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Located a few miles outside of Wellsboro, PA sits a farm locally known as Metal Lake Farms, and on this farm is a patch called Dean Hill. On Friday, April 27th a group of volunteers showed up to plant 500 trees. These 500 trees are part of a Pennsylvania initiative to plant, and hopefully grow, 10 million trees by 2025! On location were members of Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Trout Run Unlimited, and Geo Science Club of Mansfield University. The volunteers also included a small group of students from Wellsboro High School FFA and their faculty advisor.

“…this is a job shadowing program that pairs FFA students with our restoration specialists at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, as well as other conservation specialists, to learn about what they do to protect water quality on local farms and other agricultural areas…” says a Chesapeake Bay Foundation member. Coordinated by Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the initiative is a multi-partnership labor meant to help restore farm land, local watersheds, and agriculturally active areas spread out across all of Pennsylvania.

Owner of the land, Dr. Jon Grigg, says “these trees will supplement a CREP planting that was done 10 years ago.” CREP stands for Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. This program is meant to allow producers to make improvements to their land using federal funding. In many ways this program works to help clean water areas, especially those exposed to livestock. The ultimate hope of the program is that as each part of the water ways are cleared and improved, it will eventually make its way to the bay. For any of those with agricultural land to spare and conservation in mind please visit this website: here. Dr. Grigg says his hope on Dean Hill is to “…beef this buffer back up to what a real CREP buffer should look like…”

A special thanks to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Trout Run Unlimited, Wellsboro High School FFA, and certainly Dr. Jon Grigg for taking time, effort, and funding to help improve the water ways and agricultural landscape of Wellsboro, Tioga County, and the state of Pennsylvania. For more information regarding this PA initiative go to www.tenmilliontrees.org.