Thursday, July 25, 2013

Met this morning with reps from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and signed a contract for the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) for the Lett and Watjen farms.  Those two locations are mostly reclaimed land from a strip mine that went through in the mid-70s.  The soil there is extremely fragile, and prone to water erosion.  So, this program will allow us to install some more WASCoBs and other conservation measures.

The main component of this EQIP partnership is our initial experience with using cover crops.  The use of cover crops has become very fashionable, or should I say ‘popular” in recent years.  This will be our introduction to this practice this fall.  We will plant the species recommended by our consultant, Greg Anthis, and this should keep the soil surface protected with vegetation during the fall and winter months.   We are hoping this will be quite successful, and increase the organic matter in these fragile soils while decreasing the water erosion at the same time.