We, One Rake at a Time, set up a tent at Boomtown Days in Dunnellon on Saturday April 13. It was a perfect weather day, cool in the morning then upper 70’s in the afternoon. The historic district along West Pennsylvania Ave. place was Booming with people all the way to and including Cedar Street.
Boomtown Days comes once a year and is put on by the local Chamber of Commerce which is called the DCBA or Dunnellon Chamber and Business Association. A hard working group of volunteers and staff spend months arranging everything. There was music set up on a stage on Cedar Street, a beauty pageant, and a big car show beyond.
There were great food venders and tons of craft tents with incredible hand made jewelry, paintings, and a wide array of vintage items along with new idea items. There were also tents showcasing what some of our nonprofit organizations do with educational displays and information on how people can get involved in good causes.
Our tent was showcasing the work we have done over the years cleaning up and restoring our springs. The One Rake at a Time concept was born on Kings Bay in Crystal River way back in 2009 when it started as the class project with Leadership Citrus.
Leadership Citrus is a program that is sponsored by the Citrus Country Chamber of Commerce and every year they host a class of about 20 students of all ages learn about many of the different things going on by touring and visiting a new place every week during the semester. These include things from soup kitchens to farms to government agencies to private industry and each year there has to be a class project that gives back to the community.
My class, the class of 2009 voted to do my idea to cleaning up the park and swimming area at Hunter Springs Park in Crystal River. And that is where it all began. The idea was, that every rake full of invasive weeds you remove today, make’s tomorrow a little bit cleaner and that is how we can make great things happen, if we stay on it.
Needless to say I stayed on it having cleanups with all sorts of groups of volunteers and even got my Rotary involved until my nonprofit was created in 2015. From there other groups were also formed copying the successful method of raking the invasive weeds out from the springs in the shallow areas volunteers could get to until the first pilot project was started.
The pilot project was in part funded by Tallahassee as they could see the local community was serious about restoring our springs. Hand raking is effective in removing the weeds but can not rake out the muck that was left behind from years of spraying herbicide to control the weeds. This is when we got professional divers to start vacuuming out the muck and planting native plants like eelgrass in the cleaned areas.
The pilot restoration project showed success and the cleaning moved forward with the needed mechanical help to get the deeper areas that volunteers could not reach. As the years went by the project showed even better success and the eelgrass started spreading on its own crowding our the invasive weeds and becoming dominant again, thus eliminating the need to spray herbicides and allowing beneficial aquatic life to return and we all watched the murky water clear up.
Fast forward to today and at the Boomtown event many people visited our tent to learn more about our project. Some complained about the Hydrilla, Lyngbya and water weeds that were still right in front of their homes where they lived on lakes and rivers where we have not been able to clean and restore yet. Many asked if we could help them out also. We want to, it is just going to take time.
I would like to see all of our waters cleaned up and restored, but these beautiful springs and waters of ours did not get dirty overnight and it is going to take time to clean up the areas that need to restored. It will take time, but at least we are started with the Rainbow River next in our sights. As we move along we certainly hope to keep expanding the areas that we restore.
I thank all that people who stopped by our tent. Many just to say thank you for doing a good job and throwing a tip in our donation jar. Some buying a hat, t-shirt or coffee mug with our logo on it to help support our efforts. Every donation helps.
For more information or to get on our email lies to see some of our videos visit our website OneRakeAtATime.org
Thanks again, Art Jones