Grade school story problems made me sweat in math class. Despite grasping the concepts, thinking about life in the format of unknown variables, percentages and geometry concepts (to name a few) made my eyes widen in anxiety and my eighth-grade heart palpitate more vigorously than the sight of a main crush. I just didn’t get the magic, and was easily steered into focusing on languages and literature in the hopes of an enlightened life through words.
Despite a degree in French and several years of foreign travel, life continues to unfold into daily story problems. I am thankful that at this point in my experiences, awareness and deeper knowledge have found each other, enabling me to both raise the symbolic hand in question to life’s teachers, as well as try solutions for myself whether in possession of scrap paper or not.
Today was a raised hand day. Doing the higher math on our 7-acre parcel has me a bit befuddled. How to think about soil retention? Desirable woodland expansion? Pasture management for saleable livestock? Vegetable production on significant slopes? Images of terraced Asian rice fields pan easily across my mind’s eye, particularly during this WET summer season wherein everything remains bright green.
So far I’ve gone at our farm projects with nary a glance at literature or other sources of knowledge. Past experiences in life, like volunteered time on a vegetable farm or visits with livestock producers for the purpose of newspaper writing, had me convinced I could at least lead our climb into the hills. I always expected to shift into drafting position, catch my breath for a bit, and watch somebody else’s work so I too could summit. (Okay, a Tour de France analogy might not have worked there, but the long haul of managing land has me feeling like I’ll need a performance record like Lance Armstrong to compete in this world.)
Mr. Dan Miller, of the Chester County Conservation District, came over today in order to help us push on up the next hill. Formed in the aftermath of the 1930’s dust bowl, conservation districts were begun voluntarily by farmers who recognized the need to educate each other on soil conservation and overall best resource management practices, in addition to helping people stay in the practice of farming.
“I’ve never worked with a farm this small before,” Miller said at one point. But my heart didn’t skip a beat; he was eager to give it a go! “I’ll have to go look up some ideas for that bank, make sure it doesn’t wash away if you tear it up, get the grass out, and terrace it,” he commented. “And I might need to go ask some other people for help for more specifics on pasture management for something this small,” he added. Also President of the Chester-Delaware County Farm Bureau, Miller’s investment in this area’s agriculture expanded into conservation practices following a back injury that prevented him from continuing work for a 
commercial dairy.
These days, Miller, as other employees of the District, is assigned to work with farmers who lands drain into specific watersheds. In our case, the Chesapeake. Largely, he suggests erosion and sedimentation control measures, as well as stormwater management systems, all of which ensure that the water coming from Chester County lands returns to the Bay in its constant cycle of life movement as clean as possible. For our land, we have multiple goals of what we want to grow on it (livestock and vegetables being the most identifiable commodities), but we want to do it so as to participate in a more sustainable cycle of resources.
We don’t want our precious topsoil to float on down our steep slopes, thus loosing a great growing medium, and silting up the stream at the end of our property, rendering it less able to carry as clean of water on to the Bay. We want all the water possible to hit our place, like the thunderstorms so prevalent this summer, and make it down to our little tributary as clean as possible too, so what can we plant on the slope to help get it where it needs to go, cleanly?
In the coming weeks Mr. Miller will help us identify a contour planting method for the sloped lands we have identified for vegetable production, as well as other agriculture practices. The story problems will keep on growing, but doing the high math of long-term land stewarding is a lifetime I’m dug into.
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