IPM With UMass In North Amherst

Education is a huge part of my Pathways Internship. My mentor and supervisor are constantly sending me invites to attend classes and educational opportunities. So when UMass offered an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) field walk I couldn’t pass it up. The class took place on a local vegetable farm in North Amherst just off campus.

As we arrived at the farm there was a staff from the UMass Extension and some folks from the farm to greet us. We signed in and did some networking. There were UMass students, local farmers and out of state farmers attending. Everyone who is in attendance had a real interest in IPM because they know it is an integral part of resource conservation on cropland.

After introductions we first had to learn to identify what we are looking at. The concentration was on the Colorado Potato Beatle and the Flea Beatle. Both are present in North Amherst. Next we discussed what you do to control the pests and when to control them. The Economic Threshold and Economic Injury Level are one of the cornerstones of IPM. They give you real data to work with in terms of when to treat a crop to mitigate damage to that crop.

Enough talk so we headed into the potato field. As we arrived a lightning storm that had been looming sent us scrambling back to the barn where we finished the talk with a classroom version of a field walk using visual props and discussion.

All in all it was a very informative class. It was well run and when you walked away, you had some very useful information. I highly recommend it to anyone.

EQIP Ranking

An internship with NRCS is not always adventures in the field. You have to pay your dues and attend important meetings like the one in June. On the agenda was ranking the different Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) applications. Under EQIP NRCS will cost share with the farmer or land owner to put conservation practices on the land. As the applications come in from the general public they are categorized under different subaccounts. These subaccounts have specified budgets.

The 2014 Farm Bill allotted over $9.5 m in EQIP funds for the state of Massachusetts. These funds will be spent on things like:

• Farm Energy Efficiency
• Organic Certification Assistance
• Water Quality
• Conservation Activity Plans
• Cropland
• Farmstead
• NE/NY Forestry Initiative
• Pasture and Hayland

I happily note that there is a separate subaccount that has its own line item in the budget for Historically Underserved (HU) individuals. This category is made up of:

• Beginning Farmer
• Limited Resource Farmer
• Socially Disadvantaged Farmer
• Tribal Indians

Because they have been historically underserved; this line allots specific funding for those who qualify for this fund code yet might not make the cut under a general ranking subaccount.

All the players attend this meeting, Planners, District Conservationists and Program Managers from the state office all come together to rank each application in a fair and equitable way. It was an eye opener for me to see the inner workings of the ranking process.

Can You Dig It

In order to properly put conservation on the land you need to follow NRCS’s 9 Step Conservation Planning Process. The reason I bring this up is because it looks simple but there are a lot of moving parts when planning conservation.

An example of some complexities presented itself this summer when a planner from the Hadley Field Office proposed a watering facility to a beef farmer. Sounds straight forward, run a hose to the trough, fill it when needed. That was the process when he spoke to the farmer. However, the beef cows need water in the winter pasture and a hose won’t work.

To address the concern NRCS proposed a 4 season watering facility. In order to make the watering facility 4 season you have to bury a pipe at least 4 feet deep. If you want to heat the water so it won’t freeze you need electricity so you need to run conduit as well.

One filter you need to get past whenever you dig, is this digging going to affect any cultural resources? If the answer is yes then the planner must rethink the conservation practice or move the practice where it won’t be interfering with cultural resources.

As an intern I am asked to come out to the site to help dig test pits. We dig test pits to determine whether there are cultural resources in the area where the trench will be dug for the pipe that will feed the Watering facility. The land owner, myself, the planner, an archeologist (NRCS) and a member of People of the First Light come out to see what we can find.

We must dig the test pits 50cm by 50cm by 50cm. We dig pits at 10 foot intervals along the route in which the trench will be dug. All the material is screened and examined for artifacts. Fortunately and unfortunately we did not find any artifacts, if we did we would have to stop the project and replan the work.

 

Celebrating Success

Not all field work is walking fields, pastures, forest or barnyard. Sometimes you have to take time to celebrate your successes. This summer there was a lot to celebrate. We took one morning off from the field to head over to Barstow’s Dairy Farm. There was a large celebration going on and the District Conservationist I work for was invited to attend. Both he and NRCS were instrumental along with many other agencies in getting this project done.

