EXPLORING THE NIAGARA FRONTIER: The Lockport Nature Trail – the ultimate springtime hike

The rich soils of Western New York’s forests support an incredible number of beautiful wildflowers in the spring. April and May see some forest floors virtually blanketed with array of colors.

Having immediate access to such floral displays is often difficult. For example, the hills of the Southern Tier are especially beautiful, but access is moderately difficult for a family looking to go on a spring hike – while Allegany County might sport tens of thousands of acres of state forests, most are without trail networks, making for some serious bushwhacking. Plus, getting there can be quite the haul for anyone coming from any of WNY’s population centers.

To see our vernal plants in all their glory, one need only head north to the town of Lockport Nature Trail. This wonderful 100-acre woodland is accessible to the masses – it’s just 45 minutes from downtown Buffalo and 30 minutes away from Niagara Falls. Getting there is easy: For most Western New Yorkers, take Route 78 (Transit Road) north through the city of Lockport. After passing the Niagara County fairground, you will go down a hill. Near the bottom is Slayton Settlement Road on your right. Turn there and the nature trail will be about a mile down Slayton Settlement Road on your right.

You will be greeted by a friendly sign at the park entrance and a stone and grass parking lot that can hold approximately 20 cars. The park is open all year long, from dawn to dusk. Don’t let the closed gate at the back of the parking lot scare you away, that is only there to keep cars out of the trails and, when open, allow the town’s park employees to keep the trails maintained.

And that they do -- quite well.

Every portion of the trail network -- which might approach 2 miles in total length if you take every primary trail and lesser-used sub-trail -- is in tip-top shape. They are wide, there are no overhanging branches or fallen trees, many are covered with fine crushed gravel and there are very few mud pits (I encountered only one on a recent April hike). Many trails are flat and will allow the use of a baby stroller or wheelchair; there are a few rises heading to the trails to the southeast which might prove to be problematic for wheeled transports.

That’s what makes the Lockport Nature Trail such a finely-accessible field trip – families with young kids, senior citizens, those with a handicap, and anyone who doesn’t count themselves as a rugged outdoorsman can enjoy this hike…as can even the most seasoned of naturalists.

You will also find that this might be one of the most popular dog trails in WNY; early last Saturday morning, I encountered seven different hikers with dogs. Unlike many such trails that I’ve encountered in places like the Alabama Swamps and the Adirondacks, there is a good culture at Lockport and the hikers pick up after their best friends – I didn’t have to dodge one “land mine” while on the trails (critical for someone taking a five year old who doesn’t watch where she’s walking on a hike).

While those dogs will severely limit the amount of mammals you will see on your hike (deer, woodchucks, and rabbits will be scared off), they have no effect on the other impressive aspects of animal and plant life at the park.

The birds are especially abundant and varied because their surroundings are the same.

The deciduous forest is mixed in age. To the west it features brush chock full of hawthorns, honeysuckles, and ashes. The eastern two-thirds of the park feature older trees with a taller and wider canopy.

Such a mix makes the forest a great nesting site for woodpeckers, cardinals, thrushes, and vireos. That same diversity makes the park an extraordinary place to observe colorful warblers by the dozens as they migrant through the region in May.

It’s also a great place to find snakes. Prior to reforestation, the park was a gravel pit and that left tons of exposed rocks, especially in the higher areas and along the ridges. If you poke around those rocks in the summer, it’s not out of the question to find a dozen or so snakes a day (most being the common garter snake).

But, I digress.

This column began talking about spring wildflowers and that’s what this park is all about this time of year.

If you’re putting the Lockport Nature Trail on your bucket list, make sure you visit sometime between April 15 and May 15. For that one month span, the rich soils along the stony ridges and creek beds boast some incredible flowers.

You will see thousands of spring beauties in April. These attractive little potatoes of the spring woods were featured in an installment of this column last year.

At the same time, the forest floor will be covered with the green and red leaves of the trout lily (or adder’s tongue) and it’s beautiful yellow flower as well as the brilliant deep purple of the wild violet.

As you head into May, the woods will be painted with white as you will see numerous white trilliums (a species in major decline across WNY) and the interesting bloodroot that Native Americans once used as war paint.

You can also encounter some real Niagara County rarities. This trail is the only public place in Niagara County outside of the Niagara Gorge where one can find Dutchman’s breeches and the strange-looking maidenhair fern. Those plants are more readily seen in rocky places like the Gorge or in the high country of Allegany County, but typically, the soils aren’t of the right nutrients or coolness to allow their growth in Niagara’s flatlands.

All of these, and 20 more early-spring species, make for great sightseeing – always take pictures of the plants and never, ever pick them.

