[0:18] Speakerie.

[0:27] Warden T.��.

[0:29] ��.

[0:31] on the second.

[0:35] Second.

[0:35] I, I proposed.

[0:40] And I am abstinence.

[0:43] I'm here, so I'm soon in Jen of staying, since they weren't here.

[0:47] I hope like participation for items not on the agenda.

[0:50] Do we have anyone from the public or the digital public who has anything not on the agenda?

[0:58] Moving on.

[0:59] It was first on our list that would be Sandy with Tucker,

[1:11] our first victim.

[1:22] Good evening, Sandy.

[1:23] Senator Land Officer for the real estate division.

[1:27] And tonight we're here proposing to acquire a fee title to approximately 322 acres of forest and lands and a conservation easement over an approximate

[1:38] one acre building lot with a historic cabinet on it for $3 million, $120,000.

[1:46] And the property is located west of Nettarland and along Carabou Road in a zone by the M.A. Tucker

[1:52] Investment Company.

[1:55] And the M.A. Tucker Investment Company is one of the last large pieces of private land in the

[2:01] area and it's about a quarter mile west of the town limits of Nettarland.

[2:06] And you'll see here it's in between El Dora Road and Carabur Road.

[2:11] And it's immediately adjacent to the Hendrix,

[2:13] Blakely and Beach Open Space Properties.

[2:16] It's north of U.S. Forest Service Properties,

[2:19] which are all the line green areas there.

[2:22] It is north of the Arabo Ranch property,

[2:27] which is a conservation easement with Colorado Open Lands.

[2:31] And then just over to the right there,

[2:33] There's a 40-acre piece, which is also owned in fee by the Colorado Open Lands.

[2:39] And then that's where we're proposing to have the one acre house slot where the existing

[2:43] historic cabin is located.

[2:46] And acquisition of the Tucker property would provide a continuous block of a thousand acres

[2:51] of protected land right through this area.

[2:54] And this important acquisition will remove eight unused development rights and keep the surrounding

[2:59] protective habitats blend it together as one continuous core habitat area and protect the

[3:04] important natural features of the property. And the proposed acquisition, I think I said

[3:09] includes the CE over one acre of land where the cabin is located. And this is, uh, so Colorado

[3:15] Open Lands is very supportive of this acquisition. And this is, uh, given to me from them, there's this

[3:22] is their property, the other side is the Tucker property. So obviously you can see it's excellent habitat

[3:27] for the deer, elk and moose, and moose there, and let's keep it. But that's going to

[3:36] find. The property has been in the same family ownership since the 1800s and this small

[3:42] 1871 historic cabin near the road will be retained by the sellers and protected with the CE

[3:48] on surrounding the cabin,

[3:54] and that's where we would put the building lot over there.

[4:00] It is, it does house on there in North Beaver Creek and Cune, track Creek, and has multiple

[4:06] independent meadows, tree-lined slopes, and assorted wetlands, and a date howlic, a well-respected

[4:12] local wildlife biologist, and a former natural resource planner with a county, highly

[4:17] supports this acquisition, and this letter I believe was forwarded to use, so you should have received that via e-mail.

[4:23] He indicates that this acquisition contributes to the protection of the middle boulder Creek Montaine Parkland,

[4:29] which are important locations for herds of elk and mousse.

[4:33] The Tucker property contains one of the largest montaine willow cars in the county,

[4:38] and willow cars have some of the highest breeding bird densities in Colorado,

[4:41] and have high diversity of small mammals in our favorite natural habitat of mousse.

[4:46] So Dave also indicates the properties and important part of the transitional spring and fall range for the Winger Ridge L curd as it moves between Magnolia Road area to the Indian peaks.

[4:59] And this is on the road going towards the property actually the property starts here, so we're heading west on Caribou Road.

[5:06] And this is during the fall, this is from Caribou Road and the cabins a little bit over to the right there.

[5:12] And that's actually just being south of the cabin next to the creek.

[5:17] And we didn't get very far. We've only gone out there once.

[5:20] This was back in 2017 as we were working with the family to get under a letter of intent.

[5:26] So we did get some photos, but we didn't get very far and you'll see here.

[5:29] That's about as far as we got. And so it's a pretty big piece of property.

[5:33] And so from this location here, we took a picture looking out further on this snow that we were at.

[5:41] And that's kind of looking back towards the cabin itself across the meadow.

[5:47] And that was just last week.

[5:49] So, we haven't been able to get out there just yet because of the snow.

[5:52] But we have gone ahead and ordered a phase 1 environmental assessment for the property.

[5:56] And of course, if that does show to prove any mining hazards,

[6:00] we'll go ahead and notify the Division of Mining Work Committee,

[6:03] Reclamation and Safety for a former closure of those areas.

