5-23-11

So this is my last in office day at the NRCS since everything is due the next week and I will spend my time working on the analytical paper and such. Today was definitely one of those final day feels, where guidance and support is given. I did some help with Farm Bill applications, but most of the time was spent talking about my future, how to utilize what I had learned and what jobs I am looking for. Rich really wanted to make sure I didn't have any questions about the process of the NRCS and what I was qualified to do. There is a position open in the Petaluma office doing a similar position to what I was doing as an intern with a bit more responsibility so Rich helped me go through and answer the 31 questions I have to answer to describe the level of my experience. I know I learned a lot at this internship, but I definitely don't want to overestimate my skills. Almost all the work I did had to have some review by Rich because I was only an intern, but in theory I could have done it without review. After hearing his opinion on my skills it made me feel like I not only learned a lot in these 6 months, but I also contributed to the NRCS. I think its great to know that my name will be in some applications and on some conservation plans and maps. It allows me to take pride in the work I had done there. Knowing what my skills are also allows me to consider other positions. While I really enjoyed my time at the NRCS and working in land management, I think in the future I would like to be international or work on a larger scale. I also have a big interest in getting involved in ocean policy. Overall, I think I would really enjoy working for the NRCS for a couple of years to get more experience but maybe not in a location strongly focused in farming. Its incredible to realize how much I learned about erosion, and crops, considering how very anti-agriculture I was when I first began this major. I was positive that I was going to do only policy and avoid being in the field. This internship combined with my course taken in New Zealand made me realize how fun it can be to be in the field, but more importantly, how being in the field and seeing the actual problem makes you a better policy person. I thinks this has been an invaluable experience in the actual skills in the field and in the office that I have learned.

5-17-11

I split half my time working on my internship paperwork and the other half working on NRCS things. Today I worked a bit more on adding more documentation to my application and developed an outline for each of the sections in the application. This is information I will use in the 5 page description of my plan and as a way to guide people on what they are seeing. A lot of the information in the plan is confusing and very technical, and one of the complaints I heard at the midterm seminar on a previous plan was that a lot of it was confusing. So I plan on explaining the six different sections of the folder and why each is necessary to the Farm Bill application. I then helped with some administrative things that have a tendency to build up in the office. Since Angie is still not full time and still has some adjustments to make as far as running smoothly with Rich, there is a tendency of things falling by the wayside. Therefore making interns helpful to pick up the slack. Today I organized envelopes to mail out to people we had met with and had promised to send them things. There were follow ups with people we had met with weeks before and probably had been expecting some follow up for a while now. Then I assisted with reviewing HEL determinations from all clients from 2008-2011. It was tedious but interesting to get a snapshot of all the different applications and clients the NRCS has worked with in the past 3 years.

5-16-11

As the deadline of the end of my two quarters at the NRCS approach, I have become more desperate to finish my project. Technically it shouldn't take too long to accomplish, but because I can only work on it while in the office and it has to be a day when Rich isn't there, it has been hard to do. Also, I know that Angie is working on her own things, and I always feel bad interrupting. So in exchange, I spent half my day helping her get CA EE 52 sheets done and she helped me begin my conservation plan.

For my conservation plan, a lot of the time was spent trying to figure out what practices would be necessary on this property. Once I had an idea, based off what was discussed in the field visit as well as what she was applying for (Organic EQIP). The difficult part was knowing what the "technical" name of each practice was, and since I was using Rich's computer, he wasn't there to ask. I decided brush management to help control the french broom invasives on her 1st field. This is meant to help reduce the fire load and create a field usable as a pasture. The goal of that field was to create a pasture area for sheep and goats. It is also on a slope so there needed to be fencing and some sort of erosion control. The client was hoping to use hedgerows as a type of separation on the field to allow for rotational grazing. That meant the entire field was consider prescribed grazing as well and had electrical fencing surrounding it. The last thing I wanted to include, was mulching on field 3. This was to recreate a top soil, since the field appeared to be a bedrock. I also wanted to redo the access road and do brush management followed by critical area planting on the sloped area near the barn.

I faced a couple of issues with all this. One of the first things was that the last time I had made a conservation plan map, I wasn't going to be generating the conservation plan as well. The correct way to create a conservation plan, is to create the map which generates the plan for you. However, Rich always makes the plan and then has someone else make the map, so I wasn't sure on how to generate the plan. I kept having to check in with Angie to make sure I was doing it right. And then I had issues with having practices on the outside of field boundaries. Because the client didn't identify her entire property, but rather fields, I was unable to make a plan for the access road and the brush next to the barn since they were outside the field boundaries. In the end, I created a plan that will most likely be used and added on to for the actual plan.

So in exchange of helping me with the map, I helped Angie out by doing CA EE 52 sheets, which are basically narratives of each of the practices and how they are benefitting the land. Since I don't have an extensive knowledge on each practice the NRCS does, I found this a bit intimidating but Angie told me to do my best. After a while, I begun to get the language right and it become easier. Then it became tedious and after dealing with GIS all day, we decided we were calling it a day. It is always a bit frustrating with Rich not there because it makes it difficult to get answers to questions making it hard to move forward with projects. On the other hand, I know Angie is definitely the person to talk to when I need to do anything with GIS so it was beneficial to have her there.