Sustainability Initiative
In late 2007, Pine Mountain began the sustainability initiative. The four primary parts of this initiative are: to increase and diversify food production at PMSS; promote backyard gardening and food production in our community; decrease and conserve energy use at the school; and create educational programs related to food and energy.PMSS Agriculture:
Since its founding in 1913, Pine Mountain Settlement School has had a history of producing food served on campus. In the past, PMSS had a working farm with cows, chickens, sheep, and hogs, in addition to a large garden. While Pine Mountain no longer keeps livestock, we still maintain a sizeable farm dedicated to vegetable and fruit production for our dining facility.
We believe that food production is a key component in working towards becoming a more sustainable organization. For years, Pine Mountain has worked to increase our soil fertility, protect our soil, suppress weeds, and prevent disease through planting cover crops and raking all the leaves on campus to use for mulch during the following growing season. We are working to expand our use of sustainable agriculture practices, and decrease our reliance on synthetic chemicals and fertilizers so that we may continue to work this land for years to come.
We work to extend the growing seasons through the use of row covers, cold frames, an unheated hoop house, succession planting, seedling production and selection of cultivars.
Community Agriculture:
The Pine Mountain Settlement School Community garden was founded in 2008 as part of the Sustainability Initiative in an effort to inclusively bring together PMSS and the community that we've called home since 1913. With the creation of the Pine Mountain Community garden, PMSS began a renewed effort to focus on community agriculture in Harlan County. In 2010, Pine Mountain was chosen as a site for the Grow Appalachia project which provides PMSS with the opportunity to work directly with families in the community to revive agriculture practices and local food traditions. PMSS staff and Grow Appalachia participants consistently grow an amazing amount of healthy and delicious food, all while forming new friendships and learning new gardening skills. During 2011 over 28,000lbs of food were harvested through the project! PMSS also hosts local food potlucks, a sustainable agriculture workshop series, seed swaps, and works toward creating profitable marketing opportunities for local growers. For more information about Grow Appalachia and our community agriculture efforts please visit www.growpinemountain.com.
Energy conservation:
With 23 buildings on campus, maintaining buildings is a large job. Along with keeping all buildings in good working order, and improving appearances and comfort levels for visitors, PMSS staff is working to make our buildings more energy efficient. With 23 different buildings, each with electricity and heating systems (and some cooling systems), our work is cut out for us.
In the past few years, PMSS has begun strides toward reducing our energy usage and cost. Energy use has been tracked for the past five years, allowing us to make comprehensive reports, and recommendations as to which buildings should be targeted for energy work. We know that we still have much work to so, and much to learn in our effort to lower our energy use. We continue to look for simple, cost effective measures for all buildings, focusing on the most heavily used buildings first.
We are fortunate to be the host site for the Pine Mountain School for Practical Historical Preservation. Through the intensive workshops brought to PMSS through this program since 2002, PMSS has gained knowledge from many experts in the field of historic preservation. In July 2011, The National Window Preservation Summit was held at PMSS. During this weeklong summit, the windows on our main classroom building, Draper, were restored to demonstrate the standards that window restoration can achieve. By using blower door tests to check each window for air infiltration before and after treatment, many of our historic windows achieved zero air infiltration after restoration was complete! While the tests performed by the window summit showed us that there is no need to replace our beautiful wood and steel windows with the energy rated replacement windows on the market today, they also showed us how much air was leaking into the room from the floor and walls allowing us to make plans to seal these air leaks in the future.
Along with energy efficiency measures, we continue to research options for incorporating small, renewable energy projects that could be used as demonstrations in our community, such as outdoor wood fired boilers, passive solar, and active solar projects.
Education:
As an institution committed to education, we feel called to share our knowledge, resources, and experiences. Through workshops, our environmental education curriculum, and the Grow Appalachia project we provide many educational opportunities related to food and energy.
Our biggest event was the Sustainability Symposium. In May 2010, more than 80 people from five states attended the event. Workshop sessions allowed attendees to discuss issues related to food, energy, and forests in southeastern Kentucky and central Appalachia. The sessions covered a wide range of topics and activities including organic gardening and non-timber forest products, energy efficiency and renewable energy, and tours of mobile alternative energy trailers.
The sustainability project coordinator is currently working with the Environmental Education staff to incorporate food and energy lessons into the curriculum.
The Sustainability Initiative presents big questions with no simple answers. It is an exciting time at Pine Mountain. If you would like more information, please contact us at mashmore@pinemountainsettlementschool.com.