Conservationists efforts recognized

WOOSTER, Ohio – Two Wayne county educators were recognized for their work in educating their students about the importance of conservation during the 2005 Wayne Soil and Water Conservation District’s annual meeting.
Outstanding educator. Neil Topovski was named as the 2005 elementary outstanding conservation educator, while Aaron Arnold was selected as the 2005 Secondary Outstanding Conservation Educator.
Topovski is the Wooster City School’s District Consulting Teacher for the Gifted Education Department.
He has passed on his lifelong interest in conservation to the students in the district by obtaining and donating rock and mineral collections to the district’s elementary schools and obtained a grant to assemble and install a weather station on the district’s elementary schools.
He has led field trips to Shreve Swamp, Brown’s bog, Christmas Run Park and his parent’s Chester township farm.
Lessons. As part of their lessons, his students have planted hundreds of trees and built countless animal habitats and feeders.
Through the field trips, his students learned about nature, endangered plants and various types of ecosystems.
The goal of these projects, was to teach his students about conservation and preservation of natural resources.
Topovski and his wife, Dawn reside in Wooster with their four children.
Ag educator. Arnold is the agricultural education teacher and FFA adviser at Norwayne High School.
As part of the Ag. Science II curriculum, students have a soil and water conservation unit that culminates in the Wayne Soil and Water Conservation District’s annual soil judging contest.
This contest requires students to identify soil types, slopes and determine the best management practices to protect the soil from erosion.
Arnold’s teams have consistently placed in the top five in district competition and have ranked among the top ten teams in the state on several occasions and earned a trip to the national contest in 2001.
Arnold and his wife, Katy reside near Smithville with their three children.
Farm awards. The 2005 Conservation Farm Award was presented to Boss Farms, owned and operated by Robert, Ernie, Kelly, Bill and Pam Boss of Burbank.
They farm 550 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, hay and pasture and have a 60 cow dairy operation.
Conservation practices include a manure storage facility designed to hold manure and milk house waste, a heavy use lane accessing the pasture, no-till, waterways, rock chutes and drop structures.
Re-elected. Fred Myers of Dalton was re-elected to the board of supervisors of the Wayne Soil and Water Conservation District.
Myers resides in Sugar Creek township with his wife, Cheryl, and along with his son, Scott and daughter-in-law, Nicole, farms 1,400 acres of hay, corn and soybeans.
They also maintain a flock of 300 ewes.
A past recipient of the Conservation Farm Award, his conservation practices include grass waterways, spring developments, fencing, crop rotation and an animal waste facility with a gravity load system.