Extension News: Community Archives

When Rockingham County 4-H Educator Rick Alleva began work in the fall of 2002, he began by asking around about programs for youth in what he calls the Lower Seacoast--Seabrook, Hampton, North and South Hampton, and Hampton Falls. "The answer? 'Not much,'" Alleva says.

Responding to the need
"Forty percent of adult males in Seabrook never finished high school, and the town has one of New Hampshire's highest unemployment rates. Hampton has one of the state's highest homeless and transient populations, including a lot of kids.

"Drug and alcohol issues are huge across Lower Seacoast towns. Yet the whole area had no special youth development programs for kids who needed them most," he says. So Alleva convened a November meeting of all the local agencies that deal with young people: social service agencies, schools

, police. "Like many such community initiatives, we decided to apply for a grant to fund a comprehensive program of youth development services," Alleva says. “We didn't get the grant, but we had energy. We kept on meeting. In fact we've met monthly ever since."

The Seacoast Youth Leadership Project kicks off
"At that first meeting, I connected with Vic Maloney of Seacoast Youth Services, a nonproft at the time working primarily as a diversion program, providing drug and alcohol education, anger management, and community service opportunities."

Alleva wrote a proposal that was awarded a $200,000 Children, Youth and Families at Risk (CYFAR) grant to jumpstart an after-school program for the middle-schoolers most at risk. Paula Gregory, the 4-H Youth Development specialist who directs the CYFAR program in New Hampshire, notes that Alleva's proposal "is one of six five-year, community-based New Hampshire projects collectively awarded more than $2 million since the CYFAR program began in 1991."

"The Seacoast Youth Leadership Project kicked off as a two-day-a-week after-school leadership program for middle-school kids who were dealing with personal, social and emotional challenges," says Alleva. "Vic had no staff for an after-school program, so the grant covered the cost for two new staff and I began bringing in interns from the UNH family studies department. We've had five to date, and they've all have been great. "We've gradually migrated most of the annual CYFAR funding to Vic, allowing him to hire a recent UNH graduate and former intern Stephanie Charron full time this year."

The project gets a home
"When the project began, Vic was working out of a condo office in Hampton. At one of our monthly meetings, Bruce Pierce, pastor of the Church of Christ, brought up that his church owned an1845 brick school building they weren't using in Seabrook. Bruce gave Vic a tour of the old Dearborn School that had been mostly a storage facility for years and they worked out a lease.

"With $10,000 cobbled together from small grants and more than $200,000 in volunteer services, we scrubbed and we renovated. We moved in in 2004. Today we have 5000 square feet at SYS with a new kitchen, floors, bathrooms, fresh paint—and the lights all work."

The original two-days-a-week after-school program evolved rapidly to become a five-day a week after-school program with SYS expanding its in-school supports for kids as well. A four-days-a-week, three-week summer program begun in 2006 has expanded into this year's five-days-a-week, eight-week Summer Extreme, featuring field trips, hiking, biking, adventure treks, and more.

Alleva brought special skills
Alleva came to the job after years of experience as a community youth organizer and a direct service provider who'd worked the streets, managed homeless shelters, and run a residential treatment center for youth. The best way to start a program? "You just start hanging out with kids," says Alleva. "All kids are cool. Parents will get involved if you show respect, commitment, and care for their kids."

Alleva adds, " One important feature that distinguishes our programs from many others: we don't kick anybody out. We work around their problems. If a young person has difficulty reading, you need to give him or her extra help and teach them to read better. If a kid has emotional or behavior issues, you don't exclude them, you give them a place to belong where others can help them feel and act better."

Besides hanging out with kids, "I've served as a sort of jack of all trades in the project," says Alleva. "At various times, I've served as grantwriter, participant recruiter, activity leader, and staff trainer."

Wider Extension involvement
"We've also had other Extension staff involved," Alleva says. "Rockingham County Nutrition Connections coordinator Terri Shoppmeyer does food and fitness activities--healthy food is part of everything we do, and the kids are planting a garden this summer. 4-H specialist Trent Schreiffer co-leads our after-school technology program. He has kids building rockets and remote-controlled cars, doing digital videography, and educational computer gaming. Our county family and consumer resources educator, Karyn Blass, co-leads a Girl's Space group and helps with other family activities, and our other family educator, Claudia Boozer-Blasco, has helped with family and parent programs as well."

"But this isn't the sort of project where Extension can come in and give a few isolated workshops," Alleva says. "While our role will change, we need to stay involved and engaged here on an ongoing basis. Vic and three of his staff have all signed on to become trained 4-H volunteer leaders, which will expand their own capacity as well."

Making a difference
"Cooperative Extension programs are supposed to answer the question, 'How did you make a difference?'" says Alleva. "In our case, that's both tough and easy to answer. With very limited financial resources, we now have a program for middle school kids in grades fifth to eighth that began with an idea, started up as a two-days-a-week after-school lifeskills program that in less than five years has evolved into a dynamic five-days-a-week after-school and summer program.

At the same time, substance abuse prevention and intervention activities for middle- and high-school-age youth have been greatly expanded at SYS as well. "We have monthly family nights, when kids cook a meal for their families, movie nights, substance-abuse support groups, cooking classes, a leadership program that does service projects (including adopting a half-mile stretch of Seabrook beach to keep clean). We teach media literacy, team building, healthier living, food and fitness, science and technology, and help kids make good decisions for themselves and their community. This fall, our Techno-Team will be 'going green' and exploring sustainable energy (wind and solar) and environment-sensitive activities."

But the project's evolution hasn't followed a smooth, linear path. "I'd characterize what we've been doing as building the merry-go-round while we're whirling around on it," Alleva says. The network of organizations and individuals that began meeting in 2002 has recently formalized itself as the Lower Seacoast Youth and Family Coalition by drafting a memorandum of understanding that articulates its mission and commitment.

Their vision: The youth and families of the Lower seacoast area are engaged in positive community activities and are empowered to do whatever it takes to lead healthy lives. "You got that?" says Alleva. "Whatever it takes."

Granite State values citizen participation

More than a century ago Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, observed that the strength of our nation lies in the public's ability to guide policy decisions, both at the local and national levels.

New Hampshire towns have followed this strong tradition of public participation; we're one of only two states in the nation that still uses town meeting as a way to engage citizens in local decision-making (Vermont being the other). Many New Hampshire towns have had a town meeting form of government since the 17th century.

With town meeting rapidly approaching for many New Hampshire towns, let's take the time to reflect on what it means to participate in public decision-making, whether these decisions focus on a community's master plan, local schools, capital improvement projects, economic development, or other local issues. Here are just a few reasons:

• Community residents know their issues and needs best.


• Public forums can educate both citizens and policy-makers about the various perspectives around any given issue.


• Moving a decision or policy into action is more likely if the public is vested in the process.


• Public participation builds accountability for both public officials and the citizenry.

Public Radio's interactive town meeting mapping project
New Hampshire Public Radio recently collaborated with the New Hampshire Local Government Center to create a new way for citizens to learn about and become active in local affairs--an interactive town meeting map, where citizens can find the details of their local town meeting, view some of the warrant articles up for consideration, and participate in a dialogue on the issues. Close to 100 towns have submitted information so far, and the project continues to grow.

Town meeting isn't the only opportunity to get involved in decision-making in your community. To find out about a variety of other ways to get involved, visit Public Participation in Local Decision-making.

Rooftop planting offers a host of benefits to urban environment

A balloonist floating over Manchester City Hall's Connector Building might look down on an expanse of perennial flowering plants growing in rooftop containers and think, "How lovely!"

But "green roofs" like this GreenGrid System deliver many benefits, both to the building below and to the overall urban environment.

UNH Cooperative Extension conceived the idea for the demonstration project and began recruiting partners from the Manchester community in 2002. The essential project components--an appropriate site, city approval, and funding--finally came together last May, enabling us to us to move forward and get the roof in place.

Benefits of a green roof
Most of the rain that hits a conventional city building's roof flows off over pavement and into storm drains, carrying pollutants such as gasoline, oil, antifreeze, sand and trash.

The GreenGrid roof will absorb up to 95 percent of an average rainfall. By slowly percolating through the plants and soil of the green roof, roof runoff occurs several hours after peak flows, giving sewer systems time to handle other runoff.

The plants and soils in a green roof serve many other functions, which include:

• Reducing the energy needed to heat and cool the building below.
• Saving money by extending the life of the original roof.
• Filtering air pollutants.
• Improving air quality.
• Absorbing noise.
• Reducing the risk of flooding and overflowing sewers.
• Providing habitat for butterflies and other pollinators.

The green roof components

• Four-inch deep containers manufactured from recycled plastic.
• Lightweight growing mix.
• Perennial plants in this system--sedums and chives--which withstand extremes of temperature and precipitation, and require almost no maintenance.

• The GreenGrid System didn't require any roof construction or redesign.
• Workers placed a slip sheet on top of original roof.
• Then they lifted the pre-planted containers into place.
• Installation took two hours.

Watch a slide show of the entire process, from filling planters to final installation on roof. Show includes both text captions and audio.

The Manchester City Web site will provide updates on the green roof, including updates on temperature monitoring and pollutant absorption.

Check out our project sign, soon to go up in City Hall Plaza

Learn more
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Green Roof page
Green Roofs/Healthy Cities Network
Penn State's Center for Green Roof Research
Michigan State's Green Roof Research Program
ecogeek Cool photos!

By Mary Tebo, UNH Cooperative Extension community forestry educator and Green Roof Demonstration Project coordinator

Manchester Green Roof Project Funders

UNH Cooperative Extension in partnership with N.H. Division of Forests and Lands and USDA Forest Service
TFMoran Inc.
McLane Law Firm
Manchester Development Corporation
Lavallee Brensinger Architects Fund of the N.H. Charitable Foundation, Manchester Region
Weston Solutions, Inc.
N.H. Dept. of Environmental Services
Anonymous Fund of the N.H. Charitable Foundation
Breathe NH
SEPP - Enterprise Fund, administered by the City of Manchester Environmental Protection Division

In-kind Supporters

City of Manchester
Intown Manchester
Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce
UNH Manchester
Posted September 19, 2007

We have lots of species of bees in New Hampshire that dig solitary nests in soil. Many started digging just this week.

They prefer sandy soil that has a bare surface, but tolerate some sparse vegetation. Each female bee builds one burrow for herself, in which to store food and rear young. If a patch of ground is particularly attractive, lots of bees may build burrows close together there. They are not particularly aggressive.

If their presence is objectionable, you can cover the soil with mulch, or grow grass or other thick ground cover. Adding mulch is a quick solution; growing plants takes time to work.

Alan Eaton, UNH Cooperative Extension Professor/Specialist, Entomology, says pesticides are NOT recommended; these are valuable pollinators, and honeybees (closely related species) are having serious problems here in New Hampshire.

Here's a fact sheet to learn more.

Not knowing whether to send snow or rain, Mother Nature has covered much of the state in a glaze of ice that reminds us of the ice storm of 1998. We learned many lessons from that storm, the most important- trees and forests recover from damage, so don’t panic, be safe and seek professional help.

The best advice is a word of caution: Removing large trees or limbs is dangerous. Don’t climb a ladder with a chain saw. Don’t climb into a damaged tree. Never touch any tree near electrical wires. Assess your particular tree situation carefully and watch for safety hazards. Most tree work needs to be done by professional arborists, especially when the work requires climbing or the tree is leaning against another tree or structure.

Assess immediate hazards first: Remove dead trees; trees or branches that are leaning; trees with broken or cracked stems; trees with extensive broken roots; and any large, dead, or broken limbs that are still attached to the tree.

Hire an arborist: For homeowners, hire a qualified arborist to get the work done properly and safely. Trained arborists are aware of proper pruning and removal procedures and can reduce the chance of further damage to the tree. Check to see that they are certified and ask for certificates of insurance, including proof of liability for personal and property damage and worker’s compensation. Also, request local references and get more than one estimate.

Prevent additional damage: Later, you may want to prune the damaged trees to improve appearance and reduce additional hazards. If the top has been broken, the tree should be pruned back to a strong lateral branch. Damaged branches should be pruned back to the branch collar.

Don’t forget to look at your trees in the spring and summer: Some damage may not be immediately apparent. Hidden cracks may cause branches to droop when leaves come out in the spring. Stem decay, as well as cracks, may lead to structural loss, causing the tree or large branches to become hazardous. Root damage may not be evident until twigs or branches in the upper crown begin dying after two or three growing seasons.

Hire a forester: If you own large acreage, contact your County Extension Forester or a licensed forester to assess the damage, then salvage the trees if needed. Over time, damaged trees may develop decay and discoloration. As long as it is safe, there is no need to rush. You have more than a year to act before you lose wood to discoloration and decay.

By Karen Bennett, UNH Cooperative Extension forest resources specialist

For additional information and assistance:

• Certified Arborists
• County Extension Forester
• Directory of Licensed Foresters
• Hiring an Arborist
• Ice Resistant Trees
• Ice Storm of ‘98
• Large Tree Care and Pruning
• Pruning Storm Damaged Trees

Does the commercialism of this time of year get you down? Are you concerned that members of your family may be caught up in the “what are you going to do for me mode” instead of the “what can I do for others mode?”  Well, this might be the perfect time of year to turn things around.  Opportunities abound for individuals and families who want to make a difference in the lives of others.

Just in case you have totally lost faith in those around you, read a few of these findings recently reported by the Corporation for National and Community Service:

• Volunteerism in this country has rebounded and we are at a 30 year high.  In New Hampshire, roughly 30 percent of those 16 and older volunteer.
• Older teenagers (16-19) have more than doubled their time spent volunteering since 1989.  About 55 percent of youth participate in volunteer activities each year.
• College students increased their volunteering by 20 percent between 2002 and 2005.
• Baby Boomers volunteer at a much higher rate in mid-life than the previous generation.
• The 65 and older age group increased their volunteering rate 64 percent since 1974.
• Since 1989 there has been a 63 percent increase in volunteering with educational and youth serving organizations.

