Kickoff Event: Saturday, January 26th
10:00am, 11:30am or 1:00pm
Adopt a maple tree for the season! Learn about and participate weekly in the entire syrup making process, from tapping a maple tree to sap collections and boil downs. You’ll even get your very own bottle of NCNC-made maple syrup at our end of season pot-luck dinner in March. Tree selection will take place at our Kickoff Event on Saturday, January 26th. Choose one of three time slots (10am, 11:30am, or 1pm).
The New Canaan Nature Center’s construction of a barn for donated donkeys has been delayed due to pending approval from various town bodies, officials said, but is expected to break ground in the fall. Because the land is owned by the town, more approvals are needed before construction can begin, according to New Canaan Nature Center Executive Director Bill Flynn. “It’s a town-owned property so it’s a lot more complicated than just getting the normal planning and zoning permits,” Flynn told NewCanaanite.com. “It requires another level of approval.”
The Board of Selectmen in May unanimously approved an initial request to begin planning construction. However, the Nature Center must gain approval from municipal bodies including Inland Wetlands, Health and Planning & Zoning, he said.
It has been a little less than three months since the grand opening of New Canaan’s “GreenLink” trail and “greenway,” a walkable loop that includes, Irwin Park and the Nature Center. It traverses three New Canaan Land Trust properties, allowing citizens to take full advantage of their bounty. Some say that you can’t take the GreenLink path without seeing at least one fellow resident taking a stroll, so we took it upon ourselves to peruse around and find out how people are feeling about it. Jogging down the trail, New Canaan resident Katherine Mettler said the quality path for her knees helped with running. “At some trails, like Waveny, running on the pavement can be really hard on your knees,” she said.
Town officials on Tuesday unanimously approved two items related to a proposed new barn at New Canaan Nature Center whose occupants will include four donkeys. The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 on a pair of proposals, for the construction of the barn itself in Bliss Park as well as the merger of two parcels there into a single lot—a technical land use concern since the new structure will straddle them. Bill Flynn, the Nature Center’s executive director, said the Oenoke Ridge Road organization has been offered four donkeys by a local woman, “but we do not have the facilities currently to house them.”
Asked by the selectmen whether the animals currently live in a similar structure, Flynn said yes. “They are very fancy donkeys,” he said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “They have a barn.
The “GreenLink Trail” to open at 11:30 a.m. Sunday in New Canaan—on Earth Day, as part of the New Canaan Land Trust’s plans—creates a new, walk-able loop that advocates have been dreaming about, as well as carefully planning, for some four years. It features an attractive, footbridge-laden trail that spans wetlands off of Weed Street, and ultimately helps connect Irwin Park to the New Canaan Nature Center. That trail is the final piece of a larger, pedestrian-friendly loop that runs from downtown New Canaan, up Elm, along Weed Street and into Irwin, then back along Weed and into the woods, across a conservation easement and onto Land Trust property, then into the Nature Center’s woods, up onto Oenoke Ridge and past God’s Acre into downtown New Canaan again. The captioned slideshow above tracks my hike of the trail and that larger loop on Wednesday, with our dogs Louis, Marvin and Dexter. A few fast facts on it (time and distance can be tailored):
2.2 miles
5,656 steps
50 minutes
The hike can vary from two to three-plus miles, depending on just where you want to start downtown and whether you choose to enjoy additional trails within the Nature Center.
