Natural Resources Conservation Service

Lisa Rice, an employee of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), was recently honored with the Patriot Award by the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR).

Shasta County landowner Karen Freitas has worked with the staff of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) since 2009, when she sought help recovering from a devastating wild fire that had burned much of her 160-acre tree farm the previous summer.

Rieber Paulson knew part of his 40-acre forest in Northern Minnesota needed to be harvested. He also had a vision of what the area should eventually look like.

When we launched the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative, I asked each agency to take a realistic look at their programs for opportunities to better support farmers trying to access local and regional markets. Since then, we have been excited to be able to share details and concrete examples...

Allen and Becky Clark have been farming for 17 years. When they started their small business, they grew flowers, pumpkins and corn stalks. Four years ago, they began raising goats for milk and cheese and eventually started making soap as well. The Clarks had long wanted to expand their farm but...

Larry Wright leaned to his right and said, “I just realized that when I was up there introducing the conference, I forgot to tell everyone who I was.”Larry is the Oklahoma area coordinator for the Great Plains Resource Conservation and Development’s (RC&D) and worked tirelessly for five months...

This story has three parts. Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here. For an hour or so, that’s how it went: on one side of the roof, I smoked the bees and removed capped frames, volunteers ran the capped frames over to the extractor on the other side of the roof, and the extractor team spun the honey out...

This story has three parts. Read Part 1 here. Stay tuned for Part 3 later. The hive is basically a stack of wooden boxes. Within each box a series of frames rest vertically. Each frame is about an inch thick and has built-in cells. The cells are where the bees place the nectar they’ve taken from...

This story has three parts. Please look for the next two parts over the next two days. July 15 was one of the most exciting days I’ve experienced in my short time as co-beekeeper for the USDA People’s Garden. It was hot, humid, and hazy that morning, when I—together with seven partners and...

The silverspot butterfly ( Speyeria zerene hippolyta) is one of two native Oregon butterfly species listed as threatened or endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Once found in coastal headlands from northern California to southern Washington, it has disappeared from all but a handful of...