All of this volunteerism is cause for celebration! Young people volunteer because they feel compassion for others in need, or they want to do something for a cause they believe in … not unlike the reasons many adults volunteer. 

So if this holiday season has put you in a giving mood, consider giving something of yourself and encourage others to do a few good deeds as well. You might be the inspiration needed to motivate your family, friends or coworkers to make a difference in someone else’s life.  And guess what?  Everyone will benefit from those great feelings of satisfaction one gets from helping others.  It is a win-win situation.

What can you volunteer to do this month?  You don’t need to have money to give of yourself, but if you have the means, donations of food, clothing, and gifts are always welcomed.  Following are a few suggestions to get you started:

• “Adopt” a child, family or elderly person in need this season
• Donate food to a local food pantry for distribution
• Cook something for someone you know who needs a lift
• Visit seniors in your neighborhood
• Play a game or cards with someone in a nursing home
• Assist in serving meals at a shelter
• Donate a gift card or certificate
• Buy presents for someone you don’t know
• Volunteer at an organization needing help sorting donations
• Provide comfort to someone in need
• Get your coworkers involved in a volunteer effort or donation drive
• Invite people who are alone to enjoy a meal with your family
• Donate items you not longer use
• Give to your favorite charity
• Share a special skill you have with others
• Assist with a home or car repair
• Call someone that needs a good listener
• Give a phone calling card
• Help prepare food baskets
• Buy a gas card to contribute to a worthy organization to share with someone in need
• Donate personal care items to a shelter

Hopefully you will find time in your busy schedule to do something nice for someone else this holiday season. Maybe you will inspire others to volunteer to make a difference throughout the whole year. Maybe, you will even stimulate someone to do a whole lifetime of giving! 

To learn more about what’s needed and how you can help, contact your nearby United Way office, a local community service organization or your town office.  If you are looking for a few specific ideas, the internet is a good place to look as well.  Check out these websites:

• Volunteer Match
• United Way
• Energize
• Give Spot

Charlotte W. Cross, Extension Professor/Specialist, 4-H Youth Development

During the holidays we traditionally think about providing food to those who can’t afford to provide for themselves. While the holidays are difficult for families with limited incomes, many families must search year-round for food from emergency sources, such as food pantries and soup kitchens.

The New Hampshire Food Bank, the only food bank in New Hampshire, knows the challenges of hunger all too well. Serving more than 350 soup kitchens, shelters, and food pantries throughout New Hampshire, the Food Bank distributed 3.9 million pounds of food last year—up from just over two million in 2004, according to Melanie Gosselin, the Food Bank’s executive director. By supporting the New Hampshire Food Bank, you are supporting an organization that “feeds the programs that feed the hungry.”

New Hampshire’s emergency food system: straining from the need
More than 95,000 people in New Hampshire live below the federal poverty guideline, $20,000 annual income for a family of four. An additional 120,000 people live in households with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty level.

The majority of New Hampshire’s poor adults hold jobs, but earn low wages. From 2000 to 2005 New Hampshire experienced a loss of manufacturing jobs and an increase in low-wage retail jobs. We see this shift reflected in the rise in use of federal food assistance programs and food pantries.

Last year 56,338 people received food stamp benefits in New Hampshire, yet only 54 percent of the households eligible to receive the benefits choose to participate in the program. This lack of full participation in the federal nutrition assistance programs strains the already-burdened emergency food system. Even when families participate in the food stamp program, they must still rely to some extent on the emergency food system, since average monthly food assistance benefit per person is $80.56.
 
Studies reveal the extent of hunger and need in New Hampshire
America’s Second Harvest, the organization that provides networks for more than 800 food banks around the country conducted a national survey in 2005 to determine the extent of need in each state. Food pantries, shelters, and soup kitchens reported increases in requests for their services and survey respondents verified their need to visit one or more food pantries a month in order to meet their family’s nutritional needs. Here in New Hampshire:

• 45 percent of respondents said they had to choose to pay medical bills before food
• 42 percent choose to pay for utilities before food
• 27 percent reported paying for rent before food

The recently released New Hampshire’s Basic Needs and Livable Wage Study indicates that a family of four (two parents, two children, both parents working) must have an income of $48,625 to meet their basic needs—is two to two-and-a-half times more than the average low-wage employee earns annually. The study defines the basic needs as food, shelter, heating fuel, transportation, taxes, basic telephone service, childcare, healthcare, and some clothing allowances. It assumes the family prepares all of their food from home and doesn’t count cable television or internet services—living conditions most of us would consider stark at best.

These aren’t temporary statistics occurring only during the holidays. These figures persist throughout the year and are on the rise. Census and federal nutrition assistance program data show a steady increase in individuals and families looking for sources of food to meet their basic needs.

In October the United States Department of Agriculture released their 2005 Household Food Security Study, which indicates the percentage of people who have difficulty buying enough food for their families because they don’t have enough money. The USDA survey reports:

• Nearly 7 percent of New Hampshire households experience food insecurity because they don’t have money to buy enough food to meet their family’s nutritional needs.
  
  
• More than 2 percent report going without food for a number of days at some point during the year because they didn’t have enough money to buy food.

Need for emergency food supplies will continue
Unless these root causes of hunger and food insecurity change, many families in New Hampshire will continue to require emergency food assistance to meet minimum nutrition needs. You can support the New Hampshire Food Bank with donations of money, food, or time. The virtual food drive is a welcome effort to combat hunger in New Hampshire. Every dollar donated to the food bank has the buying power of four meals. Donations of food with high nutritional value and volunteering are all welcome sources of support.

By Helen E. Costello, MS, RD, LD, UNH Cooperative Extension Nutrition Connections Program Food Security Consultant

Costello chairs the Hunger and Environmental Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group of the America Dietetic Association and sits on the advisory councils for both the UNH Center for a Food Secure Future and the New Hampshire Food Bank.

For more information about hunger and food security in New Hampshire:

• Extension’s hunger and food security pages
• UNH Center for a Food-Secure Future
• New Hampshire Food Bank

Hundreds of beautiful poinsettias in a huge array of colors await visitors to the first Poinsettia Trials Open House at the University of New Hampshire Research Greenhouses December 6-8.

This collaborative event brings more than 80 poinsettia varieties developed by breeders to New Hampshire growers and the general public. If you visit, you can help researchers by recording your favorites from among many new and different varieties, including some that aren’t yet available for sale and are being shown for the first time.

The Poinsettia Open House will begin on Wednesday, December 6 and run through Friday, December 8. Hours will be 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, and from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Thursday. A broad selection of the many poinsettia varieties will be available for purchase on all three days.

Metered parking will be available at the UNH Visitor Center across from the greenhouses. Please join us in celebrating the season by exploring the amazing diversity of poinsettias.

A series of booking photos (scroll to bottom of page) taken over a 10-year span shows an attractive, 28-year-old blonde who changes into a gaunt, sickly woman looking much older than her 37 years.

The woman’s health and appearance was drastically altered by her body’s addiction to methamphetamine, which Newsweek magazine, in its August, 2005, cover story, called “America’s most dangerous drug.”

New Hampshire has yet to see the large numbers of methamphetamine addicts that Western and Midwestern states have experienced. But law enforcement officials say New Hampshire’s large expanses of wilderness are attracting those who manufacture the drug. In fact, 12 of the 18 methamphetamine labs discovered in New England in 2004 and 2005 were located in New Hampshire, many of them in rural Grafton County.

The effects of meth
Methamphetamine, also known as meth, crystal, ice, fire, croak, crank, glass, crypto, and white cross, is a powerful stimulant that affects the central nervous system. It makes people feel euphoric; its high can last for six to eight hours or more. Unlike some drugs that can take years to form an addiction, meth can cause addiction from a single use.

But though they keep trying, many users find it impossible to replicate that first feeling of euphoria experienced after initial use. People addicted to meth may suffer irreparable brain damage, as well as other health problems, financial ruin, loss of family, and death.

When on an extended meth high (called “tweaking”) people lose interest in eating and sleeping. Their only goal is to keep the high going for as long as they can, sometimes for days. Paranoia, hallucinations, violent behavior, and psychosis are common. Meth addicts’ typical neglect of personal hygiene is compounded by the smell of meth in their perspiration, a smell described as “putrid.”

Dentists across the country are discovering “meth mouth” caused by long-term methamphetamine use. Symptoms include tooth decay and receding gums. While on meth, some users begin picking at their skin to rid their bodies of imaginary bugs. Perhaps the worst effect is permanent brain damage, as meth destroys the part of the brain that registers pleasure. Long-term meth users can no longer feel pleasure, no matter how much of the drug they use.

Effects on children
Addicted parents may abuse or neglect their children when under the influence of the meth. Some children become “cooking assistants” to parents manufacturing the drug. Others get injured when the “cooking” process erupts into fires or explosions.
Children growing up or around a meth lab may carry the remnants of the drug dust on their clothing and skin. When children are removed from their home, all their possessions must be destroyed because they too are contaminated.

The walls, floors, furniture, draperies and other furnishings in a home, apartment, or garage where methamphetamine is produced and where wastes are disposed typically require assessment and cleanup. The average cost of a cleanup is about $5,000, but can reach $150,000. Who should pay the bill for this cleanup? The building’s owner? The renter? The town? A federal agency? What happens when those resources are exhausted?

Environmental hazards
In addition to the human toll, methamphetamine also poses a hazard for the environment. Meth paraphernalia left on the open ground can contaminate the soil and water runoff can pollute surface waters, wetlands, and groundwater. In some areas of the country, runoff from meth manufacturing facilities has killed livestock and destroyed large areas of trees and vegetation.

Experts estimate that the manufacture of each pound of meth produces five to six pounds of hazardous wastes that often get disposed of illegally in the environment. To make matters more challenging, many of these sites are in residential settings. This means children and other occupants of the property, as well as nearby neighbors, may be exposed to hazardous chemicals and harmful gases during and after the cooking process.

Cheap and easy to manufacture
Meth is cheaply and easily manufactured from readily available ingredients such as decongestant tablets (pseudoephedrine), iodine, Drano, rubbing alcohol, salt, common matches, and commercial fertilizer. “Lab” equipment includes such common items as plastic tubing, Mason jars, coffee filters, soda bottles, blenders, camera batteries, propane cylinders, and hot plates, electric frying pans or camp stoves.

New Hampshire’s Attorney General and county attorneys, as well as local, state and federal law enforcement officials, have begun working together to keep the methamphetamine problem from escalating in New Hampshire. Despite relatively low numbers of meth users, the social and economic costs of meth addiction are high.

Farm and forest factories
Methamphetamine’s relative ease of manufacture has long range implications for communities and landowners. People who make methamphetamines may use secluded farm or forest land to hide their illegal activities. Landowners who frequently walk their land are less likely to become victims of unauthorized use of their land.

Here are a few tips to help landowners protect themselves and their property:

• Don’t accept cash for the use of your property.
• Know what happens on your property.
• Don’t bury, move, or examine any trash found on your property.
• If you discover the trappings of meth manufacturing: red-stained coffee filters, plastic bottles with attached tubing, empty cold-tablet packaging, don’t touch or move anything. You could be putting your health at risk. Don’t confront anyone involved in suspicious activity on your property. If your town has an anonymous reporting system, call that number. Report any suspicious activity on your land to local law enforcement officials, but leave the dangerous part to those who are specially trained for cleanup.

Inform yourself and take action
A recently formed New Hampshire Government Leaders Methamphetamine Task Force has developed a statewide strategy to keep meth use from growing in New Hampshire.

Local, state and federal officials are committed to getting and keeping methamphetamine issues in the open for citizens to learn more. As a community member, learn all you can about this drug and its devastating impacts. You can mobilize your fellow community members to become more aware of the dangers of methamphetamine, co-sponsor open forums and protect yourself and your family.

To learn more:

• How meth destroys the body
• Meth pharmacology (how it works in the body)
• Meth Q & A
• National Institute on Drug Abuse Infofacts: Methamphetamine
• New Hampshire Government Leaders Methamphetamine Task Force
• Photo gallery: Faces of meth

People who come together to tend a vegetable garden produce much more than food. They get the camaraderie of work, a sense of community, a bond to the land, food for the soul and a lower weekly grocery bill.

This has definitely been true for the 12 Somali Bantu, Sudanese, and Meskhetian Turk families who have been coming together weekly since early May to tend their plots in the Brookside International Community Garden in Manchester.
           
Started in 2005 on the initiative of Master Gardener Riekie Sluder and I, the garden has thrived. This year it almost doubled in size, to 4500 square feet. In August the families harvested as much as 150 pounds of okra, beans, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, cabbage, cauliflower, herbs, and flowers. That’s amazing, considering that this was the most difficult growing season in several years.

The community garden is a partnership between Brookside Congregational Church, the International Institute of New Hampshire and UNH Cooperative Extension. For the church, which contributes the land and water, it’s about community outreach. For the Institute’s Anne Sanderson, “it’s about helping immigrants become integrated into American life. They learn about scheduling, punctuality and arranging for transportation. They get a chance to grow foods from their native homeland. They begin to understand that there are people trying to help them adjust to life in America.” And that last item sends a powerful, positive message indeed.
           
For the UNH Master Gardener volunteers, it’s all about the people. It’s about bridging cultural differences, about learning to communicate with sign language, smiles and body language. It’s about the pleasure of working in a garden with others on a sunny summer day. It’s about teaching, But, most of all, it’s about joy.
           
The experiences shared within this disparate group of gardeners build memories that will last a long time. Some are fabulous, some humorous, some bittersweet. Some are poignant, like the day a church member and her mother paid a visit to the garden. They had been arranging the funeral of the church member’s grandmother. The member’s mother, grieving and tearful, was able to connect with Romena Fatkulina, a young Turkish mother who speaks some English, and who had lost her own mother recently. The visitors stayed to work in the garden for a while. They found the experience healing and said they’d come again.
           
