Patiently Waiting.

I haven’t yet got any constructive feedback from my Alpha Reader, but it was always going to be a slow process anyway.

In the meantime and while we wait, let’s briefly go over why I think the NRCS is awesome.

Who Are The NRCS?

The Natural Resources Conservation Service is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Their website states:

NRCS provides America’s farmers and ranchers with financial and technical assistance to voluntarily put conservation on the ground, not only helping the environment but agricultural operations too.

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/site/national/home/

The important part, from my perspective, is the financial help part.

What Exactly Is It That Am I Doing?

I’m actually in a wonderful spot as an at-home Dad trying to work through a first – and when I get time, second – novel, who is also trying to start up a farm. That’s why I have so little time and inordinate amounts of it get spent working on the mini-barn. (By the way, I had a good crack at regrading this week, but the smallest excavator won’t fit under the roof, so it wasn’t an entirely successful effort.)

As we don’t have much of an income to play with and the only real income we have is the wife’s wages, any financial assistance is going to be very warmly welcomed!

The EQIP Program.

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program is a cost-sharing program where the NRCS picks up a certain percentage of the cost of approved projects. The funding annotated in our contract is a little under $19,000, which is going to take a lot of the load off.

What Is The Money For?

Standard farming practice, around here at least, consists of letting your livestock go where they want to. The upshot of this is they wind up defecating in ponds and streams, leading to bacterial contamination of ground water in the watershed. They also have other environmental impacts, but that’s one of the biggest.

One way to stop this is to implement an NRCS conservation plan. Ours consists in large part of fencing off our pond, providing pasture fencing and alternative water provision for livestock.

What Is The Conservation Plan?

Jessi, our NRCS agent, has drawn up a plan carving up the property into six fields, plus the pond and the farmstead itself, where the house is. There are two permanent watering facilities and additional provisions to connect mobile water sources at other locations.

This is great for us, since we intend to use intensive rotational grazing when we get our sheep. The reason for this is three-fold. Firstly keeping the animals confined in a given area means they’re more likely to eat a wider variety of the grasses that grow there and, in the pasture they’re fenced out of, the grass gets to grow unmolested.

Additionally, it helps even out the distribution of manure across the property.

Finally, sheep are very vulnerable to parasites. These parasites lay eggs that arrive in the world packed in the sheep’s manure, and these eggs hatch out into larva that have a certain amount of time to find their way into the digestive system of another hapless sheep. If we keep the sheep out of any given pasture long enough, the larvae won’t survive and add to their parasite load.

Of course, we plan on following the sheep with chickens, who – hopefully! – will make short shrift of the larvae they find.

So What’s The Next Step?

We haven’t received the official nod that everything’s fully approved, but I’ve been advised that we’re unlikely to be turned down.

So my first step, given some time when I don’t need to be doing something else, is to pore over the paperwork and start developing my own scheme for implementing the conservation plan, then I can make sure everything meets the specifications necessary to be signed off as compliant before I start spending money and getting to work.

I’ll post it here under the ‘What Else Have I Been Up To‘ tab, once it’s done.

Up Next…

Apart from developing my implementation plan, I have the garden to bring up to speed, I’m at least a month behind now. Then there’s the two lawnmowers that need sharpening, an oil change for one of the cars, the shed still needs tidying and organizing…

…a bunch of little things that are capable of absorbing the entire week all by themselves!

While all that’s going on, I still need to be stealing time from somewhere to keep on with the research for the first Black Box Factory story. I’m fairly confident it won’t be until after next week that I’ll get to discuss any Old Man feedback from my Alpha Reader. I’ll share that with you as soon as I have something, but right now she reports being on page 70 of 219.

Next week I hope to be in a position to discuss what the conservation plan looks like.

Until then, have a great week.

…am I the only one who doesn’t think May should be starting on Wednesday?

Categories: Farming, NRCS, Other Work