Recent News
Ag + Art Tour
June 15-16, 2024
We had so much fun at the museum on Saturday. It may have been hot and humid but our position on the porch protected us from the worst of the heat. NRCS and the Lexington County Master Gardner Volunteers joined us on the porch and the SC Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities set up in front of the main office where they let visitors make their own endangered plant stickers. NRCS gave away posters and taught visitor about soil, while we gave away seeds, shared interesting (and maybe disturbing) bee facts, and let visitors decorate our chalkboard. The museum hosted tours through out the day and had an indigo dying station.
About 70 people visited the museum over the weekend and we hope that we can double or even triple that number for the next Ag + Art Tour.
Backyard Benefits
Rain Barrel Workshop
June 8, 2024
Our collaboration with Lexington Stormwater Consortium and Lexington Solid Waste Management has been growing rapidly with the second Backyard Benefits event of year hosted at the Batesburg-Leesville Town Hall. Each BB event has a Composting and Rain Barrels 101 lesson along with a special topic and one of LSWCD's main duties during this collaboration is to provide the presentation for that. During the May event we talked about the importance of pollinators and for this event we broke out our tried and true Small Farmers & Backyard Gardeners 101 presentation.
Our friends over at the Saluda Soil & Water Conservation District partnered with us for this event and provided a breakfast of juice, muffins, granola bars, yogurt and fruit. We had 32 attendees and all the barrels for the event were claimed, even the extras! We brought our Pop-up Seed Library along with the hope that the attendees would take the remaining seeds and they didn't disappoint. Overall it was a great event and we are looking forward to the next one.
Seed Library Update
March 21, 2024 & May 23, 2024
We had a very successful event at the Swansea Library with around 150 packets of seeds given away while the Pop-up Seed Library (PSL) was there. It was a lot of fun hosting the program with the Lexington County Master Gardener Volunteers and learning what seeds the attendees really wanted (It's flowers. When the PSL was returned to our office all of the flower seeds were gone).
We really enjoyed our time there and we're looking forward to going back in September.
Our second PSL event at the Gilbert-Summit Library, and it was less of a success. There were no attendees and only 3 packets were taken during it's time in Gilbert. These things happen and we are not discouraged. We'll continue to improve our seed library and next event will be in September.
See you then!
We would like to remind everyone that the majority of our seeds were donated and we cannot guarantee their germination. As our program grows we hope to be able to purchase the seeds directly.
Annual Banquet
May 4, 2024
Another year, another successful banquet.
This year we were able to give all of our attendees a 2024 May-June SC Wildlife Magazine and a small flower starter to show our appreciation. As our organization continues to grow and change we to hope to be able to continue to give these small gifts back to the community that has done so much to help us get where we are today.
Friend of Conservation
Matt Schnabel
B.M Conservationist of the Year
Amick Farms
Just a few of our wonderful door prize winners.