[6:07] So until we get out there, we're not quite sure what it's going to look like.

[6:12] And then we've got obviously we've got our Boulder County Comprehensive Plan

[6:16] designations and as a reminder, the maps are intended to be illustrative rather than

[6:21] specific and the following designations are indicators of importance but not

[6:26] confirmation that these features exist on the property. So the property is in

[6:30] AB3, high biodiversity significance area called the North Beaver Creek. It is also in

[6:38] Indian peaks and environmental conservation area.

[6:43] We have an area of critical wildlife habitat,

[6:46] which has been labeled the Arapaho Ranch in Tucker home

[6:48] stead.

[6:50] And we have wetlands and riparian areas out there.

[6:55] And we've got significant natural communities out there.

[6:58] So after, after acquisition, I've

[7:01] approved, Parks and Open Space will determine

[7:03] if any portions of the property need to be closed

[7:05] to protect the property's natural resources.

[7:07] And determining potential closure in a situation like this is an involved process because we need ample time to evaluate the property.

[7:16] And those evaluations can only be done after we acquire the property.

[7:19] So that's going to take quite a lot of people when we go out there starting with the phase one environmental assessment.

[7:27] So for the public process.

[7:30] A public division of land process is required because this transaction will create a one acre cabin, not around the historic cabin. And divisions of land under 35 acres require, maybe require board board of county commissioners approval, pursuant to the community facility, lots split regulations contained in the land use code.

[7:49] adjacent property owners have been notified of the proposed proposed division of land.

[7:54] The notices included an invitation to attend this meeting and comment if they wanted to.

[7:59] We did hear from Colorado open lands, and as I said, they're extremely supportive of this acquisition.

[8:04] And today I heard from three neighbors up there, including one that has had her property for 29 years,

[8:09] and has always been grateful that the Tucker Homestead was not developed.

[8:13] She, as well as the other neighbors,

[8:15] are mentioning the crucially important

[8:16] riparian area for wildlife and the

[8:19] adjoining meadows and forests,

[8:21] especially for the elk, the moose,

[8:23] the coyote, and bobcats,

[8:24] and they all strongly support the

[8:25] sacrositium.

[8:27] And so I think I left you that third

[8:28] comment here, the other two had been

[8:30] emailed over to you.

[8:33] And so staff recommends the approval

[8:35] of the acquisition of the property,

[8:37] preservation and protection of

[8:38] the property is critical to prevent

[8:40] fragmentation of the property's

[8:41] important continuous natural resource habitats.

[8:45] The acquisition also complements other lands

[8:47] that are protected by the US Forest Service

[8:50] in Colorado Openlands.

[8:51] This will greatly assist the county's efforts

[8:53] to preserve undeveloped land around Maryland

[8:56] that has significant open space resources.

[8:59] Boulder County identified this property

[9:02] as a priority acquisition actually back in the 1970s.

[9:05] And since the 1990s we've been in regular contact

[9:08] with the family, we're very excited

[9:10] that this has come together, and the Tucker family

[9:13] is supportive of the property being protected

[9:15] and used for open space purposes.

[9:17] So our action requested tonight is recommendation

[9:20] to the Boulder Board of County Commissioners

[9:22] for approval of the acquisition of the fee property,

[9:25] the division of land to create the one acre cabin lot,

[9:27] and a conservation easement over the cabin

[9:29] that has described.

[9:32] Thank you.

[9:33] Questions from Post-A.

[9:35] Trace.

[9:35] Yes, Trace Baker.

[9:37] Thank you, Sandy.

[9:37] three questions. If the future evaluation does not recommend closure, what will

[9:47] public access to this land be? I don't know if we've determined that yet because we haven't been out there to take a look. I do know there is a forest service road that kind of scoots up an over near our open space properties on the west side.

[10:00] Okay, thank you. Number two, in your right out, it says the county feels there's no reasonable chance that someone would ever try to extract minerals from the property.

[10:14] At the current time, is that based on any geological survey, or is it the opinion of staff right now?

[10:21] I asked the county council about that and he said that if anybody number one were ever to mine the property the family member or the

[10:29] Airs of that one six interest I apologize I forgot to mention that of the one six interest

[10:34] They would have to pay for all damages to crops metal is in timber and since the land was patented under the land active 1820 and not the hard right hard rock mining act

[10:45] The county has the opinion that there's not a lot of valuable minerals out there, so it's highly unlikely somebody would want to go ahead and try to extract those.

[10:54] Okay, thank you. And third question, you mentioned the division of land process other than the input that you forwarded to us this evening.

[11:06] What are their opportunities for public input to this acquisition of the made?

[11:10] That the notice that we set out also includes an invitation to attend the BOCC meeting on February 11th.

