Living in a rural area is a new challenge for some students who take the Sustainability Leadership Semester at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College, Wolf Lake, Ind. For Rheannon Starr, Merriam, Ind., it is a chance to get a different perspective on her home community which is just ten minutes away.
The Enchanted Forest at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College, Wolf Lake, Ind., makes Northern Indiana a bit more magical each autumn. The nature center offers children and their favorite adults a night hike where animals talk. Friday and Saturday October 26 and 27, 7 to 8:30 p.m. are the 2018 dates.
Merry Lea’s Dr. Joel Pontius is a student of foraging. Whether he’s leading students on the Sustainability Leadership Semester’s canoe trip or boating on Alaska’s Cook Inlet, Joel has his eyes peeled for wild foods and his ears attuned to stories about them.
We begin a series looking at Merry Lea's place within its surrounding human community. The Merry Lea Sustainable Farm figures heavily in this issue. Also find out who became a master bird bander and who went to Alaska; who received a gift of honey and who gave time to help with sorghum.
Merry Lea’s master’s students prepare ecosystem presentations for their Natural History course. Throughout the course, they’ve each studied a particular locale, learning the species found there and the ways the ecosystem changes over time. Andrew Beal and TJ Rayhill kicked off the presentations with a look at areas near the Glacial Retreat Center.
It was not your typical pasture walk. Cows, chickens, nut trees, fruit trees, grapevines and raspberries were all sharing the same five acres at the Merry Lea Sustainable Farm (MLSF), Wolf Lake, Ind.
The Master’s in Environmental Education program (MAEE) at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College welcomed its largest cohort ever in July 2018.
What do you do when the things you were really good at are no longer who you are? This is the question that brought Stephan Powless, Lagro, Ind., to Goshen College. Unlike most undergraduates, Stephan is a 32-year-old father of three with an eight-year career in the military behind him. He’s been in combat in Iraq and in management at General Motors. He’s fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a soldier and demonstrated his earning power. The path forward is unclear, but it is not more of the same.
Ryan Miller has an ornery streak. He is not afraid to be the proud meat lover among vegetarians or the tractor enthusiast among market gardeners. Ryan’s assets include a practical bent and a scrappy willingness to live with the tensions inherent in today’s farming landscape.
Agriculture has always been a part of Hannah Wheeler’s life. Hannah grew up on a 40-acre hobby farm in Hudson, Mich., where the high school mascot is a longhorn steer. She has fond memories of exhibiting market steers at the local county fair and helping her family grow their own meat and vegetables.
