We’ve been wanting to get over and talk to the government farm folks to see what assistance they can provide to us, since we are new farmers. For many new farmers, funding is one of the key concerns along with knowledge on how to do many of the different things that you want to do with your farm. With the new Farm Bill, funding programs have been set up for new farmers, socially disadvantaged farmers (women) and other classifications of farmers. With govt. loan programs, there are lots of hoops to jump through and annual reporting. Grant money is great because it doesn’t have to be repaid but it will come with certain guidelines in order to qualify.
Having the expertise of a farm expert can be a great help to a new farmer. Are there plants that would be toxic to the specific kinds of animals that you want to have or is the soil conducive for the types of crops that you want to plant ? These are the types of questions that can be answered with the help of your ag extension agent or conservation agent.
I know, from talking to other aquaponic growers and from my internship last year, that there are high tunnel grants available to help growers extend their season. We are hoping to get a price from our contractor that makes it possible to start construction in October for the storage barn and greenhouse. In talking to the FSA/USDA rep, he said the first step is to get our info into the system. He would then come out to the farm and assist with the location on where a high tunnel should go. The timeline for these types of grants is a deadline of October 1 to get all paperwork submitted, with funding given in March or April. Since we hope to build in October, we wouldn’t qualify for this round of grants. The high tunnel grants require that some of the planting be done in the ground (if you recall with aquaponics the growing would take place in a trough). Ben Godfrey, in Texas, who does aquaponics and got a high tunnel grant, set aside about 1/2 of his area to do in-ground growing and set the rest up with normal aquaponic troughs. For three years he will need to continue with this set-up and then he can convert the ground space to aquaponics. In the meantime, he is using the aquaponic water on the plants he is growing in the ground. If the quote on our barn/greenhouse comes in too high then we will go back to our agent and apply for the grant and push off construction till the spring. The $5-8000 that we’d get from the grant would help us get it all done.
We didn’t have a whole lot of time to talk to Ciro (the agent) when we met with him but we did find out that he understands and supports permaculture (wahoo!) and is trained in holistic land management. He had the permaculture design manual on his bookshelf that the design course we took, was based on. We gave him a copy of our long range permaculture plan for the farm and he will put that in our file. Sadly we found out that Ciro is retiring next year but he wants to give us as much assistance as he can while he is still working there.
Mom’s land has been part of the CREP program for the past eight years and has two more years to go before the contract expires. Since this is a conservation program, involving the use of fall grasses on the land, there isn’t much that you can do to the land while its’ under contract. Building will impact the contract to the extent that once we have the footprint staked out, we’ll have to have the agency come out and determine how much of the contracted land is impacted. They will GPS the staked out area against the contracted space of eight acres and then we will need to re-pay all the money, for the space we will build on, that was paid to us for the last eight years + penalty + interest. For instance….If we take 1 acre out of the contract, it will amount to around $1000 that we’ll need to pay them. I knew this when I developed our budget and built it into the loan amount. I’m not sure if we’ll have any issue at all because of how small our building footprint is and most of the work is outside the contract area.
The exciting thing that Ciro said we’d do next is to develop a conservation plan. He will come out in late October and we’ll walk the land and talk about our plans for it and he will make suggestions. If there is funding available for certain aspects of it, he’ll let us know that. Once he draws up the conservation plan and puts it in our file, it will be there for the person that comes to take his place, after he retires. They can carry out what he started and assist us with each phase of the plan. That can be anything from laying out pastures and fencing to irrigation needs for the property. It’s exciting to get that groundwork laid and to work with a conservation expert to give us advice with our permaculture goals in mind.
Randy, our excavator got a little more work done this week.
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