mississippi

Trees are important natural resources—this is the lesson that a dedicated group of volunteers shared last week with Mississippi youngsters.

When Mississippian Kathy Land suddenly inherited 200 acres of century-old family land, the middle school history teacher wasn’t sure what to do. The idle fields were overgrown, and the Winston County native knew she needed help.

When most people think of Orlando, Florida, they envision exciting theme parks, Cinderella’s castle and a mouse with big ears.  But when USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack visited Orlando on February 24^th, it was with a different vision in mind.

On January 12, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack recognized and celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King’s Birthday by declaring a National Service Day for all USDA employees. The National Service Day honored Dr. King’s contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. Events were held simultaneously at all USDA Offices followed by a variety of Service Projects conducted in communities nationwide. USDA Rural Development Jackson, Mississippi state office employees, Michelle Wilkerson, Eliza Garcia, Ericka Butler, and Jennifer Jimerson spent National Service Day volunteering at the Jackson Stewpot Community Center.

A special Earth Team volunteer group was recently formed to benefit Ross Barnett Reservoir, in central Mississippi. Keep the Rez Beautiful was created by an NRCS employee in late 2010 to promote conservation and water quality in the reservoir.

Earth Team is the volunteer workforce for USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Earth Team volunteers help get conservation on the ground on private lands across the nation, and the Ross Barnett Reservoir group will help further NRCS’ work in this critical waterway.

For Kiln, Miss. resident David Koch, there’s a lot of truth to the expression “everything runs downstream.” Koch’s land borders Rotten Bayou, and he has made great strides to ensure no pollutants wash off his land and into the bayou, which feeds the Gulf of Mexico.

Diem Nguyen moved to the U.S. in the 1970s to pursue the American dream. She worked first as a restaurateur and then an accountant. But the career she cherishes the most is her current one—operating a chicken farm in rural Mississippi.

Mary McGee’s late father could neither read nor write. But he knew how to farm.

He could farm so well, his daughter says, he had a PhD in making things grow. He taught her how to transform idle soil into lush farmland and to take care of animals.

USDA Forest Service research is transforming exhausted farmland in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee into thousands of acres of hardwood forests that will provide revenue to landowners, remove carbon from the air and serve as habitats for wildlife.

In 1998, scientists with the Forest Service’s Center for Bottomland Hardwoods Research, in Stoneville, Miss., began testing methods of afforestation – growing trees on barren farmland. The result was a tree-planting technique that mixed cottonwoods trees (poplars) with hardwood yearlings to produce strong, straight-stemmed hardwood trees.

Cindy Ayers Elliott once worked on Wall Street—but has since traded in her high heels for a pair of work boots. The former CEO and investment banker has made a life-changing move to her Jackson home-turned-farm, where she rears goats for meat and grows organic vegetables.