At Carroll farm, volunteers make it friendlier to environment
Travis Trout’s father and grandfather dairy-farmed a pair of properties in the Keymar area of Carroll County from 1965 until 2001, and later grew crops.
After his father’s death in 2013, Trout took over the farm, and also included a mix of crops and cattle.
“I feel like I’m carrying on our family’s legacy,” said the 25-year-old.
The formula may be a good one for the farm, but a challenge for the Little Pipe Creek, which runs through the 147-acre property. Animal waste, fertilizers and pesticides wash into streams such as Little Pipe, and into the network of waterways that flow into the Chesapeake Bay.
The runoff is not only detrimental to the North America’s largest estuary. The water coming off Trout’s crop fields sweeps away topsoil.
Enter the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the nonprofit dedicated to preserving and restoring the estuary.
This past weekend the foundation and an army of volunteers planted some 1,200 saplings along the creek running through Trout’s property. The stream-side forest, known as a riparian buffer, will take up about 10 acres and border about a mile of Little Pipe Creek, said Rob Schnabel, a restoration scientist at the bay foundation.
“The newly planted trees will function as a sponge to reduce downstream flooding while also filtering any sediment pollution coming off the corn fields during rain events,” Schnabel said.
A cattle fence will augment the saplings, offering an instant water quality boost, he said. And as the trees mature, their roots form an underground web, filtering out pollutants before they reach the stream. Grant money from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency funded the fence, which was erected a day before the tree planting.
Volunteers from Carroll and counties across Maryland came in droves Saturday as Schnabel and representatives from other agencies coordinated the effort. By the time volunteers arrived around 9 a.m. Trout had drilled holes every couple of yards for trees and shrubs to be planted. The stream-side divots were marked with flags — white for trees or pink for shrubs.
And after a Schnabel briefing and tree-planting tutorial from David Tanza, CBF’s Maryland outreach manager, it was time for volunteers to get their hands dirty.
Margarita Lidstrom of Frederick has become a pro tree planter, having volunteered with her husband at such events for more than10 years. She wants more people to get involved. She touted the environmental benefits, and the long-term goal of having strictly pasture-fed beef. Chesapeake Bay Foundation restoration scientist Rob Schnabel carries planting stakes as volunteers plant more than 1,000 trees and shrubs on the Trout farm near Keymar.
“Sometimes we come back to the places we’ve [planted],” she said. “You can really see the difference in creeks and wildlife.”
Rich Mason, a wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, also lent a hand. He said an almost immediate wildlife boost could be expected after a project of this magnitude.
“These little ribbons of forest along the streams are so important,” Mason told volunteers. “As soon as we leave wildlife will come and inhabit it.”
At Trout’s farm, Mason said, a host of birds, reptiles, amphibians and pollinators will embed themselves.
Agriculture runoff accounts for 40 percent of the nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution that ends up in the bay, Schnabel said. Carroll County, rich with farmland, has been a focus area for CBF’s efforts for some time, he added.