By Greg Michel
One of the highlights for our fall young adult program was the opportunity to experience small equipment training at Carpenter’s Brook Fish Hatchery.
For the past seven years, OEC has been partnering with Onondaga County Soil and Water (OCSWCD) Conservation district on reforestation projects at Onondaga County parks to restore tree cover that has been lost to damage caused by the Emerald Ash Borer, an invasive insect that targets ash trees. With over 44,000 inventoried ash trees at the start of this crisis, restoring that canopy is a big job. This year, OCSWCD focused our attention on two parks where OEC youth and young adults planted a total of 99 trees – 66 at Jamesville Beach and 33 at Carpenter’s Brook Fish Hatchery.
Most trees that OEC plants are bare root trees that don’t require too much heavy lifting and are primarily planted with hand tools. For this project at Carpenter’s Brook, 23 of the trees were big balled and burlap trees (B&B), which can be planted by hand but can weigh several hundred pounds and are frequently planted with small machinery by professional landscape companies. As part of our goal is to provide crew members with a wide variety of work skills and experiences, we were fortunate to be able to turn this planting into a short course in small equipment operating and plant all of the B&B trees.
Over the course of a week in November, crew members had classroom sessions where we reviewed the two most common small machines used in the landscape, agriculture and construction industries – the mini skid steer loader (dingo) and the backhoe. Crewmembers reviewed operating safety, parts of the equipment, and general controls. After basic review in the classroom, participants had the opportunity to practice operations of the dingo at OEC’s staging site. Additionally, each crew member practiced all dingo operations and controls on site at Carpenter’s Brook, where teams of three each spent time planting the B&B trees. Crew members also practiced operating and interchanging the dingo attachments – bucket, forks and auger.
“Man, that was fun. We should do more of this type of training,” commented crew member Kahtrel Griffin after his first day operating the dingo. Another member, Kyle Rowser, also expressed interest in learning more about equipment operating as a career.
In addition to gaining a valuable and transferable skill, OEC crew members enjoyed being out at a county park, learning about the thousands of fish that the hatchery raises and releases in Onondaga County waterways, and restoring tree cover.
