Scientists need 15 minutes of your help. Led by the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, the Great Backyard Bird Count begins Friday, Feb. 18 and runs through Feb. 21.

It may be called the Great BACKYARD Bird Count—and your backyard is a great place to count—but you can count birds anywhere. Count them at a nearby park, your schoolyard, a nature center, even the local landfill—anywhere there are birds!

When you take part in the count, you’ll automatically be entered in drawings for bird feeders, binoculars, books, and many other items donated by sponsors.

Watch the above video to learn more on how to participate in this free and fun community service.

While it may be under several feet of cold snow at the moment, warm, rich soil lay in wait of springtime, ready to accept tomato plants, carrot seeds, and other nutritious vegetable and fruit plantings. Starting later this month, the Food Gardening 101 series will offer beginning gardeners the opportunity to learn about successfully growing vegetables and fruits in the backyard for the family table.

Trained volunteer Master Gardeners of Cornell Cooperative Extension in Fulton and Montgomery Counties will teach this four-part series. All classes will take place once a month at the Shirley J. Luck Senior Citizen Center, 109 East Main St., Johnstown, 6–8 p.m., February through May.

Residents may register for all four classes or select separate sessions. Each session will provide a combination of classroom instruction, demonstration and hands-on experiences.

Scheduled sessions include: Feb. 24: Starting Your Seeds; March 10: Selecting a Site for Your Garden; April 7: Mapping Your Garden; and May 5: Post-Planting Care. Details about each session are available on www.ccefm.com.

The cost is $5 per class or $15 for all four classes. Pre-registration is required by Feb. 11. Call 762-3909 x 101 or email fultonmontgomery@cornell.edu. Click below for more information on each session.

March 1 Cornell Cooperative Extension in Fulton and Montgomery Counties will open its new offices in Canajoharie. The new offices will be located at 50 E. Main St. in the village and will occupy the entire basement floor of the United Methodist Church of Canajoharie.

Cooperative Extension programming will continue throughout the month of February as staff makes preparations for the move.

While moving is a hardship for the association we are confident the new space suits our needs and allows us the flexibility to continue offering vital programs throughout Fulton and Montgomery counties.

Being both smaller and nontraditional office space, the basement floor of the church offers considerable savings in rent for CCEFM.

We looked at several spaces throughout Fulton and Montgomery counties and the 50 E. Main St. location in Canajoharie offered us the most significant cost saving. The savings allowed us to avoid deeper programming and staff cuts.

This will not mark the first time a Cooperative Extension office has been located in Canajoharie. In 1914, Cooperative Extension in Montgomery County got its start in Canajoharie at an office at 12 Barclay St. The Montgomery County Cooperative Extension office would later move to Fonda.

Whatever the season experts recommend keeping an emergency supply kit in your vehicle. Some extra items, of course, should be added for winter.

The publication Winter Safety developed by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Warren County and the Warren County Disaster Preparedness Office recommends the following items for a winter vehicle emergency supply kit:

· Blankets, sleeping bags, extra newspapers for insulation

· Plastic bags (for sanitation)

· Extra mittens, socks, scarves and hat, raingear and extra clothes

· Sack of sand or kitty litter for gaining traction under wheels, small shovel

· Set of tire chains or traction mats

· Working jack and lug wrench, spare tire

· Windshield scraper, broom

· Small tools (pliers, wrench, screwdriver)

· Booster cables

· Brightly colored cloth to use as a flag, flares or reflective triangles

Teachers at the middle, high school and college level can soon apply for bio energy training thanks to a $5 million grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

The new grant “will be used to train science teachers so they in turn can incorporate lessons and hands-on activities about bioenergy and products made from algae, willow, switchgrass, soybean oil and other feedstocks into their middle school, high school and college classrooms,” a recent article in the Cornell Chronicle says.

According to Cornell University’s Sun Grant Initiative website, applications to the 2011 program will be accepted between February 15, 2011 and March 31, 2011. Visit the Sun Grant Initiative website for more information on the application process.

The Sun Grant Initiative website also has information on other upcoming professional development opportunities and the downloadable "Biofuels: The Race to the Pump!" board game for K-12 classrooms.

Commercial farmers and other agricultural producers in Fulton and Montgomery counties will soon have limited services available to them from a new regional Cornell Cooperative Extension initiative.

Thanks to a cost-saving regional partnership, the new initiative will substantially increase the scope and availability of Cooperative Extension commercial agriculture programming in seven counties -- including Fulton and Montgomery.

The Cooperative Extension Capital District Agriculture and Horticulture Team is expected to start work next month. The new team will offer research-based educational services for farmers in areas ranging from new farmer development and farm business management to livestock production.

