Martin Luther King once said, “Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”  Well TLC felt much love and grace on Monday when we had over 50 volunteers came out for the MLK National Day of Service workday at Horton Grove.

Volunteers are what makes TLC tick, and we are amazed at how much we were able to accomplish in just one day!  We started the chilly day with a  tour of the Horton Grove area, led by Alton Mitchell of the Stagville State Historic Site. Then the 50+ volunteers divided into several groups to tackle a variety of much needed projects.  Participants filled a dump truck full of trash, signed the property, helped seed part of the prairie with native grasses, and installed over a ¼ mile of trail.

Thank you again to everyone who came out.  If you are interested in receiving information about upcoming volunteer events and opportunities please sign up at http://www.triangleland.org/friends/volunteersignup.shtml

TLC 2012 MLK Day of Service video

This month’s recipe comes to us from our new Development Operations Manager, Paula Mazzanti. She is offering up her Latvian Apple Cake.

Paula says…”I had been looking for about eight years for a pie/cake recipe, that my mother-in-law said her mother made all the time, but had never passed on the recipe. Her mother was Latvian, and I wanted my daughters to have some of the food/cultural heritage from both sides of their family. I tried about eight different pie recipes over eight years of searching and she said ‘not quite’ to all of them. Finally, I saw this one in a magazine article. When I made it for her, her eyes lit up, and she said, ‘Yes, that’s it’.  We have made this recipe for the 20 years since I found it!”

“This is barely a cake at all; it’s more like an instant apple pie!,” adds Paula, “Batter poured over apples in a pie dish and baked until crusty and golden.” Mmmm…sounds good! Enjoy!

Latvian Apple Cake

3 large tart (about 1 ½ pounds) apples peeled, cored and cut into wedges
1 ½ sticks butter, cut into pieces
1 tsp lemon juice
1 cup flour
¾ cup + two tablespoons sugar
2 tsps cinnamon
2 eggs, lightly beaten
Brown sugar, optional

Preheat oven to 350. Generously butter a 9 ½ or 10 inch glass pie dish.

Peel core cut apples, toss with lemon juice and mix with 2 tablespoons of sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon. Place apples in pie plate. Cook the butter on medium heat until golden. This takes a while and a watchful eye. Pour butter into a bowl leaving the bits behind in the pan. Stir ¾ cup sugar into the butter. Gently stir in the eggs and then the flour just until blended. Spread the batter evenly over the apples. Sprinkle the top with 2 teaspoons sugar. Bake for 50 minutes until the surface is gold and crusty. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Serve in wedges at room temperature.

There are variations you can do with this recipe; sometimes we add ½ brown sugar ½ white sugars or more cinnamon.

Little River meandering along John W. Narron's farm

TLC ended 2011 by protecting nearly 200 acres with conservation easements, providing our community with wildlife habitat and local farms and food, and safeguarding clean water.

John W. Narron donated conservation easements on two Johnston County farms that have been in his family for generations. Both farms are on the Little River south of Wendell. Mr. Narron’s generosity was helped by mini grants from the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, by an Environmental Enhancement Grant from the NC Attorney General’s Office, and by a grant from Johnston County.

Caroline MacNair Carl donated a conservation easement on her Steep Hill Creek Bottomlands in Wake County, protecting 24 acres of floodplain forest and over one mile of Steep Hill Creek and unnamed tributaries that feed into Swift Creek and Lake Benson. Lake Benson serves as an auxiliary drinking water supply for the City of Raleigh. The property connects with NCSU and Yates Mill Pond protected land to create a three-mile continuous riparian corridor that protects water quality and helps to enhance the Yates Mill Pond and Swift Creek Bottomland Forest Significant Natural Heritage Areas.

For all the i-phone users, check out TLC’s free app for Johnston Mill.  The app provides information on a series of natural features at the preserve as well as educational quizzes and maps of the trails.  TLC has partnered with GPTrex, a North Carolina-based company founded by parents and educators, to produce an interpretive trail guide for visitors available for download on GPS-enabled iPhones and iPad mobile devices. Using the devices’ built-in technology and intuitive touch screen interface, this new activity offers families a whole new experience when visiting Johnston Mill Nature Preserve.

This free adventure is the first of a series planned by the TLC that provides “more to explore” for visitors of all ages with beautiful hi-resolution images of plants and animals, streaming video/audio, GPS mapping of destinations along the trail, and challenge questions.

To play this first-of-its-kind interactive adventure at the Johnston Mill Nature Preserve, visitors should download the free GPTrex application from the Apple App Store or scan the QR code above. It is compatible with all GPS-enabled Apple mobile devices running iOS 4 or iOS 5.

Pictured left to right: Kevin Brice, TLC president; Ellica Church, TLC annual giving manager; Kim Lassiter, director of education & professional development for the Aveda Institute Chapel Hill; and Patrick Thompson, president of the Aveda Institute Chapel Hill.

Thanks to the Aveda Institute Chapel Hill, one of our 2011 Earth Month partners, for their recent donation of $20,474.02 to Triangle Land Conservancy.  For the past five years, the Institute has worked with TLC to raise awareness and funds to support clean water projects across the Triangle.

With that gift, the combined total for the 2011 Earth Month campaign through Aveda stores, salons and schools comes to more than $46,116.  Since 2007, the Aveda Earth Month campaign has raised more than $209,706 to benefit TLC!

