Christine Hatch Celebrates Reclaimed Wood in 'Daily Hampshire Gazette' Profile
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Christine Hatch—a research-extension liaison for the Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, and an extension professor of Water Resources and Climate Change in the Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences—recently penned a Daily Hampshire Gazette profile of western Massachusetts luthier, inventor, and teacher John Fabel. Fabel "has been making instruments out of the finest fallen trees for years now, giving new meaning to 'made local.'”
Hatch spent 16 months "apprenticing with John as part of a community instrument-making endeavor, during which time [she] produced possibly the first ever ukulele to be made of Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana)."
Using her experience with Fabel as a means to highlight the benefits of reclaimed wood, Hatch argues that most of the northeastern hardwoods cut in Massachusetts's Pioneer Valley become firewood, arguably the lowest-common use for such wood. Hatch asks: "What would it be like if we added value to what we extract from the forest? Since we have the local skill base, what if, instead of a few dollars of firewood, we made $1,000 worth of ukulele, or $3,000 worth of guitar?"
"This wood, this resource, is part of our local identity. It’s a celebration of...when you create something that can make music, that allows us to make music together. That’s what we make when we work together to make the instruments with artists like John. We’re building on that history, and essentially creating an ecosystem, a social ecosystem that ties us to the forest, and ties us to our land."
— Christine Hatch in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Read Hatch's profile of John Fabel in the Daily Hampshire Gazette.