[11:18] So people are welcome to come to that and or submit their comments prior to that.

[11:22] Okay, thank you very much.

[11:24] Thank you.

[11:25] Steve.

[11:26] I'm going to follow up on the mineral interest.

[11:28] Was there any negotiations to acquire the mineral interest?

[11:32] Yes, actually we are recorded.

[11:34] And that's right.

[11:34] I'd like to say that.

[11:35] Thank you for bringing that up.

[11:37] The purchase does include all mineral rights except for the 1-6 interest that was given to a family member back in 1961 and so was there any effort to acquire the 1-6 interest

[11:49] What we haven't had an opportunity to talk about that with the land owner yet, but we'll certainly bring that up if we can

[11:55] Um, you're recommending we go ahead even though there is, although you think it's a low

[12:01] possibility.

[12:02] There is a possibility of the right of them in role or to extract them at also some point.

[12:07] That was a vice-figure by a council.

[12:09] Yeah.

[12:10] Thank you.

[12:11] Thank you.

[12:14] A couple of questions, which I guess you probably can't answer if you guys haven't been on

[12:19] the property right for us wondering if there were a lot of social trails or if given that

[12:26] up there there are a lot of social

[12:28] trails on other public properties, and also a lot of people living rough on public properties,

[12:36] do you anticipate having to put a range around this property?

[12:40] We haven't talked about that yet, because we haven't been out there to see it.

[12:44] I have, you know, if you go on an aerial, you can see some social trails going through the

[12:47] properties.

[12:49] I've probably been there for a very long time as well, so that's, I don't know anything

[12:53] more than that.

[12:55] the most about putting a range of out there or anything like that?

[13:00] I don't know what we're going to do.

[13:08] Janice was cement get evening. I think Sandy has it right. We always need to buy these properties first

[13:15] and then figure out what we're going to do with them. And that process is Sandy described as involved

[13:20] and we can't speculate at all about what's going to happen in the future. I think that because we

[13:27] have a resident range rapid carabou, which is nearby here, they would be able to get over

[13:32] there very easily. They often already patrol the other areas around the carabou ranch.

[13:40] So we would look to that. We would look through the whole planning process. We've done something

[13:45] similar in the past few years on the upper sure would galt property that some of you may

[13:50] remember having been on Pozac 4, it was maybe, I don't know, 2013, 14, right in that time frame,

[13:57] and we did a mini planning project to decide whether or not we could use the social trails and open them.

[14:05] But that's just something we need to, we need to get up there in good weather in the spring, see what's up there.

[14:10] We certainly patrol all the properties that we own, and there would be Rangers up there,

[14:14] even if there wasn't a caretaker there, there would be people around frequently.

[14:19] but we just can't predict, we can't promise, we can't speculate.

[14:25] For you the way, I might have one other question that I had.

[14:28] I was trying.

[14:30] From the aerial, it looks very forced, forested,

[14:33] and I know that we keep our trees very much in check with respect to thinning

[14:38] and making sure that they're prepared for fire and whatnot.

[14:42] Has any work been done on this property by the owners

[14:45] to send their herd of trees so that we're not going to have to go in with a lot of forestry

[14:52] and take care of this or is it just just been growing for a long, long time and we're going to

[14:58] be growing for a long, long, long time.

[15:00] It doesn't look like any, you know, let's see how I can get.

[15:08] It's pretty dense.

[15:14] And to me, it doesn't look like there's been a force to work out there.

[15:19] Janice was fin again. I agree. It doesn't look like there's been any treatment. I think the family's been an off-site family. There are many, many dozens of family members.

[15:27] So I'll just take the opportunity to interject it's pretty remarkable that Sandy's been able to pull this deal together with met many family members.

[15:35] And our forestry crew is actually really anxious to gain ownership of a lot of properties so they can get in and do treatments.

[15:44] Right. Thank you.

[15:46] Any other questions from folks?

[15:48] Any questions from members of the public?

[15:55] Yeah.

[15:56] Oh my god.

[15:56] Okay, I was like there.

[16:06] I live in Janapore, Parks and Open Space staff.

[16:09] We have two online comments tonight.

[16:11] The first one's from Ian Wilson.

[16:14] He's at 4651, Dappel Lane in Boulder, 301.

[16:22] And his statement is, I am pretty concerned

[16:26] that in acquisitions such as this

[16:28] will be categorically shut off a recreation.

[16:31] We are spending millions of public funds

[16:32] by a piece of land and you are stating that there will be no chance to responsibly recreate

[16:38] on it.

[16:39] You will likely state something to the effect of this is protecting the land forever from development.

[16:47] That land has not been developed in over 100 years.

