Over the April Spring Break, six Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School (HVS) high school students built the first stretch of the Biodiversity Trail at Hawthorne Valley in partnership with the Berkshires-based nonprofit Greenagers.
The vision for the Biodiversity Trail emerged from a collaboration including farmers at Hawthorne Valley Farm (HVF), researchers at the Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program (FEP), and students at HVS's Ecology Club.
“This has really been a collaborative process involving so many people at Hawthorne Valley from farmers, teachers, and students, to our campus services team and development office,” says Anna Duhon, FEP Cultural Research & Outreach Coordinator. “We are so excited to see this project come to fruition, and are incredibly grateful to Volgenau Foundation, the Joyce and Irving Goldman Family Foundation, Partners for Climate Action, Fields Pond Foundation, and the Bank of Greene County Charitable Foundation for their support to make it a reality.”
Project Background
In the fall of 2023, the Farmscape Ecology Program facilitated HVS Ecology Club students siting and mapping a trail through the Farm’s northern pastures that would create a meaningful way for community members to engage with the landscape and celebrate the rich biodiversity in the valley. In conversations with Hawthorne Valley farmers and biologists, students identified key areas of biodiversity and agricultural management to highlight with interpretive signs, which will be created this spring by HVS students and installed at 16 points along the trail.
To construct the trail, Hawthorne Valley partnered with Greenagers to bring their knowledge and skills in trail building to students, and provide them with purposeful, paid work. The Greenagers Trail program hires local youth to build and maintain hiking trails.
Scope of Work
Throughout the April week, students worked with Sam Del Molino, Greenagers Trail Manager who brings a depth of experience as a teacher and trail builder to his role. Students learned a variety of skills, including how to safely use the necessary tools, masonry work, digging switchbacks and drainage channels for the trail, and laying stone paths. Del Molino says that in addition to getting youth out in nature, the program gives them a taste of what a full-time job is like.
“I think people gloss over this sometimes, but one of the most important parts of our program is that we pay the youth for their work,” Del Molino says. “For a lot of kids, this is their first job, their first experience of a 40-hour workweek, and it’s a really cool opportunity for them to get off of screens and outside touching stones and dirt and moving heavy objects. It’s a really grounding experience, and you see them become more confident with each day.”
The crew started out on the Biodiversity Trail by creating a swerving bench cut up into the pasture, and then set large stepping stones to get over a small stream. They also laid over 50 stones—all gathered from the Farm—through a wet meadow, cut into a steep forested hillside, and built a set of patio stones to get across a stream.
“This project is unique in that the trail runs through an active livestock pasture,” says Sam Del Molino. “And I have to say that it was truly one of the hardest working and most diligent crews I have worked with. Each member really put their heart and soul into making the trail happen.”
Greenagers is planning one more week of work with youth in the early summer to finish the trail. The final trail will include the installation of benches inscribed with poetry that were built with students as part of a spring Ecology Club offering.
Student Reflections
Students expressed appreciation both for having an activity for the school break and for the opportunity to earn money.
Working with stones from the Farm to incorporate into the trail was a favorite task for many of the students. They worked together to dig heavy stones from the soil and move them. The shared effort and problem solving involved in this task made it even more exciting when a stubborn stone was shifted into its final position.
“I appreciated the ease of the teamwork,” Brady says. “In school we’re not always allowed to talk while we work, but out here, we can talk and it’s evident that we’re getting a lot done. It’s good socialization and good work for the body.”
“It was surprising just how much work it is to cut into the side of a hill and do a bench cut—that took probably five hours,” says Veery. “But I love working outdoors, and would for sure want to do this kind of work again in the future.”
“Thinking about what people are going to see when they walk here, I hope they can see how much effort we’ve put into creating [the trail],” Thomas says.
Alex reflected: “It’s cool to think that we can come back here, years in the future, and the trail will still be here and we can say, ‘I built that.’”