The flowers aren’t the only remarkable plants in the park. Despite the land being almost deforested 100 years ago for gravel, there stands some awesome trees. There are two brutish oak trees on the premises, one believed to be 180 years old and another in excess of 200 years in age. Stop and appreciate these ancient giants.

Don’t overlook some of the other trees in the park. The woods also holds the largest hornbeam (ironwood) tree that I’ve ever seen.

There’s also another reason to visit the trail in the spring. The water is flowing.

Going through the park is a stony creek that feeds Red Creek (which is the east branch of Eighteenmile Creek). In the late summer it can dry right up. In the spring, she flows mightily and that makes for one of the best photo ops in the park….it has an attractive waterfalls of about five feet in height cutting through some ragged, multi-layered rock shelves. It’s truly a sight to behold.

As a matter of fact, the entire trail system is.

So, if you have a hankering to explore the Niagara Frontier in the coming weeks, make the drive to Lockport. The Lockport Nature Trail is a real gem, a place to take the whole family and experience nature.



+Bob Confer is a Gasport resident. His column, Exploring the Niagara Frontier, is published every Thursday on All WNY News.

From the 20 April 2017 All WNY News

Eating healthily on a budget

It’s well known that America’s adults are battling an obesity epidemic, with more than two-thirds of them overweight or obese.

They aren’t alone. The bad habits that led to that health crisis know no boundaries when it comes to age; now, their children and grandchildren are overcome with obesity.

One of every 5 teens is now considered overweight and those kids are besieged with related sicknesses. A January report issued by Fair Health, a national clearinghouse for health insurance claims data, showed that between 2011 and 2015, child and adolescent claims for Type 2 diabetes more than doubled while claims for prediabetes rose 110 percent, high blood pressure rose 67 percent and sleep apnea went up 161 percent.

Why is this happening?

The default refrain from health professionals is that it’s too expensive to eat healthily.

That defeatist response is the furthest thing from the truth. Healthy eating is cheap eating. Americans can eat well and not break the budget.  

Look no further than the menus at any given fast food chain which often becomes the convenient lunch and dinner for many. The high-fat, high-sodium, high-sugar meal deals average $6. For a family of 4, that’s $24. Why spend $24 when there are plenty of beneficial alternatives that can be had on the cheap?

A family would be better served by brown bagging it. Tuna is a nutritious and important protein that can be purchased at one of the local discount supermarkets for 60 to 80 cents a can, one of which can feed 2 people. Throw in low-salt, low-corn-syrup bread and some cheese and you’re looking at sandwich under $2 per person. $4 less per person -- and a whole lot better -- than the fast food fare. The cost of lunch suddenly went from $24 to $8.

Burger joints are just the tip of the iceberg. Consider the following alternatives to “normal” diets:

Most families likely indulge in junk food. Americans love their potato chips and corn chips. People may think they are easy and cheap snacks, but are they? Take a stroll around the grocery aisles and you’ll see most bags of chips nearing $4. How long does that bag last? A lot of times it won’t survive one feeding if there are a few people around. Due to the fatty goodness and addictive MSG, it’s not uncommon for a household to burn through a few bags a week. Alternatively, you can visit any local roadside stand or farmers market and buy a large bag of apples or other fruits for $5 that will last for days. They are just as satisfying and incredibly useful for our bodies. So, what may be $16 per week is down to $5 to $10 (depending on appetite).

That same family probably opts for processed foods in a variety of packages and cans for lunches during the workday or dinners at night. How much are sodium-soaked cans of chili or soup? Around $1.50 each and you need multiples to feed a family. Calorie–heavy prepared meals (TV dinners, pastas, boxed meats) are pricy, too, with price tags around $8 to $12 for family sizes. Assume 4 people eating canned foods, 7 lunches per week. That’s $42. Processed dinners might cost $84/week.  

Those financial and health obstacles can be overcome with a little time, effort and planning.  Take chilis and soups for example. Most every day at work I eat a healthy bowl of homemade chili or a quinoa/vegetable/lean meat mix. I make this stuff in batches. My cost: $0.80/lunch. That would cut most lunch budgets in half (far more if they frequent fast food joints).

Likewise, look at grocery sales fliers that show chicken at 99 cents to $1.80 per pound depending on cut and frozen vegetables for $1 per bag; all this while produce is available in and out of season at local farm markets. Numerous tasty dishes can be made from those items, all at $10 per dinner or less to feed a family. The cost may be similar to the processed foods, but they build a body in a good way and not in a bad way.  

