![[Image Description: Two MCC members taking a brief break; one is sitting on a rock, the other is standing nearby. They are both in their uniforms, looking out at the expansive, mountain view surrounding them.]](https://cdn.firespring.com/images/c3f85e97-43a9-4810-8081-e8e6338173d0.jpeg)
For our last hitch, we went to the town of Big Sky, Montana. Our project partners were from the local nonprofit, the Gallatin River Task Force. Their advocacy involves topics such as invasive vs. native species, wildlife, and clean water. They had a project they were working on, where they reached out to homeowners to help replace their turf grass with native grass.
This is where our MCC crew came in to help. We worked on the yards of three private homeowners in the area. We used a process called sheet mulching to cover their turf grass in mulch and soil in an intentional layering process that would allow them to easily plant native grass in the spring. When we finished the project at those three houses, we moved on to the task of pulling invasive weeds on nearby public land nearby. On the third-to-last day of the hitch, there was too much snow to continue this work, so we switched to a different project closer to Bozeman for the last two days. This project was with Trout Unlimited and involved harvesting and planting willows for stream repair.
