The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay has a program that helped us be more efficient and safer farmers with conservation vouchers. It’s called the Healthy Streams Farm Stewardship program. It awards $3,000 worth of conservation vouchers per acre of riparian forest buffer up to $20,000. In addition, the program allows...
A Historic Day for Farmland Staunton, Virginia: It was a hot summer day on August 4. We met the senior easement specialist with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation at our lawyer’s office to walk the four blocks to the courthouse. Our lawyer, Alan Garrison, said he could have recorded our conservation deed...
Note: The text of this post was published in the Virginia Mercury on 9/1/2022. My wife and I are beef cattle farmers in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Two years ago, we enrolled in Virginia’s Agricultural Best Management Practice Cost-Share program. We used this state funding to fence our cattle...
The grazing season is in full swing at Whiskey Creek Angus, and the bulls are in with the ladies. We rotate our two herds of cattle to different pastures about every four to six days depending on the growth of the forage. The tree seedlings we planted last year are...
Jeanne and I were successful at getting the county to amend its comprehensive plan so that part of our farm will be classified as urban open space instead of low-density housing. We paid a fee to apply for the change and spoke at two public hearings before the county’s board...
Getting vaccinated gave me hope that the pandemic will end soon. Hugging loved ones for the first time in over a year helped heal my soul. Planting trees gave me hope for healing the earth for a sustainable future. In this post, I’ll share memorable quotes of the year from...
I love looking up the trunk of a 30-foot-tall Willow Oak that I planted in 2004.
The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay made a three-minute video of Jeanne, Val, and me working at Whiskey Creek Angus.
There is much to be thankful for on Earth Day 51—way too much for a blog post! But here are some significant and promising environmental developments that occurred recently. Environmental activism and the law are alive and well. Bald Eagle Nesting Pairs Quadrupled I look up from the greening pastures...
The unnamed tributary. That little creek, or seep, or spring, or bog, or wetland without a name begins its life as surface water when it emerges from the ground. Most streams don’t have a name. In fact, about 60 percent of all streams are unnamed. I’ll bet you know of...