Do you remember what it’s like when it snows? You step outside and see a few flakes gently floating down and before long, there are flakes filling the sky and the landscape is completely changed to white.
Joe Richardson says we should be like those first snowflakes as we do earth stewardship, and soon we’ll be joined by others to create a blizzard, totally altering the landscape around us. I had the pleasure of talking with Joe about how his faith and Church teachings have motivated his self-described obsession to do earth stewardship and to engage others, especially the young, in making a real difference.
Joe owns Bar-T Ranch, an extensive program of after-school care programs, summer camps and more in and around Frederick, MD. His passion for the Creation has led him to create a place where young people see earth stewardship modeled – the camp has a huge solar panel system, geothermal system, and sustainable design for the buildings including composting toilets (saving ~1M gallons of fresh water/year). He also has a 10 kilowatt wind turbine. He has recently taken 50 acres from traditional farm production to do sustainable agriculture. He has obtained funding for a massive stream restoration project on site, removing sediment, creating a wetland, creating plunge pools to slow erosion and protecting tributaries. On April 4 he’ll be hosting a Climate Solutions Symposium for high school students to meet with professional designers and engineers to learn about sustainable technologies.
Joe noticed in visiting schools the massive volume of food being wasted. Unopened cartons of milk and other food was going directly into the garbage which meant it was going to either a landfill or incinerator. In one day at an elementary school cafeteria about 60 milk cartoons and other food was trashed. He contacted nearby Frederick Rescue Mission and learned they could use this food. He started teaching the students to compost waste food, recycle other items, and set aside untouched food which is collected in a cooler and picked up daily for the Rescue Mission. In 25 days 1,517 cartons of milk and 500 apples were given to the mission. From this small start Joe has created programs in 14 schools to recycle, compost and share food – massively reducing the amount of food and other waste in the waste stream. Students are learning about composting, recycling and caring about neighbors in need. They also learn skills in keeping statistics by weighing, recording, and reporting for the project. http://www.meegreen.org/programs/school-composting-waste-reduction/
Lunch Out of Landfills is now a program being considered in even more schools across the state: Carroll, Kent, Montgomery, and Arundel counties are all starting programs. Joe will be speaking before the state legislature on March 6 about funding to extend the program statewide. There are about 12,000 students participating this year with the potential to have 3 or 4 times that many next year. There’s potential for Maryland to model the program for other states as well – dramatically increasing the amount of food saved, waste reduced and items recycled. This blizzard of earth stewardship started with the single snowflake, Joe Richardson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y51Wh3j2wAA&feature=emb_logo
I’m so grateful to Earth Stewardship East member Caitlin Magidson who connected me with Joe. He has offered to host an event for us sometime this summer at his Bar-T ranch in Frederick. I can’t wait to see what he has created. Hope you’ll join us. Details will be posted under “Events” soon.