The USDA says that the typical family of 4 spends $150 to $240 a week on food. Using some of the examples provided, eating healthy falls at the lower end of that budget -- if not below it. So, why are we kidding ourselves about the real cost of eating healthy?

It might just be that the high cost bogeyman conveniently masks the true and more controversial cause of America’s enlarged waistlines -- our lack of responsibility and discipline. We choose to eat bad foods because we like them, we’re too lazy to cook and we have a certain weakness of will when it comes to our stomachs.

Bad health is our own doing. 

It’s high time we started saving money and saving lives.

From the 17 April 2017 Greater Niagara Newspapers 

EXPLORING THE NIAGARA FRONTIER: Glory of the Snow

Our springs are too fleeting. They pass by quickly, and amidst the hustle and bustle of our day-to- day lives it is often difficult to stop and enjoy the beauty of it all.

Sometimes you just have to stop, relax and take it all in.

One of the most perfect symbols of our springs – so much color, so much brevity - is now in full bloom and gracing many lawns across the Niagara Frontier.

Glory of the snow is one of my favorite flowers. For a brief period of time, maybe two weeks tops, they pop out of the muddy April landscape to create a carpet of blue while the rest of the plant kingdom has yet to green.

These wonderful flowers are not native to Western New York, instead coming from Turkey. They aren’t what you would consider an invasive species, either. But, they have made a home for themselves throughout the oldest communities in the region.

European immigrants liked to plant the delightful flowers around their homes, so you will see vast colonies of them around many houses that were built in the 1800s. I am confident that those in my yard date back to an initial planting around 1860 when the old farm house was expanded.

These members of the asparagaceae family (which also includes the unattractive asparagus) are long-lived and colonizing thanks to healthy bulbs that allow the colorful sprites to come back year after year. With no pests other than nematodes, they are allowed to flourish.

If you have them in your lawn, be careful with them though as you could end up being the biggest pest – do not rake or aerate where these plants grow, because the bulbs aren’t that deep. Also, don’t mow their leaves, which can hang around for a month or two after the flowers wilt. Give them to get as much nourishment as possible from the sun.

Variations of the glory of the snow (which also go by the name of chionodoxa) have been appearing at nurseries and even at Wal-Mart in recent years. But, those are nothing like the heirloom varieties which have become a part of the Western New York landscape. The Wal-Mart plants are a little taller, less dainty, and much heartier.

The older glories of the snow are spectacular despite their size. Most flowers will reach a height of 3” to 4” and those ¾”-wide flowers sport six skinny petals that are baby blue in color (some variants are light violet) with a white eye or cup in the middle. They will bloom for anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 weeks.

After witnessing their birthing and withering every spring of my life, I’ve grown to believe that excessive heat will shorten their flowering season – it’s almost as if warming spells have an adverse effect on them. They relish the cold, hence their name, and last week’s surprise snowstorm (4” of heavy slush in Gasport) had no negative impact on them; they’re just as beautiful as ever.

I’ve been able to enjoy my little flowering friends for the past week and a half now. By this time next week they will be wilted. That’s such a short period of time to enjoy these wonders. That’s why I make it a point to marvel at them every evening after work and get lost in the sea of blue.

Spring is short. Life is short. It’s almost as if I can measure the passing of the years by the recurrence of this glorious spectacle.

If you have an old homestead that has glory of the snow, savor them tonight before they’re gone. Sometimes, you just have to stop and smell the roses – if not every flower that graces the Niagara Frontier.

+Bob Confer is a Gasport resident. His column, Exploring the Niagara Frontier, is published every Thursday on All WNY News.


From the 13 April 2017 All WNY News

The US economy is finally on solid ground

Having the diverse customer base and abilities that we do at the plant, I feel that we have an incredible real-world understanding of the health of the economy that economists, statisticians and stock traders don’t and never could when crunching the numbers. Based on orders and potential investments, we see and feel what’s happening with the economy a half year before it becomes felt by the masses or reported by the news. 

The best example of that: Heading into the Great Recession we saw consumer trends spiraling downward quickly. In February of 2008, we started to batten down the hatches and make plans for the fall of that year, preparing for the worst. Our banker and many other business partners didn’t believe us and thought we were crazy. Everyone now knows what happened to the stock market and the economy as a whole that fall.

Since then, I’ve had confidence in our ability to see trends and predict the future. And, I must say: the US economy is finally -- after years of a painfully slow climb out of the recession -- on truly solid ground. Things are looking great. Businesses are investing. Consumers are buying. And, almost everyone is brimming with confidence.

Many of the Republican persuasion would say that it’s the much-anticipated Trump Bump. It’s not.

