Learning how to plant a seedling – photo by Mike Nolen
NORTH FORK — Kindergartners at the North Fork School got to have fun outside and play in the dirt while doing their part on Earth Day to replenish some of the many trees lost to drought and beetles around their campus.
On Friday, Apr. 22, Mike Nolen, Forester on the Bass Lake Ranger District of the Sierra National Forest, and Forest Technicians Richard Perez, Elodio Oronia and Rudy Yrigollen brought seedlings to the school for the students to plant.
The kids in Mrs. Griffin’s kindergarten class were taught how to use a hoedad planting tool and put the Ponderosa Pine and Sugar Pine bare root seedlings into the ground properly, keeping the tap root pointed down, and then surrounding them securely with soil so Mother Nature can work her magic.
North Fork School kids planting trees on Earth Day – photo by Mike Nolen
The kids learned that even with trees dying all around them, they can plant more trees and grown them from small seedlings.
They all had fun digging up worms and getting good and dirty, and a good rain later in the day watered the new seedlings for them.
Mike Nolen says the folks from the Bass Lake Ranger District will return next year after the nearly 100 dead pine trees, which are scheduled for removal, have been taken down.
Nolen says the trees in the outdoor amphitheater area along the roadway up to the school were planted by the upper grade classes in 1962, according to Galen Lee and Augie Capuchino who helped with that project.
