Dave Swaciak
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Title: Horticulture and Natural Resource Educator Organization: CCE Allegany/Cattaraugus Counties State: New York E-mail: dws8@cornell.edu |
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 Dave
Swaciak is working with 5 cooperators in Cattaraugus and Chautauqua
counties in western NY State. Norman and Dean Sprague are a father and
son team who is experimenting with ginseng in two separate plots on
their farm. Norman manages the ginseng sites while his son takes care
of reporting their progress to the learning community. They have discontinued
their milking operation and now manage a dry herd. Norman also operates
a small sawmill and Dean is a Cooperative Extension Agent for Cattaraugus
County. |
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| Dave himself is a private forest owner and is experimenting with ginseng and goldenseal. In the photo on the right note the bottle in his ginseng plot. It is a simple slug trap that Dave built and is baiting with fermented maple syrup. |
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Two
of Dave's cooperators, Sharon Weider and Ken Czapla,
are participating in the mushroom trials. |
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Landowner and hobby farmer Ken Czapla is holding one of his mushroom logs in the photo on the left. He is growing chicken of the woods, oyster, and maitake. Ken brings to the program his commercial horticulture experience as well as personal experience with growing stropharia mushrooms. Ken enjoys participating in research, as indicated by his participation in an insect collection study as well as the learning community program. | ||
| NY Forest Owner Sharon Weider, from the Allegany-Catskill Foothills chapter, is pictured on the right at the site of her maitake, chicken of the woods, and oyster mushroom trials. She began growing mushrooms as an interesting experiment with the idea of possibly expanding to small scale commercial production. Sharon hopes to establish ginseng in her forest in Fall 2001. |
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| This spring Dave began working with cooperators Earl Moore and Jim Makowski who are participating in the improved sugar maple trial. Both Earl and Jim are small farmers who also own private forest land. | |||