The week after planting, the refugees and Master Gardeners cooked a meal for each other in the church kitchen. Each group prepared dishes they would be cooking from the vegetables they hoped to harvest. The Master Gardeners prepared a vegetable omelet, two salads and mint tea. The Africans cooked a delicious casserole using goat meat and vegetables. The Turks made a stir-fry using potatoes, green vegetables and what they thought was chicken, but which turned out to be pork—forbidden by their religion. Apparently, the specified ingredient got lost in translation to the shopping list. But once the mistake was revealed, the gardeners good-naturedly traded dishes and enjoyed themselves despite the confusion.

All these immigrant groups have close relationships within large, extended families. At one time or another, most of the gardeners bring some of their children with them. The children generally learn to speak more English faster than their parents and often become their interpreters. Children will ask for the English names for common objects used in the garden. Then they try to teach the Master Gardeners the words in their native languages. You can guess which group is more successful!
           
Here’s a conundrum for you: Romena asked one day, “Why are American grocery stores full of boxes? Don’t Americans know how to cook?” Apparently her apartment building houses seven Turkish families, some Sudanese and one American family. The Americans, she noted, always eat convenience food. That’s food for thought.
           
As the season winds to a close, the gardeners will be harvesting butternut squash and cabbage to provide some food this fall. We’ll clean up the garden and begin planning for next year, incorporating some of what we’ve learned and chuckling over other parts.

In 2004 the city of Manchester alone helped to settle more refugees than settled in 23 other states. Because of the generosity of donors, the partners and volunteers, Brookside International Community Garden has helped to create a warm welcome for a few of these refugee families. If you’d like to donate to the garden, please contact Margaret Hagen or phone (629-9494).

By Margaret Hagen, Hillsborough County Agricultural Resources Educator

The disastrous floods of May have receded and most New Hampshire residents have cleaned up and returned to their flood-damaged homes.

But more than 300 New Hampshire families are waiting for help cleaning and sanitizing their homes to make them safe enough to live in. Some displaced families are living in cars and shelters.
 
“With the arrival of summer heat and humidity, we need to move fast to get ahead of the growth of mildew and other molds that can cause health problems for residents,” says Carole Totzkay-Sitar, a health educator with the Bureau of Emergency Management. “State health and safety officials need 200 volunteers to take the training and team up with experienced mold-mitigation teams already on the job.”

Molds threaten human health
“Families in Rockingham, Strafford, Merrimack, Hillsborough, Belknap, and Carroll Counties need immediate help,” Totzkay-Sitar says. “Failure to remove contaminated materials and to reduce moisture and humidity can present serious long-term health risks to the people who live there. Microorganisms that thrive in areas that are wet, damp, or retain water can cause disease, trigger allergic reactions and continue to damage household materials long after the floodwaters recede.”

“Mud Out” volunteer training
To boost volunteer recruitment, state health and emergency management officials, working through Volunteer NH!, have joined forces with southern New Hampshire church groups who’ve had experience organizing volunteers to go into homes to remove damaged contents, clean, and sanitize flooded premises. They plan to offer at least one “Mud Out” volunteer training in July, which will cover proper clothing, tools, safety, and health issues related to molds. All Mud Out volunteers will be teamed with an experienced “mudder.”

Volunteers must be at least 18 years old and healthy. They will need to sign a liability waiver, and provide their own protective equipment. For more information about becoming a Mud Out volunteer, call 1-800-780-8058.

Flood-damaged home? Take action now!
State officials encourage any resident whose home was flooded not to wait for FEMA funds, insurance payouts, or volunteer helpers before taking action to assess health and safety threats in their homes. If you have concerns about the health risks of molds, contact your family health care provider. For information about conducting a mold assessment or about mold removal, call Rhonda Martin at the Department of Environmental Services at 271-3911.

Links to written information about mold in homes:

• Mold in Your Home? (NH Department of Environmental Services flyer)
  
• NH Air Resources fact sheet
  
• A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture, and Your Home (US Environmental Protection Agency)
  

Natural resources play a huge, often unrecognized role in our communities. Many people living or working in cities believe that natural resources lie outside of the city, and that they have to go to into rural areas to experience the natural world.

In my work, I help people understand the importance of the natural resources in their own backyards, along their downtown streets, in neighborhood parks and cemeteries, and in small patches of forestland. These street trees, landscapes, community gardens, and “pocket parks” can change people’s lives.

Natural resources improve quality of life, even in urban environments
Research backs up our experience that natural resources such as trees, shrubs and flowers in our communities can:
 

So if trees and other plants really can improve quality of life, how do you get people who are worried about school budgets, parking problems, or high taxes, to care about them?

Getting people involved
One way to get people caring about natural resources, is by building partnerships. For example, because of my membership on the Board of Intown Manchester, a group mostly made up of influential developers, I connected with the president of Families in Transition, which provides temporary housing for homeless families, and we’ve begun working on several different landscaping projects with the residents.

Another contact, a local developer, approached me a couple weeks ago at Intown Manchester’s annual meeting. He’d heard that I was the person to talk with about putting plants on his roof. Installing a “greenroof” in Manchester is a goal I have been working on for the past four years!

Cedar Street landscaping: participation by community members generates long-term pride
I’ve found it’s important to involve as many people as possible from the beginning of the project. A great example of this is seen at the townhouses on Cedar Street. Back in 1995, I began working with Manchester Neighborhood Housing Services, which provides housing for low-income families. Working with the residents of new townhouses we helped develop a landscape plan, then plant and maintain the landscaping.

If you drive by today, 11 years later, you’ll still see the pride these residents have in their landscapes, because they created them and continue to watch over them.

As a result of the neighborhood pride that developed, the Manchester Police reported that the number of calls in the Cedar Street neighborhood dropped in one year from more 800 to just 64, a fact featured on ABC National News highlighting how trees benefit people by helping reduce crime.

The Pine Street Community Garden
This project grew literally from the rubble of an old garage foundation. Working together with community members and AmeriCorps volunteers, we developed the plans, gathered the materials, and built the Center City’s first community garden, which now serves several multicultural families.

Extension educator Julia Steed Mawson now oversees the garden. Julia brought in the 4-H Green Thumb Team, whose members grow food for the Salvation Army’s Kid’s Café, which serves hot meals daily to many children who would otherwise go without. The Green Thumb Team also grows food for the N.H. Food Bank. Through many partnerships, the garden has grown over the years and has become a keystone in the Center City.

Community transforms site of a former crack house into a park
A vacant lot on Cedar Street was a former crack house site. Residents of Cedar Street remember how afraid they were. According to resident Cathy Howland, “[The crack house] was only about six feet from our apartment. Its windows were aligned with ours, so we could see the drug dealers and they could see us. We couldn’t let the kids outside without an adult being right there.”

Many frightening incidents occurred as people came and went at all hours of the day and night. Beyond the fear of living next to drug dealers, residents had to live with the huge neighborhood eyesore of the house and yard, with trash everywhere and the house itself beyond repair. It was a wonderful day in the neighborhood when Manchester Neighborhood Housing Services purchased the property and took the crack house down.

The community came together to plan and build a new park. The residents helped create the landscape plan, and, in two days, more than 40 people including N.H. Community Tree Stewards, transformed the vacant lot into a beautiful green space. Neighborhood children dug holes, planted shrubs, and spread mulch. Finding the remains of the old foundation while digging, one of the kids shouted, “This used to be part of the crack house. Let’s get it out of here!”

Mary Tebo, UNH Cooperative Extension Community Forestry Educator
This is an  edited version of the speech Mary gave in accepting the 2006 Maynard and Audrey Heckel Extension Fellowship.

As New Hampshire begins drying out from recent record floods and taking stock of damaged homes, businesses, roads, and agricultural plantings, public officials have issued a number of flood-related warnings and information bulletins.

Over a week after the flooding, many people whose homes were damaged have not yet been allowed to return and survey the damage. In the Goffstown area, about 50 families were evacuated and still haven't returned to assess and start cleaning up. State and federal health and emergency officials are working hard to provide information.

To learn more:

• Testing and protecting drinking water in a flood aftermath (bulletin contains other important safety information)
• Risks from household hazardous materials in flood-damaged buildings
• Dealing with mold
• Cleanups that might involve asbestos
• Post-flood fraud and scams alert
• Bike/walk-to-work day postponed

Click here for a complete list of flood related links.

Record rainfalls throughout southern and central New Hampshire over the weekend led Gov. John Lynch to declare a state of emergency and activate the National Guard. Forecasters predict as much as 15 inches of rain will have fallen in some parts of the state by Monday night.

Hundreds of highways have washed out or flooded, many residents have left homes flooded or threatened by rising rivers, streams, and vulnerable dams. Hundreds of schools and businesses have closed. Homeowners and business owners by the thousands continue to pump water from flooding basements.

Office of Emergency Management spokesperson Jim Van Dongen says his department strongly suggests that residents curtail all non-essential highway travel. “With more than 800 roads out in eight counties, it just makes sense,” he says.

Department of Environmental Services officials warn residents to stay out of flood waters, which may contain toxins and harmful bacteria, to wear protective gear if you must travel through flood waters, to disinfect items that come in contact with flood water (Use 1/4 cup bleach to one gallon of water as a disinfectant.), and to test the water in shallow wells that have flooded before using it for drinking or bathing.

We’ve assembled this list of online information resources and will continue adding to it as we get more information.

I’m wanted in four states…got my new driver’s license and a sweet new pickup. V8 baby – 500 horsepower…and the best part is, it’s all free, yeah, for me at least.

Recognize these words from a popular commercial? It’s one of a series of ads promoting a new service addressing identity theft at a major bank. The viewer is immediately captivated by the words, coming from an older lady as she cleans her pool, but spoken in the rough-sounding voice of a thug. The thug finishes with a ghoulish laugh, as the words “Ruth F., Identity Theft Victim” flash on the screen.

Identity theft. Should you be worried about it? You may have seen a brochure from your bank, or an article in a current magazine warning you about privacy risks in an increasingly technological society. But did you read them?

Maybe you did after seeing the series of commercials mentioned earlier. The ads effectively convey the message that no one is safe from identity theft. Victims include people of any age, socioeconomic status and race.

The fastest-growing white collar crime

Identity theft is the fastest growing white collar crime in the United States. A survey commissioned by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revealed that an estimated 27 million Americans have been victims of identity theft in the last five years. Ten million occurred in the last year alone.

Identity theft is a serious crime that has caused victims to spend months or years—and lots of money—to clear their name, correct erroneous information and clean up their credit record.

Although identity theft victims are usually not liable for the debts the thief has incurred, they often lose job opportunities, are refused loans or housing. Some have even been arrested for crimes they did not commit.

This is why the FTC has chosen the theme Identity Theft: When Fact Becomes Fiction as their focus for this year’s National Consumer Protection Week, February 6-12.

According to the FTC, identity theft occurs when someone uses your personal information, such as your name, Social Security number ( SSN), credit card number or other identifying information, without your permission to commit fraud or other crimes.

How does this happen?

It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s easier than you might think. If an identity thief can obtain your personal information, he or she can use it to call your credit card issuer and change the mailing address on the card, open a new credit card account or bank account in your name, drain your bank account, take out a loan, even buy a car or a house.

According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, thieves obtain your SSN, driver's license, credit card numbers and other pieces of identification, in a variety of ways, which include:

• "Dumpster diving" in trash bins for unshredded credit card and loan applications and documents containing SSNs.
• Stealing mail from unlocked mailboxes to obtain newly issued credit cards, bank and credit card statements, pre-approved credit offers, investment reports, insurance statements, benefits documents, or tax information. Even locked mailboxes may not stop a determined thief.
• Accessing your credit report fraudulently, for example, by posing as an employer, loan officer, or landlord.
• Obtaining names and SSNs from personnel or customer files in the workplace.
• "Shoulder surfing" at ATM machines and phone booths in order to capture PIN numbers.
• Finding identifying information on Internet sources, via public records sites and fee-based information broker sites.

Protecting yourself

These actions will help prevent thieves from using your identity:

• Minimize the amount of information a thief has access to. Don’t carry more credit cards than you need to, don’t carry Social Security cards, birth certificate or passport.
• Don’t carry other items with your SSN on them unless you need them that day.
• Reduce the amount of personal information that is “out there.” Remove your name from marketing lists of major credit card bureaus, opt-out of the sale or sharing of your information when offered to you, sign up for the FTC Do Not Call Registry.
• Never give out your SSN, credit card number or other personal information over the phone, mail or internet unless you initiated the contact and you have a trusted business relationship.
• Order a copy of your credit report once a year from each of the three national credit bureaus.
• Ask about information security procedures and safeguards at your workplace.
• Place passwords on your bank, credit card and phone accounts, but don’t use options such as birthdate, pet name, maiden name, or last four digits of social security number.

Are the businesses you work for or shop at exposing you to a risk of identity theft?

This handy online checklist will help you evaluate whether your employer, the enterprises you do business with, and the businesses you patronize take all the important steps to reduce the risk of identity theft among their employees and customers.

If you do become a victim

If you fall victim to identity theft, take immediate action. Right away, contact the fraud units for the three credit reporting agencies: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. As of April 2003, if you notify one bureau, it will notify the other two. Ask the agency to flag your file with a fraud alert.

The FTC suggests you take the following initial steps:

• Place a fraud alert on your credit report and review your credit report.
• Close any accounts that have been tampered with or opened fraudulently.
• File a report with your local police or the police in the community where the identity theft took place.
• File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

Click here for identity theft resources

by Karen Blass, UNH Cooperative Extension Family & Consumer Resources Educator, Rockingham County.

From Thanksgiving through Valentine’s Day, we Americans spike our long winter darkness with holidays, bowl games and other special events marked by feasting, food exchanges and a general celebration of abundance.

