I feel like I’ve accomplished very little actual academic work this past week, but looking over my calendar, I’ve actually been pretty busy doing various face-to-face activities. I’ve also had two very stressful family issues to deal with which has dominated my grey matter and hasn’t allowed much time to do “real” school work.
Biologists came to our farm Wednesday morning to conduct some tests to ascertain if our property was in fact considered wetland, and if it was, where exactly those wetland boundaries lie. Brian and Tom were the two who came out, and they were incredibly knowledgeable and a real pleasure to work with. They dug a few small holes in our fields and looked at the soil in different areas, noted the various kinds of plants and trees growing, and where and how water flows on and off our property. They asked us a bunch of detailed questions about what we’ve noticed on our land and what all we’ve done to it as well as the history and what we know about what the previous owners did. After listening to all of our answers, both Brian and Tom were of the strong opinion that we have a good case to present to the Conservation District, saying that agricultural activity has not been abandoned on our property, and we therefore have the right to continue our plans of housing livestock and planting crops as we like. With
Brian and Tom’s educated opinion, both my fiance and I have renewed hope that we can make our agricultural dreams come true! We scheduled a group meeting with Rene from the Pierce County Conservation District and Brian and Tom for next week to go over this new information and to see what steps we need to take next. Keep those fingers crossed for us!!