Part of the Tisbury Great Pond is about to become an oyster reef, thanks to a project sponsored by The Nature Conservancy and the towns of Chilmark and West Tisbury.

The propagation projects calls for putting down 100 cubic yards of sea clam shells as culch and then planting 250,000 juvenile oysters.

The sound of bleating echoed across the water.

“Do you hear them?” Kristen Fauteux said standing at the edge of Daggett Pond at Cedar Tree Neck Sanctuary.

The still June morning had just settled over the pond on Wednesday as three pygmy goats made their maiden voyage from the head of the pond to its eastern edge, a small wake trailing behind their raft.

Skim the record books for the past four years of high school soccer, basketball and baseball, and you’ll notice a recurring name. Skim the grade books at the high school and you’ll notice the name again, this time at the top of the class, in the valedictorian spot for the class of 2013. Who is this Jack Roberts guy?

Some are accomplished writers. Others are star athletes. Still others are artists. They have opinions and passions and disagreements among themselves. Their interests are so wide-ranging that even the students themselves are hard put to find a description for the class of 2013.

When Katy Smith saw the scholarship advertised under Diana Bardwell’s name, she was inspired to try for it. “She was always very warm, always willing to help . . . she was the kindest woman you would ever want to meet,” Ms. Smith said, recalling Mrs. Bardwell as a “mother figure” to the students of the class of 2013.

Most Islanders who pursue higher education opportunities leave the Vineyard. Some move away permanently, some temporarily and some on a day-to-day-basis, commuting to the mainland for classes. The new president of Cape Cod Community College is making the Vineyard a priority in the institution’s plans to increase enrollment, which may enable a growing number of students to learn closer to home.

There’s nothing easy about running a small business on the Vineyard. With the high season lasting fewer than a hundred days, a late spring or a rainy weekend can easily turn a slim profit to a loss.

When work got under way this winter at the old Oyster Bar building, now owned by the Edgartown National Bank at the upper end of Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs, small business owners were no doubt excited at the prospect of a fresh façade and respected community bank making its home at the top of the street.

Here are two words that are perfectly innocuous when standing alone, but always seem to raise hackles when put together: affordable and housing.

The term seems to evoke images of tenements and crack houses. And to be fair the history of affordable housing efforts on the Vineyard is not without hiccups. But the paucity of shelter that even middle-income people can buy or rent is indisputable and well documented. What makes the Island so attractive to summer visitors puts the price of real estate out of reach for many hardworking year-round residents.

The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank reported revenues of $116,490 for the business week ending on Friday, May 31, 2013. The land bank receives its funds from a two per cent fee charged on many Vineyard real estate transactions.

Tisbury firefighters extinguished a fire that destroyed two boats and damaged a storage trailer and storage unit off Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road Thursday afternoon. No one was injured in the blaze.

Fire chief John Schilling said the fire started just after 3:30 p.m. behind Carroll’s Moving & Trucking while workers were taking apart a fiberglass, gas-powered boat with an excavator. There was apparently some fuel left in the tank, he said, which sparked and caught fire.