Alternative Break: Coe College Day 3 & 4

We just completed day 4! In all the excitement of working on projects, making meals, and getting to know everyone I ended up missing a day of posting. Over the last couple days we have spent a lot of time seeding large areas of that tamerisk area I talked about in a previous post and planting trees.

Let's start with the seeding project since that was what we did on Day 3. One of the questions people have asked about the seeding project is why we are using human-power rather than a seed spreader. Well, the best answer for that came from Tamsin and Michael....

When an area is seeded by a seed spreader the seeds are distributed evenly over the entire area. When you take a look at this area you see a lot of areas covered with a thick layer of duff (leaves and such) and wood. Most likely plants will be unable to grow in those thick layers. What a person seeding can do is only seed areas where it is likely for plants to grow and thus avoid using excess seed.

Make sense? If not, feel free to leave a comment on the bottom part of this blog with your question. The bonus to our day was the rain at the end of the day. This may sound like a mood dampener, but it was fun to see the clouds rolling in and know that the rain would drive the seeds deeper into the ground giving them a better opportunity to grow.

The tree planting project was a lot of fun! We actually woke up in the morning to a thin layer of snow! Who would have figured we would have brought the snow with us from the Midwest out to Utah. We actually ended up driving through some snow on our trip out to the tree planting site.

The trees we were planting were in a campground area. The holes were already dug by a machine. So, all we had to do was move the trees to the holes and plant them. It sounds easy, but it was a lot of work! I think the hardest part of the process was filling in the hole. Most of the holes were too deep and we had to fill them in a bit before we planted the tree. Then once we got the tree in we had to fill in the hole. Filling everything in wasn't easy because the dirt we had to fill it in with had rocks and sticks in it which made it more difficult to get into with the shovel. When we weren't planting trees we were making sure the areas that the water pipes needed to go in were clear. It was fun planting trees and looking at all of them at the end of the day. On our way back everyone was asleep.

At the end of both days we were pretty tired out. It was time for dinner and then back to the Lazy Lizard for some hangout time and sleep.

We can't wait until tomorrow when we get to go to Arches National Park for our day trip!

Signing off...
Alisa Dean
Plateau Restoration Volunteer - Minnesota State University Mankato