The District is funded by the County and the State of Virginia and that funding comes with specific goals that we must meet each year. As a serving Director and Treasurer, working with my colleagues, I have very actively helped to assure that the District has accomplished its goals protecting the multi-billion dollar value of the soil and water resources within its modest and balanced budget of $353,000. This success depends on leveraging the efforts of an army of volunteers and on grants from donors to clean the miles of streams, to reach the thousands of students in classrooms and Farm Field Days, and to provide technical assistance and conservations plans for erosion-stopping land management best practices. I am very active with the board and the staff and in the field in all of these efforts.
Beyond our current efforts, as mentioned above, I would like to carefully expand our assistance grants for erosion prevention to HOAs as residences replace farms and to explore ways to expand coordination between farmers and the local food banks and the Summer Food Service Program to reach more at risk children and families with farm fresh food during the summers when farmers often have excess produce. These new efforts could help to reach our goals of soil and water conservation directly and to improve our children’s tangible understanding of farming and the land in their lives.