As we pull up to the farm there is a large tent set up and 100 or so people from all over the state and the country milling about. They were all there to see the Barstow’s new Anaerobic Digester. In a nut shell, it is a system that takes manure from their dairy operation, mixes it with food waste which they truck in, to make clean energy for the farm and an additional 200 homes.

The anaerobic digester uses this mixture of animal and food waste as food for the digestion system. As the food is digested methane gas is released. The system feeds the gas into a generator which in turn produces electricity. After the digestion process takes place the by product is a clean product that can be used for bedding.

I was able to meet one of the design engineers from the company that built the system. He gave me a personal tour of the system and explained how it worked. The system has many moving parts and some proprietary technology that he was not willing to share, but all in all a great learning experience.

The Peoples Garden

As an intern you must take on collateral duties to alleviate the collateral workload for the office. I have taken on multiple collateral duties to include The Peoples Garden, Feds Feed Families and Combined Federal Campaign. Each of these duties provides its own set of challenges as well as rewards. I will post about the others later. Right now I would like to write about The Peoples Garden.

This will be my 4th year as The Peoples Garden coordinator. The Peoples Garden has been a very rewarding program. It seems to morph each year, reinventing itself yet fulfilling the same mission of feeding people at the Amherst Survival Center fresh vegetables from our raised bed garden.

You can tell the real gardeners in the office. Every year donating vegetable plants, weeding, watering and harvesting. Without these true gardeners our garden would not be so productive. We also have great technical assistance from our soil scientist as well as our agronomist. It really takes a team to make our Peoples Garden the success that it is.

First Outing

My work takes me to a farm in Essex MA. Working with the NRCS State Soil Scientist Al Averill, we have to make a determination if some of the fields on this farm are highly erodible land (HEL). The way we determine HEL is by digging test pits to determine what type of soil we are dealing with and then determining the slope.

Here is an example from the report Al wrote:

Methodology: land in question was traversed on foot, holes excavated with a tile spade, auger and probe. Soil properties were noted.

Results; map depicting approximate locations of field boundaries plowed areas and areas dominated by shallow soils and rock outcrop.

Map Legend:

1,2,3,4, – CLU field boundaries in red ink a.,b., c – plowed areas w/in field boundaries in black ink Areas w/in blue polygons delineated w/ blue ink – dominated by shallow Hollis soils w/ lesser amounts of rock outcrop

Areas dominated by Chatfield soils: 1,2a.,2b.,2c.,3b.,3c.
Areas dominated by Woodbridge soils: 3a.
Areas dominated by Charlton soils/highly erodible land – 4.

Learnings from this exercise, how to use a clinometer, soil horizons, soil types and HEL determinations on Ag land. Knowing if you have HEL as a farmer is extremely important as it pertains to government funding such as EQIP, not to mention soil health.

What I did Last Summer

My summer internship and the summer itself are flying by. With so much doing there hasn’t been enough time for blogging. So keep an eye out as I catch up on this blog with stories about my agricultural adventures this summer.

I would like to start at the beginning. In May of 2014 I applied for and was offered a Pathways Internship by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). I am currently a student at the University of Massachusetts Stockbridge School studying for my BS in Sustainable Food and Farming. It is my hope that when I graduate I will land a job with NRCS as a Soil Conservationist.

This blog is part of my Summer Session 2 Agricultural Practicum at UMass. The blog will serve two purposes. One, it will record all of my hard work and learning experiences for credit towards my degree. Two, I hope that it will be used as a tool for up and coming students who might be interested in what an internship at NRCS might look like.

I plan to break up my experiences into three categories, Conservation Planning, Engineering and Soils. All of these categories are directly tied to farming and farming operations. Some of the conservation planning under the Wetland Restoration Easements (WRE), however, is only tied to agriculture through the return of ag land to its natural state of wetland.

The experiences I have with each one of these categories are varied. I delved deeply into some aspects of all three categories and on other fieldwork, barely scratched the surface of what it really takes to put conservation practices on the land.

The farther I travel towards this field of work called Soil Conservation, the more I understand how truly multifaceted it is. I am slowly realizing it will take years to master.