Bird watching tour participants help conduct a nest drag, a low-tech census of nesting birds, with Headley Ranch windmills in the background.

Every year USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in South Dakota joins partners to coordinate a bird watching tour on a farm or ranch that participates in one of our voluntary conservation programs. Read more »

Jim Howard, Half Moon Bay District Conservationist, visits with Ryan Casey from Blue House Farms.

“When we started, there weren’t any other farms locally doing what we were doing,” says Ryan Casey, of Blue House Farms, outside of Pescadero, Calif. Read more »

A planning meeting with Freitas at the Redding Service Center.

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. Read more »

Tommy Berend, ranch operator at the 9,000-acre Circle A Ranch in Archer County, Texas, wanted to eliminate mesquite, restore open spaces and plant native grasses on the ranch.

The mesquite consumed large amounts of water in areas where Berend wanted to create habitat for quail and other wildlife. Quail is an important, yet dwindling species in Texas. Read more »

A butterfly gathers nectar from a mimosa flower in Adams County.

Along the lush banks of the Sunflower River, Steve Martens has a slice of paradise. The Madison, Miss. resident owns 1,600 acres of farmland and forests, hospitable not only to soybeans and corn, but also to whitetail deer and bobwhite quail. Read more »

Todnechia Mitchell, NRCS district conservationist in Milam County, works the reins to control the only horsepower used to plow and cultivate fields on Sand Creek Farm in Cameron, Texas. Ben Godfrey, farm owner and organic producer, walks behind Mitchell, guiding the draft horses that are pulling a potato planter.

“Out with the old, in with the new” isn’t the rule of thumb at Sand Creek Farm in Cameron, Texas. Ben Godfrey, the organic farmer who owns the farm, has used the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), a conservation program administered by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), to help increase the environmental benefits on his farm in Milam County. Read more »