Dale K., when my folks bought their ranch in Sonoma County, CA in 1948, WAY before it was "the Wine Country," it was a mess of Russian and Yellow Star Thistles, dust, and deep gullies and land slips. Had been overgrazed by sheep for decades, starting in the 1920s--the Great Depression didn't help....
With the help of SCS and UC Extension, we turned it into a very productive and nice place to live. Those two agencies were the only ones that were welcomed at the ranches and farms around there--anyone else with a clipboard was liable to be met with the business end of a .30-30.
I was only 5 then but I remember the SCS agent getting right down in the gully bottoms with us and showing us how to make soil catchers from all the rusty bobwire strung all over the place, how to plant hedges along the gullies and how to plant, harvest, and plant Harding Grass. Still remember the silky feel of a handful of Harding Grass seed that we had just harvested by hand like neolithic farmers!
I spent 10 years in 4-H because of those agents and agencies and loved every minute of it. The place is now owned by a Public Land Trust and is public open space, mainly used for hiking and horseback riding. Fulla game, too. When we moved in there, we had few deer, no game birds, no predators, mainly ground squirrel colonies and dust. Now there's scads of quail, tree squirrels, cottontail and jack rabbits, coyotes, tree foxes, and bobcats. And all the trees we got from SCS are HUGE! The SCS-planned farm pond is full of catfish, largemouth bass and bluegills.
Sometimes the Guvment does GOOD stuff for the land and the people. Helps if the people add some elbow grease to the equation, a labor of love.
Thanks for sharing the success story, that's the kind of thing that keeps me going to the field, especially when the government 'stuff' starts getting deep. That elbow grease you mention is a very important part of the way NRCS works. We offer suggestions and options to fix a problem and the farmer/landowner decides what they want to do. They buy in because they made the decision, it's not some government agent telling them you must do it this way.
Dale
