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Back to Basics Conference: A Conversation with Jenny Hill

Happy Dancing Turtle

Jenny Hill hopped on air to discuss Happy Dancing Turtle's 17th annual Back to Basics Conference! It's going to be a great day (especially for the lucky folks attending John Latimer and Sarah Mitchell's Phenology Workshop- wink wink nudge nudge). The event runs 8-5 on Saturday February 11th, and is held at Pine River-Backus school. We hope to see you there!

From Happy Dancing Turtle's website:
"Back to Basics is the premier sustainable living event of north-central Minnesota! It combines workshops, vendors/exhibitors, a keynote, lunch, door prizes, and more to bring roughly 400 people together to share ideas on a wide variety of topics related to sustainability and resiliency. In addition to 40+ workshops, this event includes a large vendor area with 50+ booths providing educational materials, services, and locally made/grown goods of a sustainable nature. The keynote event and vendor area are open to the public for free. Participants who want to take workshops must register--please [go here]."

KAXE/KBXE Senior Correspondent
Heidi Holtan has been involved with KAXE since 2002. Now as Director of Content and Public Affairs she manages and is the host of the KAXE Morning Show, including a variety of local content like Phenology, What's for Breakfast, Area Voices, The Sports Page and much more, alongside Morning Edition from NPR. Her latest project is Ham Radio: Cooking with Amy Thielen.
As a mail carrier in rural Grand Rapids, Minn., for 35 years, John Latimer put his own stamp on a career that delivered more than letters. Indeed, while driving the hundred-mile round-trip daily route, he passed the time by observing and recording seasonal changes in nature, learning everything he could about the area’s weather, plants and animals, and becoming the go-to guy who could answer customers’ questions about what they were seeing in the environment.
Charlie Mitchell (she/they) joined KAXE in February of 2022. Charlie creates the Season Watch Newsletter, produces the Phenology Talkbacks show, coordinates the Phenology in the Classroom program, and writes nature-related stories for KAXE's website. Essentailly, Charlie is John Latimer's faithful sidekick and makes sure all of KAXE's nature/phenology programs find a second life online and in podcast form.


With a background in ecology and evolutionary biology, Charlie enjoys learning a little bit about everything, whether it's plants, mushrooms, or the star-nosed mole. (Fun fact: Moles store fat in their tails, so they don't outgrow their tunnels every time conditions are good.)