Yet, according to a report released November 19 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, last year 36.3 million Americans either went hungry or reported uncertainty about getting enough to eat at some point during the year. This figure includes 13 million children.

By national standards, New Hampshire , with the fourth-highest median household income in the nation, has a relatively low rate of hunger. Yet our state’s affluence masks the harsh truth that tens of thousands of Granite State residents can’t stretch their incomes to meet the basic food requirements for healthy living.

Hunger and food insecurity in New Hampshire

Although we don’t have hard data on hunger and food insecurity in New Hampshire , we can gauge its incidence through related indicators like these:

• A U.S. Census Bureau report issued last August estimated that 96,000 New Hampshire people lived below the federal poverty guidelines ($18, 850 for a family of four) at some point during 2003, up from 79, 200 in 2002 and 63,300 in 2000. Most of these people rely on a combination of government food assistance programs and emergency food providers to get enough to eat.
  
  
• The 2003 USDA Household Food security survey revealed that 45 percent of households reporting hunger or food insecurity have incomes above 130 percent of official poverty levels, meaning they probably don’t quality for federal food assistance programs.
  
  “We have real concerns for the thousands of people who earn just enough that they don’t qualify for food stamps and other government assistance programs,” says Val Long, Nutrition Coordinator for UNH Cooperative Extension’s Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program.
  
  “Steep increases in the costs of housing, fuel, transportation and healthcare, as well as food, haven’t been matched by increases in wages. A lot of working families have begun depending on emergency food pantries to feed their families. The emergency food system was intended to be just that: help for temporary emergencies. But people have begun relying on it chronically. That shouldn’t happen in the United States . It’s not an acceptable way to ensure that people are getting a nutritionally adequate diet that keeps them active and healthy.”
  
  
• In 2000, 36,266 New Hampshire residents received food stamps. By 2004, that number had risen to 48,449.
  
  
• Survey results released in December by the National Low Income Housing Coalition indicate that to afford the average two-bedroom apartment (including utilities) in New Hampshire , a worker must earn $16.75 per hour, more than three times the federal minimum wage.
  
  
• By the end of 2004, the New Hampshire Food Bank will have distributed about four million pounds of food to nonprofit and emergency food providers throughout New Hampshire —a million more pounds than last year, according to executive director Melanie Gosselin. “In one year, we expanded membership from 240 agencies to 342,” she says.

New Hampshire ’s emergency food providers

The federal government’s nutrition safety net, which includes the Food Stamp Program, the Women, Infants and Children Nutrition Program (WIC) and the School Meals Program, has traditionally built nutritious food and nutrition education into their programs.

In recent years, the net has frayed. Many low- and moderate-income people with incomes too high to qualify for food stamps and other government assistance programs can’t keep up with the escalating costs of housing, home heating fuel, and transportation. Responding to an increase in need, the state’s charitable emergency food system has grown dramatically in recent years.

Founded in 1984 as a program of Catholic Charities, the New Hampshire Food Bank serves as a centralized warehouse and distribution center for a network of nonprofit daycare centers, senior feeding sites, emergency food pantries, soup kitchens and homeless shelters.

The New Hampshire Food Bank maintains an affiliation with a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks and perishable food “rescue operations” called America ’s Second Harvest . The nationwide organization takes advantage of its collective buying and bargaining power, and today serves local agencies that feed needy people in every county in the U.S.

The New Hampshire Food Bank receives food from grocery stores, wholesalers, farmers and individuals, as well as cash donations from individuals, organizations and a variety of fundraising activities. The Food Bank requires its members to acquire nonprofit status, have refrigeration if they plan to store perishable foods, and undergo periodic inspections that ensure safe food handling practices. Agencies preparing food onsite must have state-certified commercial kitchens.

Some emergency food facilities offer classes that promote nutrition and cooking skills to the agencies and their clients. For example, a nationwide program called Operation Frontline, pairs nutritionists with chefs from local restaurants to teach cooking skills and nutrition to clients of emergency food pantries. UNH Cooperative Extension Nutrition Connections staff in Hillsborough and Rockingham counties have collaborated with Operation Frontline to teach classes which deliver nutrition education to Food Stamp clients.

In addition, some food pantries provide other services that range from cash assistance to meet emergency needs for housing, fuel, clothing, and medicine, to job training and health screenings and clinics.

Observations from the field

Persis Gow, the bookkeeper for St. Paul ’s Church Food Pantry in Concord , has noticed an increase in demand on the pantry in recent years and months. “In January 2004, we served people from 25 surrounding towns. In November, we had people from 30 towns,” she says. “In 2001 we added 363 new families—people we’d never seen before. Already this year we’ve had 400 new families, with December figures not in yet. In 2001 we served 3688 children under 18; in 2004, to date, we’ve had 4228.

Gow says people who visit the pantry include elders, single parents, and people with disabilities. “But lately, I’ve noted an increase in the number of traditional, stable, working families—mother, father and children, all with the same last name,” she says. “That’s new.”

Dot Hunt has served as treasurer of St. John’s St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry in Concord for the past 22 years. “There are at least 27 food pantries here in Merrimack County , and we’re all busy. Our numbers are up, with 400 new families this year. As many as 1200 individuals pass through each month,” she says. “We’re seeing more elderly, more working families and—what’s new for us—more single young people. Sometimes three or four single people will be living together and one will come in to get food for them all.”

Hunt says the pantry also provides emergency help with rent, medicine, fuel and clothing. “Usually I get about 12-14 requests a month for help with fuel and rent. But one month not too long ago, I had 60 calls. We’re seeing a lot of people facing eviction.”

2005 hunger study

In 2005, the N.H. Food Bank will participate in the Hunger in America Survey that America ’s Second Harvest conducts every four years. “This will be the first time New Hampshire has joined the survey,” says Erin Chamberlain, the N.H. Food Bank’s program services director. The two-part study will collect demographic data from face-to-face interviews with clients of emergency food pantries and soup kitchens, as well as from a survey of provider agencies themselves. “It will give us hard data about who is hungry in New Hampshire and how they deal with it,” says Chamberlain. “The study will also help us learn about what our member agencies are doing for the people in need and what more we could do for [the agencies].”

If you or someone you know needs food

If you face a family food emergency, or know someone who does, find the most available source of food. Call the Nutrition Connections staff person in your county or call your town hall and ask how and where to apply for local welfare. If you have children in school, go to the school nurse for help finding out whether your children qualify for free or reduced lunches. The New Hampshire Assistance Handbook offers sections on eligibility and how to sign up for food stamps WIC, and other government assistance programs.

If you want to help

Besides educating yourself about the extent of hunger and food insecurity in your own community, you can also participate in a local food drive, contribute cash to the Food Bank, or volunteer your time at a food pantry or soup kitchen.

Donating directly to the N.H. Food Bank instead of purchasing food products yourself increases the buying power of your donations. “A $10 donation to the N.H. Food Bank will buy 40 meals for hungry people,” says Gosselin. “Our buying power allows us to sell food to local pantries at only 18 cents a pound.”

Since most local pantries or soup kitchens run on volunteer labor, citizens can also consider donating time. Call to find out if an emergency food provider near you (link to list of emergency food providers) needs help.

Resources 

Nutrition Connections
This list connects you with UNH Cooperative Extension county staff who provide nutrition education to low-income individuals and families in New Hampshire. Staff can help connect you with emergency food resources.

New Hampshire Food Bank
New Hampshire ’s only food bank; warehouses and distributes food to a statewide network of 342 member agencies.

America ’s Second Harvest - America’s Food Bank Network
A nationwide network of more than 200 food banks and “food rescue” operations.

Serve New England
An “alternative to food shopping” that offers families of any income level deep discounts on major brand name foods in exchange for at least two hours of volunteer service each month. New Hampshire has 35 pick-up locations. You can buy a package of frozen meats, fresh fruits and vegetables at about half the grocery store price. No limit on how much food you can buy. Call 1-800-603-4855 for nearest location.

New Hampshire Assistance Handbook

Published in 2003, but updated for 2004, the handbook contains a listing of critical resources for people in need, including food assistance, shelters for the homeless and for battered women, nutrition education, legal assistance, fuel assistance, social services, and much more.

Kids Café
A service of the Salvation Army. Serves dinner to needy Manchester children, followed by an hour of crafts or games, four nights a week

The Paradox of Hunger and Obesity in America
Obese, but hungry and malnourished? This paper, issued jointly by Brandeis University ’s Center on Hunger and Poverty and the Food Research & Action Center , helps explain the apparent paradox of how dual threats of hunger and obesity can co-exist in individuals and families.

By Peg Boyles, UNH Cooperative Extension writer/editor, and Helen Costello, Food Security Coordinator

See also: "It can happen to anybody."

After breakfast, she
Sends me outside to harvest
Poems from the land.

This poem introduces Jack Kraichnan’s just-published book of short poems, Winter to Winter: a year of seasonal change in the Monadnock foothills (Snow Brook Press, 2005).

Trained as a naturalist, Kraichnan takes his daily exercise outdoors and on foot. In late 2002, he committed himself to producing a certain number of poems during each walk, using the three-line, 5-7-5-syllable meter of traditional Japanese haiku as his form. Winter to Winter incorporates the best of the haiku Kraichnan wrote during and after walking the same five-mile loop through Dublin from mid-December, 2002, to mid-December, 2003.

Kraichnan says he didn’t intend to write a book, but simply to use haiku as an interior discipline to complement the physical discipline of walking. “I wrote the poems as a sort of journal,” he says. “They contain both what I observed and what I associated with those observations. Diane [Kraichnan’s wife] read them, liked them, and organized them to create the book.”

Kraichnan encountered all types of weather during his year of daily walks. “In our increasingly developed and engineered world, weather is one of the last forces of Nature left wild,” he writes. “Being outside in it for a year was a gift.”

Writing within the rigorous demands of the haiku format “forced me to distil my thoughts,” writes Kraichnan. “I was rigorously honest in recording what my senses perceived, and resisted altering reality even slightly to accommodate an easy turn of phrase.”

On their surface, haiku report some observation or experience of nature. The best of them invoke deep emotional and spiritual resonances that readers experience directly, without the mediation of figurative or explicitly symbolic expressions. My favorite from Kraichnan’s Winter to Winter collection:

Beneath snow and ice
In dark of pond’s still water
Turtles are waiting.

I love this idea of combining physical activity with a writing discipline as Kraichnan has done. Over nearly four decades, including 18 years as a serious competitive triathlete, I’ve walked, hiked, run, biked, snowshoed, and swum thousands of miles, almost all of it across the familiar woods and roadways near my home, in the little pond just outside my kitchen window, or in half-acre vegetable garden I’ve planted, tended and harvested for 37 seasons.

Like Kraichnan, I’ve learned that our “seasons are not as clearly defined as I had thought,” with each season offering as many micro-seasons as I have encounters with the world outside my walls.

I’ve also learned that the same piece of terrain never looks sounds, feels, or smells the same from one encounter to the next. The feeling of the ground under foot or wheel changes perceptibly as the seasons advance. The scents on the air change, as frozen ground softens to mud, lilacs bloom, a neighbor mows his lawn, a dead woodchuck rots by the roadside in the August heat, fall leaves accumulate, a hard frost stiffens the ground. On my walk today, I heard the groans of frozen trunks and limbs in the winter woods and the rattle of beech leaves still hanging on their branches; tomorrow I’ll hear the whisper of uncut hay in the field, the voices of crows in my compost pile, and the squeals of children playing tag in my neighbor’s yard.

Like Kraichnan’s, my outdoor excursions have provoked me to write many poems, most of them marking rites of passage for me and for loved ones.

When my daughter turned 18 and left home for college, I presented her with a poem titled Rock and a small rock I picked up in our backyard vegetable garden to go with the poem. I spent three months writing Rock, laboring over each word and image, in part because I wanted my child to remember where she came from, but mostly because I needed work through my own grief and summon the considerable strength I needed to let go.

It snowed the day I received Jack’s book in the mail. Returning home from a long walk, I went to the edge of my small pond. A rim of ice had formed around the edges. A sparrow flew down as if to land, then flew away, leaving me with this poem:

First snow dusts thin ice
Of backyard pond, too thin
For that small sparrow.

Kraichnan writes in his preface, “I offer this book to those who may be trapped inside too often.”
Getting outside to exercise and explore can open us to new awareness of body, mind, and spirit.

Making poems about those excursions involves another level of “getting outside.” Committing to the discipline of putting words on paper helps the poet escape the received notions and old frames of reference that also keep us trapped inside.

Yesterday turned cold, windy, and sunless. I took a lunchtime run up Route 4, and came home with this poem:

Dry beech leaf rattling
Across dead, frozen asphalt
Takes wing on the wind.

By Peg Boyles, UNH Cooperative Extension Writer/Editor

This spring about a thousand New Hampshire landowners will slice the newly-defrosted ground to create thousands of welcoming holes for tree and shrub seedlings bought from the State Forest Nursery.

Howie Lewis, nursery forester, calls his nearly 40-acre nursery one of New Hampshire’s best- kept secrets. Lewis says the nursery produces a unique product. “We provide something nobody else does – tree and shrub seedlings native to New Hampshire, with seeds picked from specimens grown right here in the state. When you buy from the state forest nursery, you know the plant is suited to grow here.”

In operation in Boscawen since 1910, the nursery grows more than 50 species of trees and shrubs for reforestation, Christmas trees, and wildlife, and sells them at affordable prices. Seedlings, sold on a “first come-first served basis” include conifers, such as white, red and Scotch pine, Norway, blue, red, and white spruce, concolor, balsam, fraser and douglas fir, and hemlock.

The nursery offers many other species, including arrow-wood, crabapple, fragrant sumac, grapes, highbush cranberry, dogwood, rose, nannyberry, beach plum, elderberry, winterberry holly, bayberry, hazelnut, red oak, cedar, sugar maple and white ash. Special “packages,” each containing an assortment of 25 shrubs and/or trees, include a Christmas tree sampler and special wildlife-and-songbird, wetlands, native species, and winter survival packages.

