e-Tour Gets Down on the Farm

After our program with the Operation Purple group at Medoc Mountain State Park, we drove through coastal Carolina to Ashton Crossroads near Burgaw to visit Ashton Farm Day Camp. The camp, founded in 1975 by Sally and Jim Martin, is set on 72 acres of the historic Ashe Plantation, one of the earliest land grants in the Colony of North Carolina. The property was a working farm that Sally and Jim developed into a summer day camp that could provide kids with an opportunity to learn about nature through hands-on experiences. The camp has entertained hundreds of young campers every summer and busloads of school groups during the academic year. It’s a great setting to learn about the traditions of farming life and to experience a huge variety of timeless recreational activities for kids.

From Ashton Farm

Sally is one of Barrett’s sisters, and her camp has been advocating many of the basic Leave No Trace principles since its inception. Over the course of our visit we had an ongoing conversation about the e-Tour and the Leave No Trace ethic. It was really great for us to see how constant the camp has remained over the past 35 years. We loved hearing how the young city-raised kids who first experienced the camp’s traditional agrarian message decades ago are now sending their children to Ashton Farm so they can create their own enduring memories of the place and the experience.

We left Sally and Jim with a healthy sampling of Leave No Trace materials, and took with us refreshed memories of the many good times spent at Ashton Farm in years past. We hope that there will be future opportunities to help Sally incorporate more aspects of the Leave No Trace ethic into her camp activities, and that the traditions of Ashton Farm will endure for generations to come.

Hope to see you down the road,

Barrett and Peggy
2010 e-Tour

e-word: eating (sea and farm-fresh fish and veggies...)