Buff Ranch directors describe hits, misses of first garden crop

Produce distributed to community, incorporated into school lunches

Overcoming a slow start, the work that was invested this spring and summer at the Buff Ranch yielded a bountiful harvest for Big Horn County School District No. 3 students and Greybull residents.

Chris Dalin, the district’s food service coordinator, and Ashley Coenen, manager of the South Big Horn Conservation District, informed the board earlier this month that 1,063 pounds of vegetables had been harvested on the school farm.

Located northeast of Greybull on Land 33 1/2, the Buff Ranch is a 20-acre property and the community garden was developed on its upper shelf, in close proximity to the greenhouses, a mobile trailer and a barn.

The community garden was a collaboration between the school and conservation district that produced potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, corn, squash, radishes, cucumbers, carrots, onions, pole beans, cantaloupe, watermelons, winter squash and pumpkins.

While the lettuce and corn “didn’t really turn out,” Coenen said the growing season with respect to the other crops was “very successful” despite getting a late start on planting, which occurred in June.

Following the harvest, more than 100 bags of produce were given away to the public and Dalin incorporated some of the vegetables into the meals he prepared for the school lunch program.

To get the community garden off the ground, the conservation district received a $5,000 grant from the Wyoming Community Foundation.  Coenen said $4,281 of that was spent on hoses, manifold supplies, sprinklers, fencing and gates, a scale and a sink.

Dalin planted a seed about a future need, telling the board that the irrigation system is in need of an upgrade. “We have a lot of trees and things to water ... it’s hard to water that many areas on a 1-inch tap from the town,” he said. “You just don’t have the volume.”

Dalin is already looking forward to next year, saying the plan is to start growing some crops in the temperature-controlled greenhouse and get them in the ground a lot earlier than they did this year.

While they aren’t sure if they are going to do pumpkins again because others in the community have stepped up to provide them, Coenen hinted about hosting a fall festival in the future as more of the ranch is developed and additional water becomes available.

Supt. Mark Fritz called it “a great start” for the community garden, but said he’d like to get more kids involved next summer in the growing of the crops.

SRO back in play?

Greybull Police Chief Travis Davis met with members of the school board recently to discuss the potential hiring of school resource officer (SRO).  The Greybull district is the only one in Big Horn County without an SRO on staff; in the other three districts, the SRO program is run through partnerships with the sheriff’s office.

The issue has come up a few times over the past two decades, but the town council and the school board have never been able to agree on how to fund the position and which of them would supervise the officer.

Board members agreed that they’d like to continue discussing the SRO position.

Trustee Lynette Murray offered the most positive view, saying she’d be in favor of hiring an SRO not only to serve as a deterrent but also because it would allow students to view law enforcement in a more favorable light — “as people and not just the law.”

Chairman Bette Rae Jones said she isn’t against hiring an SRO, but “what I get frustrated by is, multiple times we’ve talked about it around a grant.  I really feel like as a board, we need to decide if it’s a position in school. Let’s say there is and we allocate money to it.  We’d have to be able to sustain it then.”

Supt. Mark Fritz said the legislature’s talks on school safety measures aren’t limited to arming staff.  Lawmakers are also talking about providing school districts with funding to hire SROs.

Fritz said 70% to 80% of the districts in Wyoming have SROs.  Those positions fall outside of the state’s funding model, which means districts with SROs are paying for them with their own local resources and no state funding.

Fritz said he’d argue that if 70% to 80% of districts doing it, lawmakers should put funding in the model so all districts can do it.

When asked how he feels about the need for an SRO, Fritz said, “In today’s world, I think it would be a good thing to have on staff.  I’d hate to not have one and have an incident happen. And if (a potential school shooter) knows somebody’s there who can defend in a second, they would hopefully choose differently.”

Other News

In other Oct. 8 news:

• The board accepted the resignation of  Pat Anderson, who was hired as a special education teacher at the high school but left a few days into the school year.

• The district’s enrollment stood at 447, up two from the start of the year.

• The board accepted a $300 donation to the school lunch program from Freier Properties.

• Two more home schooling requests were approved, bringing the total to 23.

• Karen Campos was hired as a special education paraprofessional at GMS.

• The district received another $75,000 in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding from the Wyoming Department of Education.  Last month, it received $100,000 from the same source.