Besides being one of his best sellers, balsam fir is Lewis’ personal favorite. “I’ve worked with this species the most. I follow seedlings from the parents in the seed orchard through to watching them grow in the seedbed.” Balsam fir is a customer favorite because it has that classic evergreen smell. Seedlings sell out, so nursery staff suggest you order early.

Ordering starts in January and ends March 30. “When you are in the nursery business, spring starts a different time each year,” says Lewis, “So we ship to a county pickup point in late April or early May, whenever the seedlings can be lifted from the ground.” Customers receive a card in the mail announcing the pick up dates. “We work throughout the year getting ready for the spring shipment and hope we have many new customers this year.”

Lewis is enthusiastic about his trees and shrubs and hopes “New Hampshire’s best kept secret” is known by all.

By Karen Bennett, UNH Cooperative Extension Forest Resources Specialist

More information:

• To receive a catalog, contact the N.H. State Nursery, N.H. Division of Forests and Lands, P.O. Box 1856, Concord, NH 03302-1856, or call 603-271-3456.
• View the State Nursery catalog and order online.
• Planting and Care of Tree Seedlings
• Establishing the Christmas Tree Plantation

Are you interested in helping protect New Hampshire's wildlife? Are you an enthusiastic person, involved in your community? Do you manage your own land to help wildlife? Are you concerned about the loss of wildlife habitat in New Hampshire?

The New Hampshire Coverts Project is looking for applicants to attend the eleventh annual Coverts training, to be held in Hancock, September 7-10, 2005. Anyone with an interest in wildlife and land stewardship who is willing to commit 40 hours of volunteer time is invited to apply. The training is free.

The program has successfully trained more than 220 Coverts Cooperators who live in more than 100 communities throughout the state. Landowners, conservation commissioners, business people, land trust volunteers, doctors, teachers, and writers have all participated in the program over the years. These volunteers are making a difference for New Hampshire's wildlife and their habitats by managing habitat, promoting a land stewardship ethic, initiating community conservation planning, and helping to protect land.

UNH Cooperative Extension coordinates the program in partnership with N.H. Fish and Game, The Ruffed Grouse Society, and N.H. Division of Forests and Lands. For an application, phone Malin Ely Clyde at 862-2166 or email. The deadline for submitting applications is June 1, 2005.

To learn more about the Coverts Project and the training workshop, visit NH Coverts Project website.

Are you frustrated with the way your town is growing, losing its fields and forestland?

According to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, New Hampshire is losing 12,000 to 15,000 acres of open land each year to development. Some towns are slowing that trend by voting land conservation bonds at their town meetings, buying up open space through public taxpayer dollars.

Last spring, voters in 29 communities across the state considered proposals for bond issues to finance land conservation projects. According to the Center for Land Conservation Assistance, 13 envisioned borrowing at least $1 million to preserve undeveloped parcels of land.

A UNH survey conducted in 12 of those 29 communities examined why voters supported or opposed local open space preservation initiatives. The towns surveyed included Auburn, Brentwood, East Kingston, Exeter, Hollis, Newington, Barrington, Durham, Errol, Greenland, Hopkinton and Rye, whose preservation bond proposals ranged from $500,000 in Newington to $5 million each in Hollis, Hopkinton and Rye.

Out of the nearly 500 respondents, the number one reason people voted for the conservation bonds was because of town growth and the need for preserving more open space. Other reasons included preserving the rural character of the town, saving forest land and keeping property taxes down. Those who voted against the bond cited its high cost and the fact that taxes were already too high.

When asked to name the biggest issue or problem facing their town, 41 percent overwhelming cited growth/sprawl/lack of open space highest. Taxes came in second, with 30 and 25 percent of respondents citing schools/quality of education.

UNH Cooperative Extension teamed with the Center for Integrative Regional Problem Solving (CIRPS) to help New Hampshire’s rapidly growing communities. With information from community decision-makers and active citizens across the state, the team compiled a list of the top 10 issues facing rapidly growing communities in New Hampshire:

• Determining economic impacts of land use choices, including cost/access to services, taxation and financing education.
• Preserving New England character, including a sense of community.
• Exploring growth management strategies and model ordinances for natural resource protection: what works, what does not.
• Conserving the best open space through non-regulatory options.
• Sustaining the economic base without losing the quality of life.
• Creating affordable housing with developer incentives.
• Creating adequate transportation services and systems.
• Ensuring surface and groundwater protection.
• Encouraging collaboration within communities and within the region.
• Providing leadership training to community decision-makers.

The CIRPS/Extension team is developing an online clearinghouse to provide resources to New Hampshire residents and community leaders with an eventual goal of making it a regional clearinghouse, including southern Maine and northern Massachusetts.

The site will include links to organizations that provide materials and support to communities, links to New Hampshire communities that have developed innovative ways of dealing with rapid growth, and a wide range of academic and scientific research papers on the topics.

UNH Cooperative Extension offers many programs that help citizens and local officials try to deal with the costs of increasing sprawl and growth. These include the Community Profile, a process which brings citizens together to envision and plan the future of their community, and the Community Conservation Assistance Program, which pulls together groups of citizens to work on special land and water conservation projects.

UNH Cooperative Extension also provides support and technical help in many areas, including programs that provide education about land conservation, developing trail systems, determining the cost and protection of open space, water quality monitoring and protection, managing community forests and using geographic information systems (GIS).

For more information about what UNH Cooperative Extension is doing to support New Hampshire’s communities, visit Extension’s website at http://ceinfo.unh.edu or one of these specific program links:

• Extension’s Communities Program
• Community Conservation Assistance Program
• Community Forests

By Michele Gagne, Program Coordinator, Strengthening NH Communities Initiative UNH Cooperative Extension

A team of 93 community volunteers organized by Carroll County Extension Master Gardeners picked, washed, boxed 12,500 pounds of surplus vegetables from Sherman Farm in East Conway and distributed them to food pantries and senior meal programs throughout the county last summer.

Their generosity served more than 23,000 vegetable meals valued at more than $15,000 to residents of Carroll County who might not otherwise have had access to fresh vegetables.

Organized last year as an Extension Master Gardener initiative, the Veggie Volunteer Program (VVP) links volunteers with Sherman Farm, a diversified dairy, livestock and vegetable farm whose community-spirited owners had long wanted to find a way to get their crop surpluses to people in need.

In addition to the fresh food it distributes, the VVP offers important educational benefits. “Volunteers from the community get to see a working farm in operation,” said Carroll County Extension agricultural and environmental stewardship educator Tina Savage. “Many people are unfamiliar with how and where vegetables grow. Visiting the farm helps them develop an understanding of the value of working farms, local food and open space.”

This year the VVP expanded to include an after-school program, called the Sprouts. “Children in the program learned about human nutrition, plant nutrition, food safety, and the food guide pyramid,” said Savage. “The Sprouts finished up with a trip to the farm to help with the harvest and tour the whole operation.”

Future plans for the VVP include writing and publishing a how-to manual that will help other counties and other states develop similar programs.

Donating food in New Hampshire

The New Hampshire Food Bank, which expects to distribute nearly 4 million pounds of food in 2004 to emergency food pantries and soup kitchens throughout the Granite State, can provide information about where to donate food in your community. Call 669-9725.

Hunt for the Hungry
The Food Bank also manages a program that accepts donations of whole or processed game animals. Call 669-9725 for information.

Who's my legislator?
Find the people who represent your town in the NH State legislature.

State Legislature
Learn the history and current status of bills, committee membership, legislators' voting records and more.

Who represents me in Congress?
Contact information and links to the individual Web sites of New Hampshire Senators and Representatives in the US Congress

Bills before Congress
Legislative Information on the Internet contains a lot of information about activities of the US Congress. Visit their Frequently Asked Questions page for help finding the information you need.

Information about New Hampshire cities and towns
Use the pull-down menu and click on your town to find demographic and economic data, municipal services, labor force, housing, recreational facilities, growth patterns and much more.

Locate your voting districts
New Hampshire has five sets of districts: Congressional Districts, Executive Council , State Senate , State Representative Districts, and County Commissioner .

How do I register to vote in New Hampshire?
Good fact sheet from the Secretary of State's Election Division

Where do I vote in New Hampshire?
Locations and hours for all municipal polling places in New Hampshire

Want to run for office?
Qualifications for candidates interested in running for local, county, state and federal offices

Homepage New Hampshire
The gateway to more information about NH state government

August 27 footrace supports local agriculture

Whether you run, walk, or shuffle, come boost (or boast about) your physical fitness while you support local agriculture in the 1 st annual Stride for New Hampshire Pride 5K footrace August 27. The race begins at 9 a.m. at the State House Plaza in Concord.

You might win a bushel of New Hampshire-grown sweet corn or a bag of vine-ripened tomatoes.

The fast, flat, USATF-certified course winds through downtown Concord and ends with a party on the State House lawn featuring locally-produced goodies.

Organized and directed by UNH Cooperative Extension educator Sadie Puglisi, the event aims to raise awareness about the economic, social and health benefits of local agriculture. All profits go to the New Hampshire Farmers’ Market Association.

For more information check out the Stride for NH Pride webpage.

“Matt feels good about losing weight. When he played outside last summer, he would have to catch his breath. Now he doesn’t have to catch his breath anymore,” says Matt’s mother JoAnn.

Six-year-old Matt, nicknamed “Bear,” has lost 18 pounds since last December, when he weighed 117 pounds. His family doctor told JoAnn that Matt had the height of an eight year-old and the weight of a 14 year-old.

But Matt also had medical problems related to his weight, including high blood pressure. His doctor was so concerned with Matt’s health he referred Matt to a specialist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.

The Dartmouth-Hitchcock doctor told Matt and JoAnn that Matt needed to lose weight. JoAnn was surprised. She hadn’t really thought about the health implications of Matt’s weight.

Experts nationwide have become increasingly alarmed about childhood obesity. National studies have shown that 15 percent of American children are overweight or obese. A recent New Hampshire study reported that 22 percent of boys and 17 percent of girls of elementary-school age are overweight and another 20 percent are at risk for becoming overweight.

But, being out of breath is nothing compared to the health risks associated with obesity. Obesity is a risk factor for the development of a variety of complications, including type 2 diabetes—a disease doctors once called “adult onset” diabetes because it appeared so rarely in children. A recent Yale University study revealed that 25 percent of obese children were at high risk for developing diabetes.

Matt’s Head Start teacher referred JoAnn to Terri Schoppmeyer, a UNH Cooperative Extension Nutrition Connections educator. Terri taught JoAnn the basics of nutrition, label reading, how to eat well on fewer calories, and the importance of parents serving as role models for good nutrition.

JoAnn started by writing down everything Matt ate, then decided what she needed to cut back on. “Matt used to eat two salami sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise, but now has only one sandwich with mustard, instead of mayonnaise,” she said. “It was difficult at first to cut back on food for Matt. He’d say, ‘There’s nothing good to eat!’”

JoAnn and her husband have five children. The whole family began following a more healthy diet and lost a total of 65 pounds since December 2, 2004.

Dad plays a special role, because what Dad eats, “Bear” eats; if Dad eats well, so does “Bear.” JoAnn said, “Matt even likes asparagus and swordfish, just like his Dad.”

JoAnn says she is spending more on groceries; “I’m buying more fruit and other foods that sometimes cost more.” But when it comes to food, JoAnn now thinks first about her family’s health. “It’s hard at first to change eating habits, but you have to stick to it. Your child’s health is more important than anything.”

Some of the changes JoAnn made:

• Cutting back on items like chocolate milk (Matt was drinking four or five glasses each day)
• Offering fruits instead of breakfast pastries and other sugary, fatty foods
• Reading labels to identify the most nutritious foods
• Buying lower-fat products
• Finding ways to get her kids to eat vegetables
• Offering water instead of high-calorie drinks
• Encouraging more exercise

One of the best ideas JoAnn has for the summer is to keep a cooler full of ice cold water on her porch. When the kids get thirsty, they just open up the cooler and get their water. No hanging out in front of the refrigerator on hot summer days in this household!

If you’d like nutrition help from a UNH Nutrition Connections educator, call 1-800-FOODLINE and leave a message. We will have your local educator contact you.

By Valerie Long, UNH Cooperative Extension Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program Coordinator

Youth mappers to chart community resources in Belknap and Strafford Counties

Every community has all sorts of places to go, to learn, to have fun, to work out, to find work and to get or give help, as well as people who make things happen.

But residents can’t connect with resources if they don’t know about them, and community leaders can learn more about the resources their communities lack once they’ve identified the ones they already have.

Identifying and documenting community assets will provide summer work for about 40 young people ages 14-20 in Belknap and Strafford Counties who will pilot a “community youth mapping” process organizers hope will spread statewide.

Between July 20 and August 5, teams of young people working with adult mentors in the pilot counties will fan out into local communities to identify and “map” their local assets. Decked out in colorful t-shirts that identify them as youth mappers, the teams will canvass neighborhoods, surveying businesses, service agencies, recreation programs, churches, health care facilities, emergency services, and a host of other resources, including many not listed in traditional service or business directories.

Once the teams have designed their surveys, conducted their interviews, and recorded their data, they—and perhaps others—will enter their information into an online database with interactive maps they can update and expand as the project grows.

In addition to gaining valuable skills and gaining a broad understanding of their local communities, those involved in the mapping project will earn either academic credit or cash for their work.

Getting young people involved in asset mapping
“Asset mapping is the name given to the process by which community members take stock of community strengths and assets,” says Charlotte Cross, a UNH Cooperative Extension 4-H Youth Development Specialist who organized and leads the project. “Youth mapping brings young people into the process.”

Through her work with nonprofit agencies serving youth, college faculty, businesses, the criminal justice system, community leaders, teachers, school administrators, and parents, Cross had discovered tremendous interest in the concept of youth asset mapping.

