests, forest products and wildlife to the future of New Hampshire.

UNH Cooperative Extension's 2008 NH Outside Calendar took first place in the "one-to-three-color popular publications" category of the Association for Communication Excellence (ACE) 2008 Critique and Awards program.

ACE is an international association of communicators and information technologists who work in universities, government agencies and research organizations in the public sector, as well as companies and firms in the private sector.

The gold-winning Extension design and production team of Peg Boyles, Pam Doherty, Alice Mullen, and Holly Young has already begun planning the 2009 edition.

The judges awarded 97 of 100 points to the NH Outside calendar, calling it, "An excellent example of making the most of a one-to-three-color publication. The essays are especially good. A very attractive publication with an effective use of illustrations throughout."

Subtitled connecting you with the wisdom and wonder of the natural world, the calendar itself reflects the purpose of Extension’s four-year old collaborative writing project. The project began in 2004 to give Extension’s natural resources volunteers (master gardeners, wildlife coverts, community tree stewards, lakes lay monitors, and marine docents) who love to write another way to share the humor, insight, and wonder they’ve found in the world outside their doorways.

Congratulations to Peg, Pam, Alice and Holly!

Congressman Paul Hodes invited representatives of the NH Statewide Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Alliance to a recent press conference. The Alliance is sponsored by UNH Cooperative Extension. At the press conference, Congressman Hodes talked about a bill he sponsored providing tax relief and investment incentives for small businesses and about cosponsoring another part of the stimulus package that extends tax relief to seniors. The stimulus plan provides all working families with a tax rebate. Congressman Hodes noted, "New Hampshire families need and deserve some of their money back to help them through this tough time."

Six hundred thousand New Hampshire families will receive an average refund of $833. Most working families are eligible for the rebate, including those earning over $3,000 in wages or receiving at least $3,000 in Social Security or veteran’s disability benefits. Many will get the refund as early as mid-May. Tax relief begins to phase out for single people with incomes above $75,000 and couples above $150,000. Those who live on Social Security income also qualifies for rebates, and the bill honors disabled veterans by extending rebates to them.

You must file a 2007 Federal Tax Return to receive an economic stimulus rebate even if you aren’t usually required to file one. If you have already filed and received a tax refund, the payments will be deposited in the account you designated or you will receive a check.

The locations and times of the 70 free tax preparation sites statewide is available through the Web site of NH Statewide EITC Alliance or by calling the toll free line of 1-877-398-4769. IRS-certified tax preparers are available at all of the free tax preparation sites.