Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Tales...Story 3: From Farm to Forest

Narration: Quail by the Creek Farm is in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. When Bill King first bought the farm, it was in pretty bad shape.

Bill King: You could hardly take a step without stepping on an old oil bottle or an old tractor oil filter, trash everywhere, hypodermic needles for inoculating cows and pigs, empty vials, you could not take a step without stepping on some sort of trash, so things are getting a lot better, we’ve made a lot of progress. I can walk around without inoculating myself against some cattle disease.

Narration: Long before the cattle farmers, Civil War soldiers marched through this rural Virginia property.

Bill King: It has some history, it was some degree involved in Battle of New Market, it’s a little over 58 acres. It takes in a little more than ¾ of a mile of Smith Creek.

Narration: Smith Creek runs all the way from these Mountains, on to Washington, DC, and 100 miles out to the Chesapeake Bay.

Bill King: Well it’s interesting when I cross the 14th street bridge into DC I wonder how long it’s taken a molecule of water to go from our farm outside of new market, into smith creek, into the north fork of the Shenandoah, into the Shenandoah, into the Potomac and then pass under that bridge as I’m going over it.

Narration: It’s not just the molecule of water that’s made the journey – it’s joined by pollutants from cities and towns along its route. Sally Claggett works on the Chesapeake Bay program for the US Forest Service.

Sally Claggett: We all contribute to pollution, when we drive our cars, fertilize our lawns, but the biggest single culprit is conventional farming of crops and livestock.

Bill King: Cows are very hard on a stream, they tear up the bank, they defecate in the stream, the fecal chloroform readings go up, it’s not a good thing.

Narration: So now government agencies are focusing their cleanup efforts on farmers and other landowners.

Sally Claggett: 90% of the Bay watershed is privately owned so that is really where we are trying to do the most work now. And we are really targeting farmers because of the runoff from farms.

Narration: The US Department of Agriculture has an unconventional program to help farmers prevent pollution from running off their land and into streams. It’s not crop rotation. It’s not a new fertilizer. It’s trees. And Bill King has wholly embraced the idea. He’s converting his entire farm to a forest.

Crunching thru grass

Katie: The shafts where you have planted trees are as far as the eye can see.

Bill: Yes, that tells you where the property line is, as you look along the creek there, you can see some cedars on the other side, you can see sycamore which is a tree that likes wet areas, there’s box elder which is another tree you see along trees, and some ash.

Narration: He’s planted 5,000 trees under this incentive program. Farmers are paid according to a formula to convert parts of their farm land into forest. Forests along stream banks help to filter out pollutants running off the land, and help prevent erosion. The incentive program is making a difference. In just a year Bill has already reduced pollution in Smith Creek. Nelson Fox of the Virginia Department of Forestry monitors the health of the Creek.

Nelson Fox: What we’re finding is that Mr. King’s farms nitrate loads are reducing by 20% just within one year, just by helping to keep the bank’s vegetated and planting trees that hopefully will help decrease levels of hazards flowing in Smith Creek.

Narration: The incentive program has cleaned up pollutants running off Quail by the Creek farm. Al Todd of the US Forest Service promotes the program to farmers all across the Chesapeake Bay region. He’s found that the incentives don’t attract all farmers.

Al Todd: Farmers, the land we’re asking framers to restore back to trees is land they’ve used for production, for agricultural crops, part of a livestock or grazing operations, for some farmers that can be a barrier, you’re removing a part of their working land.

Narration: That’s not a problem for landowners like Bill. He’s happy that his 5,000 new trees are improving the land, filtering out pollutants, preventing erosion, and helping to preserve what’s been on the land for years.

Bill King: I’d like to take the time to point out this walnut tree, it’s a black walnut, you’d be hard pressed to find one this large, I said it was probably here when Battle of New Market was fought in 1863, the forester said that was here when George Washington was doing his surveying, I worry whether the erosion will get the roots, but if it’s been here that long, hopefully will be ok.

Narration: For SOUNDPRINT, I’m Katie Gott.