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While it seems that everyone else is packing it up and getting ready to leave, I’m only just beginning my time with CBG in Lander, WY as a Botany intern! Although I’ve been living in Lander for over a year,\u00a0I’m new to CBG and will be\u00a0hanging out until mid-January.\u00a0I have to say, I’m pretty\u00a0excited to see what\u00a0CBG can teach me about my home. I’ve already learned about Wyoming’s rarest endangered plant, desert yellowhead (Yermo xanthocephalus<\/em>), and have gotten a taste (and a smell) of our many varieties of sagebrush.\u00a0I’ve\u00a0also\u00a0gotten to experience\u00a0the joys of finding a bountiful seed set, the frustrations of searching endlessly for viable seed, and the cross-eyedness of trying to count tiny seeds only to sneeze and blow them all over the table. I’m enjoying the work though. I love getting lost in the meditative trance of collection, cleaning, and seeding.\u00a0Despite the small frustrations, I find the\u00a0process undeniably pleasant and I feel fortunate that\u00a0we are able to have such great resources at our disposal! My last job working with seeds did not go as easily and is a stark comparison to the\u00a0Seeds of Success (SOS)\u00a0project I’ve been working on.<\/p>\n I came to Lander via Senegal, West Africa. I was stationed in Senegal\u00a0for three years with the United States Peace Corps\u00a0working as a sustainable agriculture extension agent. My job mostly consisted of\u00a0consulting with farmers and working with local villages to create fruit orchards, community gardens, and improve sustainable cultivation practices. A large part of my job was also seed extension. The idea was to give improved\u00a0seed varieties\u00a0to\u00a0farmers in exchange for them returning double the amount to me at the end of the year. The extra seed I received back would be given to other farmers to expand and grow the program.\u00a0When I began my service, I had grandiose dreams of extending seeds across the region. I dreamt that my seed extension program\u00a0would be so successful that it would evolve into a region wide seed collection effort in which, hand-in-hand, villages would skip into the African bush, collect seed, and together we would sow a new African forest, thus preventing desertification, increasing vital habitat, and increasing plant diversification across the country.\u00a0It’s probably not a surprise that my big dreams did not come to fruition. In fact, in my first year of doing seed extension only half of the farmers I worked with returned seed to me. I spent hours collecting and cleaning\u00a0seed by myself, only to have it blow away in a gust of wind, get eaten by insects, or in the off-chance that it actually made it to planting season, my new germinates would[delete]\u00a0get eaten by merciless greedy goats. It seemed like so much work for such little gain. But the work was hard because I lacked resources. I wasn’t partnered with a government bureau. I didn’t have a car that could take me to remote areas where the best seed was. I didn’t even have a good pair of hand pruners. All this is to say, that I didn’t fail because I was a bad person, I failed because seed work can be hard.\u00a0It\u2019s hard to make a difference when one person is working by themselves.<\/p>\n The\u00a0next year I clung to the farmers who had returned seed to me. They were my helpers and together we found more people who were interested in establishing a local seed bank. Although the seed program didn’t reach the region-wide scope I had envisioned, that year eighty percent of my farmers returned seed to me and they were excited to grow the program the next year.\u00a0All of this\u00a0opened my eyes to how important it is to work together on projects of this magnitude – it isn’t something that anyone can do alone. It takes a lot of people, and a lot of resources\u00a0to\u00a0collect and distribute that much seed.<\/p>\n And now I’m an SOS Botany intern tasked with collecting seeds to save and distribute\u00a0for national reclamation projects. The great thing is, I’m not alone in this endeavor. I am one of many working on this momentous project.\u00a0This\u00a0is why I am so thrilled to be a part of\u00a0this national effort as a\u00a0CLM intern. Together, we really can make a difference.<\/p>\n -Gwen BLM, Lander Field Office<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Gwen in 2015 creating seed bags to extend to farmers<\/p><\/div>\n Long leaf sage seed moments before sneezing it all over the table.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While it seems that everyone else is packing it up and getting ready to leave, I’m only just beginning my time with CBG in Lander, WY as a Botany intern! Although I’ve been living in Lander for over a year,\u00a0I’m … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/IMG_20150801_094838-600x600.jpg\")
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