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.