Hooray! We’ve won a grant from the UDSA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) to transform 1.5 acres from weeds into a Pollinator Habitat, for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Phase One of the three-year project will be to establish a 1000 foot-long windrow (NOT pollinator-attracting), which should protect the habitat from herbicides sprayed by neighboring farms. We’ll do one tilling of the old field this summer, amend with stone dust, plant buckwheat and clovers…and in the fall, we will turn this under to put in cover crops. By next spring, we should have improved the soil and crowded out most of the weeds, and will begin our design for pollinators. Imagine: a plot of land in constant flower throughout the growing season! With berries and shelter for birds through the winter. We’ll follow permaculture tenets and organic practices, with a minimum of tilling.