In the summer and fall of 2016 we saw a whole bunch of purchase orders from existing clients across multiple industries come across our desk. That wide-ranging deluge was highly-unusual as we saw orders coming from clients who typically don’t order in the second half of the year.

I posed to my dad the following observation: The rest of the economy will be brimming with vitality in early 2017 and everyone will be attributing that to whoever won the election, whether it was Clinton or Trump. Of course, we’re seeing that now and the Republicans are trumpeting Trump’s economic moxie.

So, does 2016’s turnaround that mean the economy we’re in now is the Obama legacy? Perhaps, but not all the way.

Something equally invigorating has happened since mid-January when Trump took office. Americans are becoming rabidly innovative and entrepreneurial like they used to be.

I like to judge the strength of those factors by how many requests for quotations (RFQs) we receive through our website from inventors, start-ups and others who are not our clients. In 2015 and 2016 you might as well say that RFQs received were negligible; we’re talking maybe one every quarter.

This year, the marketplace changed dramatically. We have been receiving RFQs at a clip or 1 or 2 a week, from all sorts of people and all sorts of end markets.

One could attribute that desire to invest in new molds and product lines to Trump’s philosophies about business and policy. People now feel comfortable taking a leap and risking it all now that he’s in charge.

So, what is it? Is this an Obama economy or a Trump economy? Obviously, both have contributed or will contribute to what I am seeing at the plant and what everyone has experienced recently and will experience in the coming months and, hopefully, years.

But, I think we as a society pin our hopes too much on what a President allegedly can or cannot do. The economy is bigger than one man. Even public policy is bigger than him, it takes a whole Congress to make laws and budgets.

Sure, Presidents, their belief systems, deal making abilities and cheerleading can contribute to economic confidence but in the whole scheme of things their impact is minimal. They aren’t the ones out there in the trenches. An economy is driven by the people.

It’s consumers who feel safe in their jobs and incomes that want to buy goods, go on vacations or invest in homes. It’s the business owners and entrepreneurs who feed off of that and produce the goods and services that people want, which in turn keeps people employed and drives further consumption. There are 319 million Americans driving this system. 

We are blessed to live in a country where those people are free to buy what they want and need and investors of capital are given the chance to satisfy that hunger.

And, we’re lucky that all of the factors point to an economy where that freedom is allowing hope and growth. The US is in, and heading further into, some pretty good times. Enjoy them while you can, savor this great free market of ours and all the rewards that come from it.      

       

From the 10 April 2017 Greater Niagara Newspapers 

EXPLORING THE NIAGARA FRONTIER: Comet 41P/Tuttle–Giacobini–Kresák

Western New York skywatchers are blessed with an excellent year for comets that are visible with binoculars and perhaps the naked eye -- if we’re lucky.

In February, Comet 2P/Encke could be seen in the western sky with field glasses. In May, Comet C/2015 V2 (Johnson) will become available to us, once again by binoculars.

This month, we’ll be able to track Comet 41P/Tuttle–Giacobini–Kresák (which we’ll call 41P for brevity’s sake).

Comet 41P comes from the Jupiter family of comets. This doesn’t mean they came from Jupiter, it means that the giant planet actually controls their orbits. On occasion, Jupiter’s pull has proven so strong that comets have crashed into it. This specific comet passes by Earth every 5.4 years.

41P made it closest approach ever to Earth on April 1 st . Don’t be scared…this isn’t a sci-fi movie in which a comet will strike the Earth and wipe out humanity. When talking about the cosmos, “close” is still a vast distance – the ball of ice and dirt was still some 13.2 million miles away from us. That’s fifty times the distance to the moon.

The comet is easy to find because she is located near the best-known of all constellations – Ursa Major, which holds the Big Dipper. Over the next few weeks, 41P can be found between the Big Dipper and another constellation, Draco the Dragon.

Comet 41P is not very large, coming in at just a mile in width, so it doesn’t really make for prime viewing. For now, it cannot be seen with the naked eye. You will have to use binoculars or a telescope. You’ll be looking for a fuzzball of green-blue light.

It will probably stay that way for the next few weeks unless we are lucky.

In 1973 as it neared the sun on its orbit its brightness increased by a whopping 10,000 times, which made the comet easily visible to the naked eye. Outbursts, though much weaker, also happened in 1995 and 2001.

The comet will be closest to the sun on April 12 th , so if she’s going to brighten, it will be in the next few days.

Keep your fingers crossed. Let’s hope an outburst does happen, because there are few astronomical sights as mystifying as a naked-eye comet.



+Bob Confer is a Gasport resident. His column, Exploring the Niagara Frontier, is published every Thursday on All WNY News

From the 06 April 2017 All WNY News