News » organic gardening http://www.bates.edu/news Fri, 17 May 2013 12:31:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 For geochemist Beverly Johnson, shells tell a story http://www.bates.edu/news/2007/12/21/for-geochemist-beverly-johnson-shells-tell-a-story/ http://www.bates.edu/news/2007/12/21/for-geochemist-beverly-johnson-shells-tell-a-story/#comments Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:37:41 +0000 Bates News http://batesthisweek.wordpress.com/?p=975 Beverly Johnson

Beverly Johnson

Organic gardeners know that eggshells, despite their brittleness, are durable, because they’re still recognizable in the compost heap when all else has turned to humus.

Organic geochemist Beverly Johnson knows that an eggshell can endure even for tens of millennia. Moreover, that shell can reveal much about the world in which it was made.

Eggshells are especially useful to Johnson, who has been an assistant professor of geology at Bates since January 2001 and who specializes in relating organic substances from the geological record to long-term environmental change.

Combined with the eggshell’s longevity is the fact that a bird’s diet leaves chemical traces in the shell she lays. Chemical variations from one batch of eggs to another can indicate much about environmental alterations over time. [More...]

]]> http://www.bates.edu/news/2007/12/21/for-geochemist-beverly-johnson-shells-tell-a-story/feed/ 0 Longtime Maine grower and author discusses garden design http://www.bates.edu/news/2002/03/26/garden-design/ http://www.bates.edu/news/2002/03/26/garden-design/#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2002 20:49:05 +0000 Bates News http://home.bates.edu/?p=22169 terry-and-mark-silber

Longtime Maine grower and former Atlantic Monthly art director Terry Silber will talk about perennial garden design at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 2, in the Muskie Archives.

For three decades, Silber and her husband, Mark, have owned Hedgehog Hill Farm, a commercial organic operation in Sumner, Maine. There they grow vegetables, herbs and flowers, and offer workshops on farming and gardening. They have written two books: Growing Herbs and Vegetables: From Seed to Harvest (Knopf, 1999) and The Complete Book of Everlastings: Growing, Drying, and Designing With Dried Flowers (Knopf, 1992).

As part of a program funded by the New York-based Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Silbers are also guest faculty at Bates this semester. They are teaching Working the Land: Thirty Years of Labor and Discovery on a Small Farm in Maine, a course based on their experiences with running a commercial organic farm in Maine. Part of the interdisciplinary environmental studies program, the course emphasizes an approach to farming that is flexible, modestly scaled and respectful of the natural environment.

The environmental studies grant is one of two the Mellon Foundation awarded to support learning-associates programs at Bates — teaching projects that bring in outside experts to enrich the curriculum with a “real-world” perspective and experience.

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