GRP

The NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) was out to our place the end of last week.  We participate in the Grass Land Reserve Program (GRP) which is a conservation program designed to keep grasslands, grasslands for all of the wildlife and environmental reasons that converting to cropland disturbs.  As part of the program they come out every year or so to document and observe our operation and to make sure that we are still in compliance and also to give advice.  I've mentioned before one particularly harmful piece of advice that I was given by their grazing specialist who is no longer with NRCS.  That advice still continues to impact our operation and has allowed us the opportunity to try different grazing techniques in an attempt to heal the setback that the advice caused.  Anyway, they have a new GRP manager (I think that is what he is) and the local NRCS office wanted to bring him by.  They came out and also had a Pheasants Forever representative with them.  We did a quick pasture walk and discussed our current operation, past operation, and future direction, with the takeaway that they wanted to see what the pasture looked like next year after this years MIG/mob grazing/Holistic Management grazing results can be seen to see if we might want additional grazing advice.  I am excited to see how this years grazing leads into next spring, advice not withstanding...