“I spent the past three years looking at various models that would offer tools and training materials, and help communities with planning, training and organizing the data collection. The Academy for Educational Development (AED), Center for Youth Development and Policy Research, kept rising to the top,” she said. “They’d developed and tested a model they call Community YouthMapping (CYM) that’s been used in more than 100 sites across the U.S., as well as in other countries, including Haiti, Egypt, the Netherlands and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. AED had credibility and funding from many foundations and government agencies. And they’d developed a nationwide online Community YouthMapping Web site where local teams can store, update and access their information.”

Project history
In March, Cross had recruited a group of five co-sponsoring organizations (see links at end of article) and convened an orientation meeting to gauge interest in community youth mapping, inviting an AED consultant to give a presentation on the specifics of the organization’s CYM model.

“We had a tremendous response,” Cross says. “Seventy people showed up, representing youth-serving organizations from all over New Hampshire, and 30 said they’d be willing to serve on a statewide CYM steering committee.

“What’s more, two agencies immediately stepped forward and offered themselves as pilot sites for this initiative: the Community Response Coalition (CoRe), in Belknap County and the Transition Resource Network at Strafford Learning Center, covering Strafford County. The two groups collectively committed $77,800 of their existing funding to pilot the initiative locally.” The county sponsors recruited youth for the project through schools and youth-serving agencies.

Youth mappers develop individual and team skills while serving the entire community
“Community youth mapping is designed to be the foundation of a community’s information infrastructure,” says Cross. “It involves a comprehensive process that supports the entire community, while serving those youth immediately involved in the process.”

“Overall, it’s a youth development initiative. I think of it as ‘supervised fieldwork,’” she says. “The youth involved learn valuable workforce skills, such as how to conduct interviews, record information, work with databases, analyze, report, and present what they’ve learned.

“They also develop important job-readiness ‘soft’ skills: teamwork, conflict resolution, communication, professional behavior. They take leadership roles that help build self-esteem. They learn more about and become more engaged their communities.”

In trainings held July 18-22 in both counties, the teens and their adult mentors were introduced to the Community YouthMapping process and the survey tool they’ll use to collect and record information. “The training features role-playing, canvassing safety, dealing with difficult people, professional protocols, interpersonal relations and daily expectations on the job,” says Cross.

Next steps
“We’ve received a $25,000 grant from the N.H. Workforce Opportunity Youth Council we’ll use to purchase the statewide license that will enable all participating communities to access the online CYM system and pave the way for future projects among the dozens of organizations that have expressed interest in sponsoring youth mapping programs locally,” says Cross.

This fall, Cross says she’ll bring all interested parties together for a follow-up workshop to share the results of the summer pilots and form a statewide CYM steering committee.

“State legislators have also expressed interest in the project,” she says. “In June, I was invited to give a presentation to the Legislative Caucus for Young Children, and they’ve invited me back this fall to discuss the results of our summer pilots.”

For more information about Community Youth Mapping Initiative, contact Charlotte Cross at (603)862-2495.

For more information about CYM’s co-sponsoring partners

• Belknap County Citizens Council
• Community Response (CoRe)
• Makin’ It Happen
• N.H. Department of Health and Human Services, Maternal and Child Health
• Reclaiming Futures

Local Officials: why engage citizens in participatory decision-making?

• To develop a richer information base. Local citizens know the local needs and issues best.
• To educate both citizens and policy makers about the many dimensions of an issue or decision.
• To allow discussion of many points of view on the issue and give each citizen a voice.
• To make it easier to implement decision or policy easier.
• To help build accountability for public officials and citizen.

Public notice requirements
By law, public officials must notify the public of community-level public meetings by posting notices before the meeting. All meetings must take place in locations accessible to the public. These legal safeguards ensure that citizens have an opportunity to speak up about local decisions before they go into effect.

In spite of this public notice requirement, some municipal boards and committees still conduct policy-making without full disclosure to the public. In some instances, time constraints or lack of understanding of the public's role in the decision-making process leave the public out of decision-making sessions. In other cases, public officials intentionally neglect to engage the public, for fear that public input might derail their agenda.

Tools for encouraging citizen participation in local decision-making
For every issue before them, public officials have a variety of tools available to engage citizens in decision-making. Among them:

Citizen advisory committees
Citizen advisors help enrich the discussion with diverse perspectives on policy or program development that foster positive relations with the community. Here's an example of citizen participation in Department of Transportation projects.

Community surveys & questionnaires
Community surveys help public officials gather data about local attitudes regarding well-defined issues, problems or opportunities. The University of Kansas Community Toolbox project offers some wonderful tools for conducting community surveys.

Focus groups
The focus group is a roundtable discussion aimed at gathering ideas and opinions from a targeted group of citizens. Focus groups help build a synergy of thoughts and ideas.The U. Kansas Community Toolbox offers resources for conducting focus groups.

Public hearings
Hearings are public meetings that enable residents to express their concerns about public plans, decisions, or issues. Click here or information on public hearings.

NH Public Notices contains a wealth of information about "the relationship between public notice advertisements and 'active citizenship,' an American ideal holding that the collective good works of individual citizens make society stronger and benefit all the people."

Periods for Public Review and Comment
Public review and comment refers to a formal process that provides a window of time within which the public may review proposed public plans or policies and comment before the plan or policy becomes law. Your local newspaper the Federal Register usually print notices of notice of upcoming hearings.

Community Forums
A community forum is a public meeting intended to bring together a variety of community perspectives to discuss salient issues, visions, problems, or concerns that the community is facing. The University of Kansas Community toolkit offers good information on community forums.

UNH Cooperative Extension engages communities in an expended community forum process called a Community Profile , during which a community takes stock of where it is today and develops an action plan for how it wants to operate in the future

Public officials: before you decide which tools to use, ask yourself

• How do you want to involve the public?
• At what point in the decision-making process should you involve the public?
• How will you get the public engaged in the process, given that most citizens live busy lives?

• Collect public input at various (or all) stages of the process, not merely to validate an existing plan.
• Provide citizens enough information, education, and/or training to play a meaningful role in the decision-making process.
• Give all stakeholders affected by a particular decision or policy an equal opportunity to participate in the process.
• Facilitate the public participation process, but refrain from "leading" inways designed to elicit specific participant or group responses.

• Periodically visiting the Town Hall or other public buildings where meeting notices are posted to keep informed of local decision-making
• Writing letters to public officials to keep them accountable
• Asking key questions at town meetings
• Encouraging officials to develop an effective process to engage local citizens
• Turning to the various state and Federal regulatory agencies to ensure that public officials abide by state laws and regulations.

Finally, citizens have the right to enact a citizen initiative - if enough signatures are garnered, public officials may be forced to put an issue up for referendum.

Participatory decision-making requires energy, time and resources. Yet if cities and towns want to respond effectively to citizen needs, local officials need to start listening to citizens and recruiting their help in crafting the policies and decisions that will shape the future of their community.

UNH Cooperative Extension and the Center for Integrative Regional Problem Solving (CIRPS) have developed the online Resource Clearinghouse for Rapidly Growing Communities to provide New England communities with a fast, easy way to find experts, information, and other resources to help conserve open space, protect the human health and environmental health, and preserve local character.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ranks sprawl as one of the biggest environmental challenges facing New England, a region that loses more than 1,200 acres of open space to development each week.

Between 1982 and 1997, New England lost open space at almost six times the rate of population growth, while the United States as a whole consumed land at two to one-half times the rate of population growth. Southern Maine, Northeast Massachusetts and the New Hampshire seacoast share the challenges of a steady influx of new residents and tourists from the Boston area seeking escape from urban life and/or rising real estate prices.

The Clearinghouse harnesses the best of what a university can offer: scientific information and expertise, technical expertise in on-line communication, and a multi-disciplinary regional perspective.

Background
Asurvey of local citizens and organizations developed this list of the top 10 issues facing communities concerned with rapid growth: conserving open space, water protection, economic impacts of land use choices, growth management, leadership training, preserving New England character, transportation, economic development, encouraging community collaboration, and affordable housing.

New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts participants at a 2003 CIRPS symposium, The Voices of Communities Experiencing Rapid Change, identified a central clearinghouse providing easy and quick access to information, organizations, and tools as a major way UNH and its external partners could help communities meet the challenges posed by increased growth and development.

A planning group, which included representation from Nashua Regional Planning Commission, Rockingham Planning Commission, New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, NH Office of Planning of Energy and Planning, Concord 20/20, GrowSmart Maine, Southern Maine Regional Planning Commission, Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, and departments and programs of the University of New Hampshire, formed to develop the Clearinghouse. The NH Charitable Foundation, the NH Estuaries Project and the Maine Community Foundation provided funding for the first phase of the project.

What the Clearinghouse provides
A searchable database focuses on the top 10 concerns of rapidly growing communities. Users get quick access to a variety of valuable information, including links to organizations and agencies that can help communities with these issues; background and contact information for UNH faculty and UNH Cooperative Extension experts on the issues; direct access to ordering information or links to the text of publications and other tools, such as CD-ROMs, other clearinghouses, seminars, and stories from communities that have implemented growth management or smart growth strategies, including best practices and outcomes.

Ask a question
The “query” function of the site allows individuals to plug in specific details about the information they are seeking, providing them with a targeted response of what’s currently available in the Clearinghouse. Additionally, individuals can input “keywords” or “view all resources” in the site.

Find organizations that offer help
A Community Assistance Providers section lets site visitors the resources of many organizations and individuals who can help communities in areas of concern associated with rapid growth. The section offers information about the areas of interest and expertise of the organizations/individuals, the geographic region in which they work, descriptions of what they offer, along with contact information, including a link to the website, if available.

Find information tools
The Publications and Other Tools section includes articles and books, data-intensive websites conference information and proceedings; and toolkits. Listings include the type of tool, the region it covers, a brief description, and contact information.

Find expert help
An Experts and Consultants section provides information on experts from the University of New Hampshire and other consultants who can provide technical expertise and support to community leaders. These listings include the experts’ areas of expertise and interest, the regions in which they work, as well as descriptions of the individuals’ background and experience, the services they provide and their contact information.

Learn from other communities
Stories compiled from successful action groups in communities that conducted UNH Cooperative Extension’s Community Profile project, as well from UNH students who interviewed community leaders and regional planning commission members. The stories provide site users with the steps towns or citizen groups took to accomplish their goals, as well as links to pictures, and to organizations and experts who provide support.

Help build the site
The submit new resources feature encourages organizations, consultants, community leaders and other, to help develop the site by suggesting resources or simply telling the story about an initiative they’ve developed to help deal with rapid growth— an innovative zoning practice, a visioning process to set future agendas, a successful land preservation effort.

Review and post comments about site features
The Clearinghouse also allows users to give feedback on real-world experience using the resources in the database. This information can be viewed by other online users and will provide site developers with insights they can use to evaluate and improve the site.

For more information about the Clearinghouse, contact Amy Seif at 862-4650, or Michele Gagne at 862-5046.

by Michele Gagne, Program Coordinator for the Strengthening NH Communities Initiative and the Community Profile Project

Help! I found my pot-bellied pig chomping down on some exotic-looking plant in the barnyard this morning. I hope you can help identify it. The plant seems to have sprouted up from nowhere. It looks like some sort of exotic tropical specimen, with huge, heart-shaped leaves, spiny stems, bright yellow, trumpet-shaped flowers, and fleshy, dark- green seedpods about four inches long. I’m worried they might have poisoned him!

Now that spring has finally arrived in force and folks have headed outside to take stock of the natural world, people who raise pigs or chickens or vegetables, people with lawns and lilac bushes and perennial flowerbeds, or people just curious about snakes, or bats, birds, wild turkeys, or insects, will start calling us with questions. (The pot-bellied pig question arrived early one August morning.)

Yes, adventures in the great outdoors, even adventures that take place just outside your kitchen door, can stimulate a lot of questions. But where can you turn for answers?

If you’re smart, like the caller concerned about her pet pig, you’ll call the UNH Cooperative Extension Info Line at 1-877-398-4769. Trained volunteers linked to an extraordinary network of professionals with expertise in a wide variety of subject matter areas answer the phones Monday through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m., dispensing practical, environmentally-sound, research-based information tailored for New Hampshire conditions. People who can’t call during business hours can email questions.

Some days the calls come so fast and furious our phone staff can barely catch their breath between calls:

Can humans get roundworms from dog droppings on the lawn?
Where can I get my chickens tested for bird flu?
How long will homemade pickles last on the shelf?
Can I bury my dog’s ashes under the rose bush I want to plant as his memorial?
How can I banish a family of skunks from under the front porch?
How do I get my well water tested?
Do you have plans for a bat house?
The grass on the front lawn looks yellow and sparse. What can I do?
How can I tell if the tick I just pulled off my son’s leg is the kind that transmits Lyme disease?
How can I get more potassium into my diet?

At the end of the day, an elderly gentleman wants to know why his zucchini flowers aren’t developing into zucchinis. We tell him the likely reason is that the female flowers aren’t getting pollinated during this wet spell, give him a lesson in hand-pollination, and close down our phone lines for the day.

Over the past five years, volunteers staffing the Info Line have fielded almost 50,000 questions on gardening and landscaping, lawn care, food safety, food preservation, backyard livestock, water quality, wildlife, household pests, composting, tree care and so much more.

Few of us have extended families and neighbors these days with the knowledge and experience to advise us what to do when the chickens start pecking each other, or explain the advantages of removing suckers from the tomato plants. Most of us are at least two generations removed from folks who grew their own food, kept livestock, and knew which tree species produced the longest-lasting heat.

Most questions that come to the Info Line are uncomplicated and easy to answer. Chances are, the Info Line staffer you talk to has answered similar questions already, had the experience him/herself, or knows someone who has. And when they don’t have the answer at their fingertips, our staff will do the research to get you the information you need or refer you to someone who has it.