This fall, the Aveda Institute Chapel Hill and Aveda Corporation were jointly recognized as the 2011 North Carolina Land Trust Corporation Conservation Partner.  A heartfelt thanks to all our Earth Month partners for all their energy, creativity and commitment.

By conserving farmland, TLC is ensuring land right here in the Triangle will be available for farming forever, providing fresh local food for generations to come. In that spirit, every month we are offering you a new, tasty dish that is a favorite of a staff member or friend of TLC.

This month, stock up on pecans to make my go-to potluck recipe! This is THE dish I am known for bringing to gatherings of all kinds, and for good reason. It is SOOOO good! Much like pecan pie, this tasty treat even satisfies certified chocolaholics, without any chocolate. So, without further delay, here is my recipe for Toffee Pecan Bars. (Full disclosure: I got this recipe from Taste of Home) Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Toffee Pecan Bars

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 cup cold butter, cubed
1 egg
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk (low fat works, too!)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 package English toffee bits (10 ounces) or almond brickle chips (7-1/2 ounces)
1 cup chopped pecans

Directions
In a large bowl, combine the flour and sugar; cut in butter until the mixture is crumbly.
Press into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking pan. Bake at 350° for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the egg, milk and vanilla. Fold in toffee bits and pecans.
Spoon over crust. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown. Chill until firm before cutting. Yield: 3 dozen.

Looking for birds at Johnston Mill

We had a beautiful children’s outing at Johnston Mill Nature Preserve yesterday. Our goal was an introduction to birding, and eventually, we were able to do that. Perhaps the birds had a large lunch and were taking a nap, because we didn’t find anything for about an hour and a half. Even so, the kids had a blast as they often do at Johnston Mill! There was playing in the stream, climbing on roots, and more! Eventually, we found ourselves on the Old Field Creek trail, and we saw fifteen species!

Getting a good look at the New Hope Creek

Crossing New Hope Creek

We found these bright orange mushrooms along the trail.

We found some birds!

I thought the brown beech leaves and green ferns showing brightly in the sunlight was stunning.

Sunlight shining through the beech trees

And for those of you interested in which species we saw…

• Hairy woodpecker
• Red-bellied woodpecker
• Downy woodpecker
• Goldfinch
• Cedar waxwing
• Chickadee
• Titmouse
• Vulture
• Bluebird
• Grackle
• Towhee
• Yellow-rumped warbler
• White-breasted nuthatch
• Cardinal
• Golden-crowned kinglet

Exploris students removing invasive Japanese honeysuckle at Swift Creek Bluffs Nature Preserve

This fall and spring TLC and Partners for Environmental Justice, a nonprofit based in Southeast Raleigh, have hosted a series of innovative environmental education programs for Exploris Middle School students at the Swift Creek Bluffs Nature Preserve.  The program features restoration ecology and nature awareness activities designed by Ross Andrews and Randy Senzig, two certified North Carolina Environmental Educators interested in exposing Wake County students to hands-on restoration work needed on TLC properties along with much needed time to reflect and connect with nature through observation exercises, sketching and journaling.

Journaling at Swift Creek Bluffs Nature Preserve

Journaling at Swift Creek Bluffs Nature Preserve

Sponsored by a generous grant from Partners for Environmental Justice, Exploris students will have 10 field trips to Swift Creek Bluffs with half of the time removing the invasive vine Japanese honeysuckle from the floodplain, and the rest participating in nature awareness activities on the creek side trail and the bluff trail.  Nature awareness activities are designed to open up the sensory experience of being in the outdoors and include creating a sound map, finding various natural scents and quiet observation.  Ross and Randy both received training in working with youth using nature awareness activities through “The Inner Life of the Child in Nature Program” featured at the Center for Education Imagination and the Natural World near Burlington, N.C.  Other salient background includes Ross’s MS in Restoration Ecology and Randy’s Environmental Educator of the Year award (2006).

Students with bags of Japanese honeysuckle they removed

Exploris Students have removed over 20 garbage bags of honeysuckle sprigs so far; considering the honeysuckle remaining on the site is typically only about 2 feet high, that’s a lot of honeysuckle!  The nature awareness activities have also left an impression on the minds of these students.  One young lady commented “I feel a strange sense of calm whenever we come to visit Swift Creek.”  Another said, “You know, I am not a nature person, but I am really beginning to enjoy being outside.”  Finally, a young man asked if he could bring his family out to the site to show them the big trees he has seen.

Students journaling along Swift Creek

Ross and Randy will be continuing these programs with TLC in the future through the incorporation of a new nonprofit dedicated to getting public school youth onto land trust properties for similar activities.  This organization, The Center for Human-Earth Restoration is seeking board members now.  If you are interested, please contact Ross Andrews at rosslandrews@yahoo.com.

On Sunday, Doug Frederick of NC State’s Department of Forestry showed us several forestry methods in various stages. He also explained the benefits of forestry and how this process improves the forest for wildlife habitat.

Doug Frederick of NC State explains the environment longleaf pine need to grow.

Katie Kovach led our children’s hike at Brumley Nature Preserve. In addition to just taking in all the sights and sounds, the kids worked on a couple activities. They used crayons and paper to make rubbing of various trees, and each child collected interesting leaves in paper bags. The outing concluded with playing in large piles of leaves!

The children share the bark rubbings they made.

A big find near the pond!

Great fun playing in the leaves!

Hope you had a great weekend, too!