Because our county funding was cut, farmers in Fulton and Montgomery Counties will not have the same level of service available to producers in nearby counties as originally planned. Despite our funding cuts, we were still able to ensure that our local farmers could take advantage of some of the exciting new opportunities. With severe budget reductions in both counties, partnering for regional programming is the only avenue available to maintain agriculture programs for producers in Fulton and Montgomery Counties.

Counties participating in the new cooperative agreement include Albany, Columbia, Greene, Schenectady and Washington. While funding reductions at this time will not allow the Fulton and Montgomery County agricultural community to be a full partner in the new initiative, farmers and producers from the area will still be allowed to attend programs and other opportunities presented by the new team. However, local farmers will need to travel to attend these opportunities as the new team will not be holding any events in Fulton or Montgomery counties.

At its recent organizational meeting, the Board of Directors of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Fulton and Montgomery Counties elected its officers for 2011.

Bette Papa of Fonda has been elected to serve as President of the Board. Bill MacLauchlin of Fort Plain has been elected to serve as Vice President. Linda Kollar of Johnstown has been elected to serve as Secretary. Lorinda Settle of St. Johnsville has been elected to serve as Treasurer.

This will be Papa’s sixth year on the CCEFM board. The last two years Papa served as board treasurer. This will also be MacLauchlin’s sixth year. This will be Kollar’s third year on the board. She previously served on the CCEFM 4-H Youth Development Committee. Settle is beginning her second year on the board.

The Board of Directors is comprised of volunteers from both counties who serve as the governing body for Cornell Cooperative Extension in Fulton and Montgomery Counties. Major program areas include 4-H Youth Development, Nutrition and Health, Consumer and Financial Literacy, Consumer Horticulture, and Commercial Agriculture.

Citizen science involves ongoing scientific projects in which individual volunteers or networks of volunteers (who may or may not have any specific scientific training), perform or manage research-related tasks such as observation, measurement or computation.

The use of citizen-science networks permits scientists to accomplish research objectives more feasibly than would otherwise be possible.  Additionally, these projects aim to promote public engagement with research as well as with science in general. Citizen science is one approach to informal science education for youth and adults and is frequently used as a form of education and outreach to promote public understanding of science.

Check out these citizen science opportunities connected to Cornell University for you to explore:

Bird Sleuth -- Check out the Science Investigator’s Kit for Homeschoolers and much, much more

Project Feeder Watch -- Embrace Winter! Count feeder birds for science.

Celebrate Urban Birds -- Start this citizen science project by getting a free copy of the Celebrate Urban Birds kit containing a beautiful color poster, information on urban greening, and bird identification for 16 common species.

Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network -- an exciting grassroots effort to measure precipitation in the backyards of citizens from the Atlantic to the Pacific

In response to recent funding cuts from both its sponsor counties, Cornell Cooperative Extension in Fulton and Montgomery Counties informed staff Tuesday of reduced work hours effective next month.

Many local association employees will see their work schedule reduced by one or two days per week effective Feb. 1.

The cut in work hours follows the elimination of two positions late last month – one layoff and one attrition reduction. In addition, two longtime employees retired at the end of December.

The CCEFM Board of Directors met Monday to enact the staff hour reductions. The loss of positions and the cut in work hours reflects a 25 percent reduction in personnel cost for the association.      

Also in an effort to cut costs, the CCEFM Board of Directors decided the association will soon move its offices. While details are still in the works, plans are being readied to relocate the CCEFM offices to smaller and less expensive space in the village of Canajoharie.

The New York Energy Research and Development Authority has launched a new grant program to help New York farmers cut utility bills. The new $3.2 million Agriculture Energy Efficiency Program, announced last week, is currently accepting applications. Funding will be awarded on a first come, first served basis, NYSERDA said. New York farmers can apply by completing a two-page application.  

Farmers can then receive grants for up to 75 percent of the costs to update lighting, install high-efficiency motors and fans, and other projects that will save energy. Farmers would pay the remaining 25 percent.

To better understand a farm’s energy needs, the agency says it can perform energy audits at no cost for audits up to $1,500. “For more complex audits exceeding $1,500, NYSERDA offers a cost-sharing option to help you defray some of the expense,” the NYSERDA website says.

“Past NYSERDA programs demonstrate that a typical dairy farm can save 20 to 30 percent of its energy bill with cost-effective energy efficiency improvements at an average seven-year payback. The Agriculture Energy Efficiency Program can provide a typical dairy farm with $2,700 to $4,000 per year in savings from a farm investment of $4,800 to $7,000,” a NYSERDA news release said.  

For more information and download an application visit NYSERDA’s Agriculture Energy Efficiency Program website.