One more thing about the Info Line volunteers: without exception they’re very curious. They sign up for the 70-plus hours of training and commit to many hours on the job because they revel in the chance to learn something new as they research answers for you.

Oh, about that “exotic tropical plant” with the heart-shaped leaves, trumpet-shaped flowers and “fleshy seedpods” the caller’s pet pig enjoyed so much?

Because the woman—a recent transplant to rural New Hampshire—had to dash off to work to deliver a presentation, we suggested she put on gloves, pull up the plant, and bring it to her veterinarian’s office after her presentation, while we continued using our botanical “keys” to track its identity.

Turns out she didn’t need further advice from us—or her vet. She called ten minutes later from work to thank us and to say that her coworkers had identified the plant immediately—as a zucchini!

By Margaret Hagen, Director, UNH Cooperative Extension Family, Home & GardenEducationCenter

More from the Family, Home & Garden Education Center

• Do you like to learn through fun, hands-on classes or workshops? Visit our calendar of events to look

• If you want information oriented towards how to grow, build, diagnose or raise almost anything, check out the more than 150 Home & Garden Information Fact Sheets.

• Take a look at some of the New Hampshire Outside columns, mostly written by Extension volunteers with a personal story to tell about life in New Hampshire’s outdoors.

• WMUR-TV (Channel 9) also features a weekly UNH Cooperative Extension spot called “Grow It Green” which airs at noon Tuesdays and during Saturday morning’s early news. The spots highlight topics of seasonal interest.

"My neighbor burns his household trash in a barrel behind his garage every weekend. Says he has for the past 50 years," a friend told me recently. "He says he's saving the town money by not taking it to the dump."

My friend's neighbor probably hasn't saved his town much money. But he is probably breaking New Hampshire law every time he burns his trash.

RSA 127-N, which took effect January 1, 2003, prohibits burning residential trash, which includes packaging materials, coated or laminated paper, rubber, painted or treated wood, coated cardboard, plastics, shingles, foam rubber, oily rags and animal, vegetable and kitchen waste.

The character of household trash has changed dramatically in 50 years. Today's trash can contain inks, dyes, chlorine, plastics, heavy metals and a variety of synthetic materials which produce toxins as the trash burns at the low temperatures characteristic of backyard burn piles. Many of these toxins get released directly into the air, where they stay close to the ground or fall onto plants and soil, where they can affect the health of residents and neighbors, especially children. Other pollutants remain in the ash, where they can contaminate soil and groundwater.

A recent EPA study showed that burning a week's worth of trash from a single household in an open barrel can spew as much of some toxic chemicals into the air as a well-controlled municipal incinerator burning the trash from thousands of homes.

Wood stoves and fireplaces provide primary or supplemental heat for many New Hampshire homes. State officials say residents may continue to burn newspapers and other household paper waste in home heating units.

But Rick Rumba, air toxics program manager for the NH Air Resources Division, advises against burning holiday wrapping paper in a fireplace or wood stove. "A lot of that paper is imported from countries that still use inks and dyes containing cadmium, lead and other harmful materials," says Rumba, noting that some toxic materials may rise with the smoke and pollute the air, but others, like heavy metals, can pollute the soil when people sprinkle the ashes on their lawns or gardens.

The new ban on burning household trash doesn't prohibit Granite Staters from burning clean wood, leaves and small brush outdoors. However, you'll need a permit from the local fire warden before you kindle a pile of leaves or brush. Even when you do have a permit, state regulations prohibit open burning between the hours of 9:00 am and 5:00 pm, unless it's raining.

When snow completely covers the ground where you plan to burn brush or clean wood, you don't need a fire permit, although some local ordinances restrict wintertime burning

"I always like to tell people, fire permits are a privilege, not a right," says New Hampshire's Chief of Fire Protection, Robert Nelson. "Fire wardens issue permits on the basis of safety and weather conditions."

New Hampshire legislation that went into effect in 1993 made it illegal to dispose of leaf and yard waste in solid waste disposal facilities. Many municipalities do leaf and yard waste composting at the local transfer station and some commercial composting operations accept leaf and yard waste. As an alternative to burning, residents can also safely and easily compost these materials at home. To learn how, call the UNH Cooperative Extension Info Line at 877-398-4769, Monday through Friday from 9am  2pm.

Other resources:
Much more information on the health and environmental effects of backyard burning: http://www.epa.gov/msw/backyard/

To report illegal burning of household trash, contact Air Resources compliance officer Gary Milbury at 271-0907 or 800-498-6868.

For posters and pamphlets providing residents with information about residential trash-burning, call Kathy Brockett at 271-6284 or Barb Fales at 271-1390 or call 800-498-6868.

For more information about the NH rules governing open burning or obtaining a fire permit: http://www.nhdfl.org/protection_bureau/fp_firepermits.htm

For a fact sheet on municipal composting of yard waste: http://www.des.state.nh.us/factsheets/sw/sw-3.htm

For lists of NH composting companies (many accept residential leaf and yard waste):
http://www.ceinfo.unh.edu/Agriculture/purchcom.pdf
http://www.des.state.nh.us/SWTAS/Composters.htm

Looking for a distinctive and useful gift that reflects New Hampshire ’s natural heritage? Consider giving one of four beautiful publications available from the UNH Cooperative Extension Publications Center . With prices ranging from $6 to $20, these gifts won’t break the bank, either.

A Landowner's Guide to Inventorying & Monitoring Wildlife in New Hampshire

This book will teach readers some fascinating ways to inventory the wildlife inhabiting the land around them: listening for grouse drumming or toad calling, observing woodcock peenting or turtle-basking, and setting out “scent posts” that attract predators. Written by Malin Ely Clyde, Darrel Covell and Matt Tarr of UNH Cooperative Extension’s Forestry & Wildlife program, this beautiful, spiral-bound volume helps New Hampshire landowners get to know and survey the wildlife around them. The book includes tips for observing wildlife and instructions for keeping records of your observations, guidance on creating a habitat map of your property, detailed how-to descriptions of methods for taking inventories of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and insects, and data tabulation sheets for each inventory method. The book also offers descriptions and contact information for many state and national wildlife programs that welcome your involvement in their wildlife surveys.

The 2005 North Country Garden Calendar

Learn how to spread wood ashes, buy a home greenhouse, establish a wildflower garden, collect seed and keep fall invaders. This attractive, two-color calendar highlights gardening topics for northern New England gardeners throughout the year. Produced by horticultural experts at the Cooperative Extensions of the Universities of New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont , the calendar offers a useful tip for each day of the year, along with solutions to three of the most common problems Northern New England gardeners face each month.

The Best Plants for New Hampshire Gardens and Landscapes

How to Choose Annuals, Perennials, Small Trees & Shrubs to Thrive in Your Garden

This beautiful book uses the concept of habitat gardening to help gardeners and landscapers choose and care for plants in our unique New Hampshire environment. It includes lively, easy-to-read text and useful charts, pen and ink illustrations, black & white photos of selected plants, sections on plant selection and care, specialty plant lists and an index for easy referencing.

Written by Cathy Neal and Margaret Hagen of UNH Extension, along with Leslie van Berkum of van Berkum Nurseries, this book is published by the New Hampshire Plant Growers' Association in cooperation with UNH Cooperative Extension.

Preserving Old Barns

Now in its second printing, with each copy hand-signed by both authors, Preserving Old Barns offers a history of New England agriculture through the evolution of barns, helps barn owners assess the structural integrity of old farm buildings, and provides instructions for making basic repairs. Photos and sketches on every page provide clear examples of the concepts presented. A special colored section showcases more than a dozen beautifully restored barns. The appendix has an extensive bibliography of information pertinent to barn repair.

Authors John Porter, a UNH Cooperative Extension dairy specialist, and Francis Gilman, retired agricultural engineer specialist with UNH Cooperative Extension have between them have more than 50 years of experience helping farmers around New England update and retrofit barns.

To order:

A Landowner's Guide to Inventorying & Monitoring Wildlife in New Hampshire

The 2005 North Country Garden Calendar

Preserving Old Barns

The Best Plants for New Hampshire Gardens and Landscapes

To ensure delivery in time for the holidays, please get your orders in before Friday, December 17. For more information, call 603-862-2346.

USDA Food Safety Mobile makes its first N.H. visit The NH Safe Food Alliance, a consortium of Granite State academic, regulatory and industry groups, will sponsor the U.S. Department of Agriculture's new Food Safety Mobile at the Hopkinton State Fair September 3-6.

Al Lampson, the Food Security Coordinator of the N.H. Bureau of Food Protection who coordinated the visit, describes the vehicle as "a 35-foot van plastered with cartoon characters. Colorful costumed characters and food safety experts will be on hand to provide cooking demonstrations, safe food handling tips, free publications on food safety, and games for children. The van will be open from 9AM to 9PM. Come by and visit!"

What local institution helps preserve open space, improve public health, create jobs, generate income that stays in the local economy, revitalize downtowns and foster a sense of community? A farmers’ market of course!

“Farmers’ markets are re-energizing and re-invigorating New Hampshire cities and towns” says Jack Potter, founder and director of the N.H. Farmers’ Market Association. “Markets are providing a highly valued social event that people look forward to each market day. They are bringing an awareness of the importance of local farms and food quality into the minds and kitchens of thousands of people throughout our state. On market days, people drawn to the markets also visit and buy from other community merchants.” 

According to Gail McWilliam Jellie, who directs the of Agricultural Development for the N.H. Department of Agriculture, Markets & Food Division 48 markets, “ will operate in cities and towns throughout New Hampshire this summer, with several more expected to open before the end of the growing season. When I took this job 11 years ago, there were only 11.”

McWilliam Jellie credits the federal Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program as the primary force driving the explosive growth of farmers markets throughout New Hampshire. The FMNP provides coupons that qualifying low-income families and seniors can redeem for fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers’ markets.

“A N.H. Farmers’ Market Association survey estimated that the state’s farmers’ markets grossed about $800,000 last year,” says McWilliam Jellie. “FMNP coupons accounted for nearly $200,000, or about one-quarter of gross receipts.”

McWilliam Jellie says a resurgence of interest in farming and local initiatives to revitalize downtowns also factor heavily into the growth of farmers’ markets statewide. “I’m wondering when the trend will peak,” she says, adding that the pilot program enabling market vendors to accept the electronic cards used by food stamp recipients “has the potential to expand farmers’ market activity even more dramatically.”

Although locally-produced fresh fruit and vegetables play the starring role, most markets also offer a broad range of products reflecting New Hampshire’s rural heritage: plants and flowers, eggs, poultry, pork, wool, honey and maple syrup, baked goods, handmade soap and crafts. Many markets offer educational programs, cooking demonstrations, live animals, music, activities for children and festivals.

Growers needed!

“Most markets need more growers,” says Nada Haddad, Extension educator in Rockingham County. “Fruits and vegetables sustain these markets. More and more people are shopping at farmers’ markets, and we’re getting more and more markets every year, so we will continue to need more growers.” Haddad suggests that interested producers call their county Extension office or contact the manager of their local market for information on how to get involved or attend the May 12 workshop described below.

For more information:

Selling at a Farmers’ Market Essential tips for people who sell agricultural products at N.H. farmers’ markets.

New Hampshire Farmers’ Market Association A wealth of information for vendors and prospective vendors.

Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program Official pages on USDA’s Farmers Market Nutrition Programs for WIC recipients and low-income seniors.

USDA Farmer Direct Marketing Contains links to many information resources for vendors and consumers of farm-fresh products.

5 A Day Produce for Better Health Foundation Describes the health benefits of vegetables and fruits, contains links to fact sheets, recipes, research reports and more.

Popular home horticulture course moves to the North Country this fall

UNH Cooperative Extension will offer a Master Gardener course in Lancaster this fall. After completing the intensive course in home horticulture, Master Gardeners volunteer time in their communities, sharing their knowledge and their love of gardening with others.

Since 1993, this popular program has trained more than 700 Master Gardeners throughout New Hampshire, 500 of whom remain active as Master Gardener volunteers and take advantage of ongoing programs of continuing education.

Students in the program normally travel to Concord or to Manchester for classes. Coos County Extension educator Steve Turaj organized the Lancaster classes to ease the travel burden for North Country residents. Through an exchange program with the Vermont Master Gardener program, the Lancaster training program also welcomes Vermont applicants.

"The course isn't geared for beginners," says Turaj. "We're looking for experienced gardeners who want to increase their in-depth knowledge of home horticulture." Instructors will cover such topics as botany, soils, insects, plant diseases, plant propagation, indoor plants, fruits, vegetables, sustainable gardening, woody ornamentals, annuals and perennials, landscaping and more.

After graduation, the gardeners volunteer a minimum 45 hours during a year-long internship, extending to other gardeners their enthusiasm for gardening and the knowledge gained through the classes. After the intern year, full-fledged Master Gardeners remain active by continuing to volunteer a few hours each year.

The North County classes will meet a full day a week for eight weeks in the Granite State Room of North County Resource Center in Lancaster from late September to mid-October.

The eight classes will meet from 9 am to 4 pm, September 23, 28 and 30, and October 5, 8, 12, 14, and 19 (days of the week vary-check calendar). The program costs $175, which includes a reference handbook. Scholarships are available based on need.

For more information, or to receive an application in the mail, please call 788-4961.You can also download the application from our Web site. Please submit your application for the Lancaster program by August 31.

UNH Cooperative’s Extension Nutrition Connections program has won a $31,000 grant from the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture, Research and Education Program (NESARE) that will encourage food stamp recipients to use their electronic benefits transfer (EBT) cards at three farmers’ markets this summer. Additional funds from the Nutrition Connections program will support two additional markets in the project (see list of markets below).

Nutrition Connections’ food security coordinator Helen Costello says the grant will allow shoppers at markets in Nashua . Manchester, Sanbornton, Enfield and Laconia this summer to use their EBT cards to buy locally-grown fruits and vegetables, lean meats, poultry, eggs, dairy products and whole grain breads while they enjoy the social aspects of market days.

