ACC ag club takes on beautification project at the college

ALPENA -- Alpena Community College's Agricultural Club hopes to cultivate and beautify the space between the college's Van Lare Hall and the Northeast Michigan Community Mental Health building.

"I think it's gonna be really good for the community and do some conservation work," said Emily Samp, vice president of the Agriculture Club. "We're gonna get some more native plants in here and make it look a lot prettier than it is now."

The space is being split up into two distinct areas that are separated by the bike path leading to MyMichigan Medical Center Alpena. On one side lies a pollinator area and, on the other, a crop area.

The pollinator side will have more than 40 native plants placed there to both look beautiful and attract pollinators, such as butterflies and bees.

The crop side will see a host of different crops planted over time. Club members had the idea of raising crops to donate to the ACC food pantry, though nothing has been confirmed, yet.

The Agriculture Club hopes to plant crops that will bolster the fertility of the soil over time, such as clover.

"Our crop area is going to get what is referred to as a plow-down crop or a winter wheat of some kind," said Garet McQuarrie, the treasurer of the club. "Basically, something to do during the winter, kind of get the ball rolling and get the soil back up to snuff."

The Agriculture Club is still waiting to see if it will receive funding from the college's Board of Trustees but has enough resources thanks to donations from one of the club's faculty advisers, Andrew Paad, to start planting some of the flowers in the pollinator area as early as spring of next year.

"We have the equipment and Mr. Paad is donating all the seeds and stuff like that," said McQuarrie. "We're borrowing his equipment until we can get ours established."

According to Paad, the Agriculture Club was first suggested by ACC Financial Adviser Alexis Young as a way to give students interested in agriculture an avenue to gain more knowledge or connect with like-minded individuals for networking opportunities. It started at the end of the last academic year.

"There's no agricultural classes up here, which really is kind of strange to me," said Paad. "A lot of the students that do attend ACC live on farms, own farms, or are starting farms, and there's really no system for them to connect and network and what have you. We thought an ag club could serve that purpose."

While developing the club, Paad was also looking to incorporate aspects of conservation into the club's activities, and, after some talks with ACC President Don MacMaster, the Agricultural Club developed its beautification project.

"Agriculture and conservation kind of go hand in hand, so we looked to marry the two ideas together," said Paad. "We talked with the president, and he kind of had an idea that morphed even further to not only just be purely agriculture. So now we're gonna grow some basic agricultural crops, you know, some real basic stuff like maybe some buckwheat or wheat or oats we're going to put in, some basic flower gardens for the butterflies and stuff like that."