nrcs

For special meals like those on birthdays and Christmas, members of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians include hominy on the menu—but hominy, essentially dried corn kernels, is expensive to purchase.

Over a decade ago, Winston and Teresa Pike brought their family back to the 140-acre farm where Winston grew up to begin a farming operation of their own.

Since then, the Pikes’ business has grown from a small family farm with fewer than ten pasture-fed beef cattle to a thriving operation with over 100 head of beef cattle, as well as dairy cows, hogs, meat chickens, egg laying chickens and turkeys – not to mention a variety of vegetables. The farm sells its organic products to restaurants, a co-op and online, and has a CSA (community-supported agriculture, a kind of farm subscription service).

Larry Woods dedicated 36 years of his life to education in Kentucky. After a successful career as a teacher, coach and administrator, last year Larry retired to his Garrard County family farm, which he plans to develop into a full working operation for his children and grandchildren to enjoy.

Woods was raised on the 100-acre farm, and a love of farming, hunting, fishing and living off the land comes naturally for him. But when he returned to his farm, he quickly realized that keeping track of his 30 head of Charolais cattle was a next-to-impossible task. He spent countless hours rounding up the herd from ridgetop pastures and steep valleys full of tree and brush.

Members of the Puget Salish Tribe in the Northwest are now using Southeastern longleaf pine needles from Mississippi to build baskets, all because of a connection made between two employees of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)—from the Gulf Coast to the West Coast.

2012 saw the worst drought in a generation. It was exceptionally dry from the northern Great Plains into the Deep South— nearly three-quarters of the country.

“We knew that the carrying capacity of our pastures for next spring would not support our herd,” says Larry Cutliff, who runs a 45-head cow-calf Angus cattle operation in west Tennessee. “The prospect of drastically reducing our herd size was one option we were considering.”

Variano “Chino” Suarez manages four restaurants in Mississippi. You could say that he appreciates his free time more than most. When it’s time to unwind, Suarez retreats to his forest acres in the red clay hills of eastern Mississippi. Here, wildlife thrives and ponds are filled with bream and bass.

Koeberle’s job carries her over mountains by helicopter and horse, snowshoes and skis. She has encountered grizzly bears, avalanches and wolves and visited ridges that few people have seen.

Koeberle is a hydrologist and snow surveyor for USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and works on the agency’s snow survey team—a group of specially trained scientists who maintain snow gauges that are important to farmers, business owners and many other people in the West.

There has been little in Ruben Herrera’s life of late to celebrate. The past few years have been marred by drugs, prison, and homelessness.

A military vet who was raised on a farm in Gilbert, Arizona, Ruben remembered the sweetness of his childhood rural lifestyle even as he struggled with the realities of life on the streets of America’s sixth largest city.

In October, Ruben’s Veterans Administration counselor directed him to the Human Services Campus in downtown Phoenix where he is now finding renewed hope and purpose.

The Human Services Campus houses several social service agencies—St. Vincent de Paul, Central Arizona Shelter Services, Lodestar, NOVA Safe Haven, Maricopa County Health Services and St. Joseph the Worker employment counseling. But for Ruben, the Community Garden, rooted out of a parking lot next to the campus, has become his sanctuary.

In southern Illinois, along the Mississippi River, you can see a diverse landscape of woodlands, open wild areas and farmland. But that wasn’t the case about 20 years ago, after the Great Flood of 1993 ravaged the area. That summer, all of these ecosystems resembled a moonscape with most of the vegetation removed.

For 40 years, Vietnam veteran Javier Mancha has developed his Maverick County, Tex. land by hand, and relied on USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to help incorporate conservation practices into his operation.

Mancha’s Rosita Valley farm is known locally for growing some of the hottest peppers and sweetest melons around, and over the years, has grown and sold enough produce to put four daughters through college.