“When the electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card replaced paper food stamp coupons in 1998, farmers’ markets and many farm stands didn’t have the infrastructure to accept the cards, inadvertently excluding food stamp customers from these markets,” says Costello. “The NESARE grant will allow the pilot sites to bring the necessary telephone and electricity lines to the markets and remove other barriers that have prevented market vendors from accepting food stamps. This summer, food stamp customers can bring their EBT cards to the UNHCE kiosk at participating markets and have them authorized to receive market scrip to make food purchases.”

Food stamp project joins existing Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program

The project enhances the benefits already available through the USDA Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, which provides coupons at the start of each market season that let qualifying low-income families and seniors buy fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers’ markets. The ability to use the EBT card at the markets will extend the purchasing power of families and seniors.

“Studies show that seniors who participate in the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program say they eat more fruits and vegetables than they would without the program and that they plan to eat more fruits and vegetables throughout the year,” says Costello. “Also, families who introduce their children to frequent exposure to fruits and vegetables help instill healthy eating habits early and help reduce the risk of nutrition-related diseases later in life, especially obesity and Type 2 diabetes.”

Costello credits George Hamilton, Extension agricultural educator in Hillsborough County and Jack Potter, director of the New Hampshire Farmers’ Market Association with enthusiastically supporting the idea and promotion it vigorously among growers.

UNH Extension Master Gardeners and nutritionists from the Nutrition Connections program will present food production and cooking demonstrations at each of the five participating markets to educate the public about food production and introduce new ideas for using farm fresh foods.

At the end of the three-year pilot Costello plans to develop a how-to manual for market managers that will help the food stamp program grow to include farmers’ markets statewide.

This time of year some people will experience a phenomenon they'd probably rather watch in a Steven King movie. Flying insects come out of the woodwork, invade their homes and wreak havoc. Fortunately, there is something that can be done to prevent this experience from causing trauma in a homeowner's life.

Warm spring temperatures and high moisture levels provide favorable conditions for increased termite and ant activity. Now through May is prime mating season for both types of insects, and when colonies get crowded, sexually mature kings and queens move on to start new colonies in other locations. The swarming of these insects, both ants and termites is a natural event and serves to expand their territory. Hopefully your bedroom isn't the place of choice. However, knowing what type of insect you're dealing with helps determine the strategy for controlling them.

Flying ants and swarming termites are often difficult to tell apart. Ants have a narrow "waist" (the joint between thorax and abdomen) like wasps; termites have an abdomen that is broadly joined to the thorax with no waist. Ants have two pair of wings that are unequal in length (the front pair is longer than the back). Although termites also have two pairs of wings, they are almost equal in length. The antennae of ants are sharply bent in the middle, like an elbow, whereas termite antennae are straight and beadlike. Both insects are relatively small, from 3/16 inch for the smaller ants and termites to 3/8 inch for the large ants.

Termite colonies consist of three castes: workers, soldiers and winged reproductives (the kings and queens). The workers are creamy-white and are rarely seen unless infested wood is pulled apart. About a quarter-inch-long, these termites have a crucial role- they perform all the labor in the colony, such as obtaining food, feeding other caste members, excavating wood and constructing tunnels. The workers probe continuously through the soil, looking for food, which may be as far as 500 feet from the colony. They then build tunnels for thousands of workers to transport cellulose back to the colony. The workers are careful to keep the path protected. Where it may be exposed to light or open air, the workers build mud tunnels from the soil to the food supply. These tubes are an indication that termites are present.

Soldier termites are about the same color as workers but their elongated yellowish heads have large jaws, and they are about the same size as adult workers. Soldiers can not feed themselves and rely heavily upon the workers for food. They are less numerous in the colony than the workers, and their only function is to defend the colony against invasion.

The kings and queens are dark brown or black, and grow to about a half-inch long. They are poor flyers so when these swarmers finally emerge above ground, they usually flutter a few yards and fall. They shed their wings and males that survive look for compatible mates. The couples burrow into the ground to become king and queens of their own colonies.

Carpenter ant colonies, like the termite colonies, have castes: reproductives and workers. The reproductives consist of the queen and male ants. These ants vary in size and color but are usually 1/4-1/2 inch and blackish. The male ants fertilize the queen during the ant's nuptial flight, then die leaving the queen to start the new colony.

The worker caste ants are devoted to a variety of activities such as nest construction, repair and defense, foraging for food, and feeding and caring for larvae and the queen. Workers vary in size and appearance within a species.

Both of these insects are social insects that live in colonies. Termites usually live underground, where they feed mostly on old roots, tree stumps and fallen limbs. Ants are found in cavities located in the soft, moist, decaying wood of a hollow tree, stump or log. They feed on other insects, aphid honey dew and plant juices. Both of these insects are extremely important in nature until they find your house.

If you discover swarmers inside your home DO NOT PANIC! Termite swarms emerging inside a structure don't usually survive. It is, however, an indication of infestation. If this is the case it's a problem you really can't treat yourself. If you are unsure of whether or not you need an exterminator you can call the Family, Home & Garden Education and request the following fact sheet "Do You Need an Exterminator?" Professionals can examine the structure to determine where the colony is nesting and just how large it is. These people have the most effective chemicals and the technical expertise for proper application. There is no need to be rushed into a termite control program. It is more important to take your time to select a "reputable" pest control firm to treat your home. Deal only with a licensed, certified pest control firm having an established place of business and a good professional reputation. Research and get at least three competitive estimates before signing any form of agreement.

Homeowners who have properly identified their swarmers as carpenter ants can try to combat the problem on their own. It is essential however, that the nest is located and eliminated.

Once treatment has been completed, you can take additional actions to help reduce potential infestation in the future. These actions include:

• Reducing the moisture level in basements and crawlspaces
  
  
• Removing scrap wood from around your home and moving firewood at least 25 feet away from the foundation
  
  
• Eliminating any wood to ground contact
  
  
• Keeping gutters free of leaves and debris
  
  
• Fixing water leaks as soon as you find them
  
  
• Replacing badly damaged timbers with sound materials. Where possible, don't allow wood within 18 inches of the soil
  
  
• Filling all visible cracks and voids in the foundation with concrete or caulking compound
  
  
• Reducing soil moisture around the structure by directing run-off away from the foundation. Be sure gutters and downspouts are installed and working correctly.

The hustle and bustle of the winter holidays can leave us more than ready to approach the New Year with serious resolutions that go beyond the familiar promises to lose weight, spend more time with the family, or spend less money.

We live in a world in transition, where cultural misunderstandings lead to conflict, and intolerance of differences is displayed through aggression. What would happen if we jumped ahead a few weeks and reflected on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr. before making our New Year’s resolutions? Dr. King was considered a champion of interracial brotherhood and sisterhood, economic justice, and nonviolence.

One of the most important resolutions we could make to honor King’s vision involves taking stock of the changing culture around us, and learning more about our own prejudices, behaviors and beliefs in an increasingly diverse society.

The nation’s increasing cultural diversity

We know from the 2000 Census that our nation and state are becoming more ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse. One in five Americans over the age of five speaks a foreign language at home. From 1990 to 2000, the Latino population in the United States increased by 60 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that, by the year 2050, the Latino population will have increased from 12.6 percent of the total population to 24.4 percent.

Nearly 50 million foreign-born immigrants came to the United States in the last decade. From 1990-2000, New Hampshire had the fastest population growth rate among the New England states, due in part to a 32 percent increase in the number of foreign-born residents.

N.H.’s growing diversity

According to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, immigrants and their children make up 14 percent of New Hampshire’s total population—about 174,000 residents.

New Hampshire has become home to legal immigrants from Mexico, China, India, Philippines, Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Cuba, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Canada, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Croatia, the Former Soviet Union, Somalia, Iran, Sudan, Nigeria and Liberia, among many others. When people of so many cultures come together, there is potential for misunderstanding and conflict.

Among the state’s 10 counties, Hillsborough County has the greatest diversity of cultures. Nearly 45 percent of the county’s 25,793 foreign-born residents immigrated between 1990 and 2000. More than 45,000 Hillsborough County residents over the age of five speak at least one language other than English, and 14,864 speak English less than “very well.”

In the past year the N.H. Department of Education reported 2,755 students with limited English proficiency attending New Hampshire public schools. Nearly half of these students attended Manchester schools. Schools all across the state, from Nashua to Littleton, find more of their students are children of refugees and immigrants who need support in understanding and speaking English and in understanding American culture.

Resolve to increase cultural awareness

As we think about how population shifts have begun changing the culture of our communities, we can resolve to learn as much as we can about the beliefs, social behaviors, and languages of all people.

Culture defines who we are and how we view others. It is often described as the sum total of our life experiences, including learned behaviors and ways of life. Aspects of culture include family, faith, beliefs, values, country and region of origin, music, arts, language, and traditions.

As we become more aware of the cultures of the people we encounter, we are better able to respond to distinct differences between and among us without misinterpreting emotions, language, and behavior. Understanding culture can also help us to avoid prejudging another person.

Refugee children challenge New Hampshire schools

Special issues emerge when children born in refugee camps come into our schools. Rebecca Kaufman recently reported on New Hampshire Public Radio that 85 children from African refugee camps registered with the Manchester school district in September. None of the children spoke English on arrival.

“The students had to be taught how to hold a pencil….many didn’t know how to do simple things like sit in a chair. Some had never seen a set of stairs before and were reluctant to walk up them,” Kaufmann reported. Teachers told her the refugee children may react to unfamiliar situations with physical aggression learned in refugee camps where their families have been warehoused for years.

Strengthen communiucation skills

In addition to a resolution to increase our cultural awareness, we can resolve to strengthen our relationships with fellow human beings by improving our communication skills in general.

This includes trying to understand another person's perspective, rather than trying to be heard or to enlighten that other person. In areas where we may disagree, we can strive to take an assertive rather than aggressive stance, by simply stating our position, rather than forcing our opinion.

“It takes time for attitude change”

It has been 36 years since Dr. King’s assassination, and 21 years since Congress took the rare step of recognizing a social leader by naming a national holiday in his honor in 1986. New Hampshire's Martin Luther King Day Committee worked for more than a decade, from April 1988 to June 1999, before the Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights Day Bill was signed.

“It takes time for attitude change,” Dr. King told the Seattle Times in 1985. It’s not too early to resolve to examine and adjust our own attitudes about the changing culture of our communities.

By Paula J. Gregory, Extension Specialist, 4-H Youth Development

As New Englanders, we take winter storm warnings in stride but these storms can often disrupt your usual routine. Winter storms can leave you without power or prevent you from getting to the grocery store.

Planning ahead for winter weather can eliminate a major source of stress for you, your family, or others you care for, such as an elderly relative or neighbor.

Planning ahead for winter storm emergencies can range from a well-organized 7-day emergency food supply to a few basic items to keep on hand. Regardless of where you are on the range of planning activities, the ABCD's of keeping food safe in an emergency can help you plan what you'll need. The ABCD's are:

A - A lways keep meat, poultry, fish and eggs refrigerated at or below 40 degrees F. and frozen food at or below 0 degrees F. This may be challenging if there is no power! Keep the refrigerator and freezer doors closed as much as possible to maintain the cold temperature. Once the power goes off, the refrigerator will keep food safely cold for about four hours if it's unopened. A full freezer will hold the temperature for approximately 48 hours (24 hours if it's half full) if the door remains closed.

B - B e prepared by stocking up on foods that don't need to be refrigerated and can be eaten cold. Here are some examples of foods to keep on hand:

• Water one gallon per person per day
• Ready-to-eat canned foods vegetables, fruit, beans, meat, fish, poultry, pasta
• Soups canned
• Smoked or dried meats commercial beef jerky
• Dried fruits and vegetables raisins, fruit leather
• Juices (vegetable and fruit) bottled, canned or powdered
• Milk powdered, canned, evaporated
• Staples sugar, instant potatoes and rice, coffee, tea, cocoa mix
• Ready-to-eat cereals, instant hot cereals, crackers
• High energy foods peanut butter, nuts, trail mix, granola bars
• Cookies, candy, chocolate bars, soft drinks, other snacks
• Ready-to-use baby formula for infants and pet food
• Manual can opener

• Wash hands and surfaces often.
• Keep raw foods separate from ready-to-eat foods.
• Cook food to recommended temperatures.
• Keep cold food cold and hot foods hot.
• Follow the two-hour rule throw out perishable food stored at temperatures above 40 degrees F. for 2 or more hours.

What to do if you are a victim of identity theft

• ID Theft: When Bad Things Happen to Your Good Name
• Recovering from identity theft
• Identity Theft: What To Do If It Happens to You
• Remedying the Effects of Identity Theft

Prevention is the key

• Go to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
  for your Privacy Survival Guide and look into other ways you can protect your personal privacy.
• For more suggestions about protecting your identity and privacy
• Coping With Identity Theft: Reducing the Risk of Fraud

General information

• About Identity Theft
• Understanding Identity Theft
• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse An excellent website with a wealth of information on just about every aspect of protecting your privacy. Fact sheets are easy to read and website is well organized. What you learn may scare you!
• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse – Identity Theft
• Federal Trade Commission: National Resource for Identity Theft
• The FTC provides a wealth of information on identity theft and privacy, as well as numerous other consumer protection issues. If you are interested in managing your money most effectively, this should be at the top of your bookmarks.

Vulnerable populations

• And what about privacy for kids?
• College students are prime targets for identity thieves
• Senior citizens are vulnerable because they tend to be more trusting of others, have larger accumulations of assets, don’t see credit reports regularly, have Social Security numbers on health insurance cards (including Medicare), and often aren’t as aware of the risks associated with advanced technologies. The Colorado Gerontological Society provides this risk assessment.

Federal law

• US Dept of Justice – Making a Federal Case of Identity Theft
• US Dept of Justice – Identity Theft: The Crime of the New Millennium
  
  

Return to Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft