Recently, the CWPP team finished conducting their interviews and creating maps for Craven County. The whole team worked together on Craven with Ada leading the whole crew. We tackled CWPPs at the Cherry Point, Harlowe, Havelock City, Little Swift Creek, New Bern City, Rhems, Township Six, Township Seven, Tri-Community, and West of New Bern fire districts. As many of the fire districts were in close proximity to New Bern, we were able to explore a bit of the city. Some of the highlights include walking around the perimeter of the Tryon Palace, enjoying mocha shakes at the Bear Towne Java Café, and eating brunch at the Baker’s Kitchen – particularly the Dutch potatoes, which some of has have become mildly obsessed with. Another fun activity we enjoyed during our time in Craven was finding all of the different bears throughout the city. New Bern’s mascot is the bear, and local artists have created numerous fiberglass bears that have been placed around the city. Some include the farmer’s market bear, the country club bear, and, of course, Wilber Bear, who is another mascot of the Forest Service! While working on CWPPs for Craven, much of our time was spent in cities, particularly New Bern. However, we took a day to head up to Raleigh for some community outreach at the Raleigh City Farm. We arrived early in the morning to help harvest vegetables at the farm to be delivered to local restaurants. There was quite a variety we collected, including yellow squash, zucchini, patty-pan squash, okra, and tomatoes. After doing a quality check to ensure everything was up to standard, the vegetables were packed up and brought to various restaurants in Raleigh. As a thank you for helping out, the farm coordinators sent us home with quite a few vegetables that the restaurants didn’t need. It made our dinners for the following week even more delicious! We’ll be writing blogs for Brunswick, New Hanover, and Columbus counties within the next few weeks, so keep on reading!
