A Day in the Life of a Red Wiggler
Hey there! I’m just your average worm living in the UW Farm’s bustling vermicompost bin. Let’s wriggle through a day in my underground life.
Rise and shine, it’s morning routine time. I move through our cozy bedding in search of breakfast. I can always find my buddies lined up at the buffet. 

Here at the Washington Park Arboretum we are lucky to care for many extraordinary trees. One of these amazing trees is our single specimen of Montezuma pine, Pinus montezumae var. lindleyi (Accession number 506-65-A) planted at the northeast corner of Crabapple Meadow in 1969. I first became acquainted with this tree in the spring of 2017 when I was the Teaching Assistant for a Landscape Plant Recognition class at the University of Washington. 

An endemic plant found only in Benton County of Washington State, Umtanum desert buckwheat (Eriogonum codium) is a long-lived perennial adapted to grow in an arid landscape. This compact, tufted plant forms a low-branching woody stem from a stout taproot and spreads 2-9 dm laterally but rarely reaching a height much higher than 8 inches. Leaves are basal, oblanceolate to elliptic in shape, and only 6-12 mm long x 3-6 mm wide. 

Each Year Rare Care recognizes volunteers for their outstanding contributions
Jane Engle is a relatively new Rare Care volunteer, having completed the training in 2022; however, she has come out of the gate running. Jane contributed over 147 total hours in 2023. As a first year seed collector, Jane collected seeds for Veronica schizantha in Gifford-Pinchot National Forest with the help of her assistant and mapper Duane Engle. 

Rare Care’s team has changed once again this year. We would like to welcome all of the new faces and recognize the returning staff who make our work possible.
In late 2023, Andrea Cummins was hired as the new Volunteer & Outreach Coordinator–most of you have probably already seen a flood of emails from her this year. Andrea is a past Rare Care volunteer (several years past) and is very pleased to once again be a part of a program that plays such an important role in plant conservation and lands managment across the state. 

As home gardeners know, sowing seeds is much cheaper than buying plant plugs. In 2019, Rare Care started an experiment to test if direct seeding of White Bluffs bladderpod (Physaria douglasii ssp. tuplashensis) could be an efficient method to establish new populations.
Establishing a new population of White Bluffs bladderpod would help meet the Recovery objectives for this threatened species. It is a single-site endemic found only on a narrow, 17-km stretch of the White Bluffs on the east side of the Columbia River. 

Planting 672 plugs and sowing 45,000 seeds by hand takes no small effort. That was our goal this past fall when we planted Wenatchee Mountains checker-mallow (Sidalcea oregana var. calva) at three sites in Chelan County and Umtanum desert buckwheat (Eriogonum codium) at one site in Grant County. Fortunately, we had three days, nine volunteers, seven agency partners, one graduate student, one faculty, two undergrads and three staff to get it all done. 

03.27.24

Around The Farm

A Letter in Loving UW Farm 
By Kaija Koenigberg, Environmental Studies, College of the Environment, UW Farm Vermicompost Intern '23-24, UW Farm RSO Dirty Dozen President
 
I have been the UW Farm’s Vermicompost Intern since last March, and this is my final quarter as the “worm guy”. During my time in this position, I have gained so much invaluable knowledge and fostered deep connections with the farm community that I will cherish long after my time at UW has ended.

03.20.24

Around The Farm

Urban Farming in Japan
By Kove Janeski, UW Farm Student Staff, Operations Lead, Masters Student, Landscape Architecture, College Of Built Environments

I have been lucky to be a part of the UW Farm team since the fall of 2021. In September of 2023, after spending the summer working at the UW Farm, I left Seattle to study abroad in Tokyo, Japan. 

03.13.24

Around The Farm

Study Shows UW Farm Practices Restore Soil Health
By Will Shenton, featuring Julia MaCray, Vermicompost Intern circa 2022
 
The soil beneath our feet may not often catch our attention, but keeping it healthy can have major impacts on climate change and the overall sustainability of our food production system. A new study of agricultural practices at the UW Farm, led by recent College of the Environment graduate Julia Macray and Professor of Earth and Space Sciences David Montgomery, demonstrated that even relatively small changes to the ways we farm can help restore soil health and sequester carbon from the atmosphere.