[16:52] Yes, we can still protect it from development but we should be able to enjoy the land as responsible

[16:57] recreational stewards, instead of just looking at it longingly from the road. Yes, it is possible.

[17:06] Recreate to recreate and enjoy the land while still protecting it. Buying this and shutting it down

[17:13] is just taking it from one private owner to the next, even if the name open space is next to the name.

[17:20] As it is public money, the public should be able to enjoy it.

[17:26] The next comment is from Steve Bond,

[17:28] His address is 5120, a liney way in Baldur, 80303, and he says it would be great to see new trails on this open space, particularly a new mountain bike trail.

[17:42] Many of the days I ride have me driving an hour or more to ride a new trail.

[17:47] Having more trails closer to home would be a great thing to finally see.

[17:52] Let's make sure none other ones have come in and that's it.

[17:58] Anyone else?

[18:00] Okay, do we have a motion from post-act?

[18:06] It's trace-faker.

[18:08] I move approval of this transaction as described.

[18:11] Do we stay out?

[18:13] It's a very interesting second.

[18:15] Discussion?

[18:15] Trace.

[18:16] I'll go first and she motion.

[18:20] I'm sorry.

[18:21] Discussion?

[18:22] Oh, for the vote.

[18:22] Do you want to go first and she made the motion?

[18:24] I did not have any discussion.

[18:27] Here.

[18:28] Back.

[18:29] Anyone?

[18:32] Okay.

[18:32] Since we have no discussion,

[18:34] and I'll have a vote on paper.

[18:36] Hi. Hi. Hi.

[18:38] Post?

[18:39] Extension.

[18:42] No. Thank you, Sandy, for any wonderful present.

[18:44] Thank you.

[18:46] Hey, next up on the agenda.

[18:50] We've got Herbus Seaclus or Carbon Carbus.

[18:54] Here I'm on the brain. Carbon Seaclus Station study updates.

[19:03] But I have to point out that Scott Miller is in attendance now.

[19:09] Good evening, like for the Division Manager for Agricultural Resources Park,

[19:14] Stopen Space, and we're going to tag team present tonight, because we've already established

[19:21] the fact that I can put your, this, I guess, body asleep very easily.

[19:25] So you won't have to listen to me too much, and in the interest of time, I'm going to

[19:28] allow my two co-presenters to introduce themselves right now, and we'll just proceed with

[19:35] them.

[19:43] Good evening, Posec.

[19:44] I am Vanessa McCracken.

[19:45] I am a former Ag Resources Specialist

[19:48] of Boulder County Parks and Open Space.

[19:55] So do you want to introduce yourself now or after?

[19:59] All right, so I'm just going to get us started

[20:00] with the carbon sequestration update.

[20:07] So this started a few years ago.

[20:10] The goal of the project, as you see there,

[20:13] was to undertake a pilot project to determine

[20:15] the feasibility of sequestering additional carbon in soils

[20:18] in agricultural fields, forests, grasslands,

[20:21] rangelands, and urban, and residential properties.

[20:24] So that goal is quite broad, and as we moved forward

[20:27] with the project, we narrowed it down

[20:29] to really focus on the agricultural fields,

[20:32] which also include the grasslands and rangelands.

[20:36] This was also in conjunction with Colorado State

[20:39] University, and so the first thing we undertook

[20:42] was the phase one feasibility study.

[20:47] There were several meetings with producers and different ways to gather input from them that were hosted by CSU and Parks and Open space.

[20:56] And when we compiled all that data, we came up with five different treatments that we could use to move forward.

[21:04] And you can see those up there. Number one is apply compost as a soil amendment plant wind breaks and restore riparian buffers.

[21:11] integrate cover crops into cropping systems, reduce tillage, and use nitrification inhibitors

[21:17] and slow release fertilizers where possible. And these were really deemed to be like the best

[21:23] bang for our buck, like what could we get done with available resources. So we've moved into phase two

[21:31] after some time, which is the actual implementation of the project. And so we implemented on range land

[21:37] and on irrigated crop land and on range land what we did on the ground was small scale compost

[21:44] on the range land and then on the crop land we were able to do more where we applied compost

[21:49] reduced tillage planted cover crops and used slow release or spoon fed fertilizer. So on the

[21:57] crop land we were able to incorporate four out of the five recommended treatments.

[22:02] everything except planting a windbreak. So where did this occur? Up in the very far north

[22:09] part of the county up there, that's the yellow circled in red, that's the DeBerry

[22:14] property. That's one of the range land sites down on the southern part there in the

[22:19] southeast grasslands. That's the Mayhapa property. That was our other range land

[22:23] site. And we spent quite a bit of time in the field looking for these sites. There

[22:27] for certain requirements that the site

[22:30] It's had to meet, had to have the slope couldn't be too great. There had to be the ability to graze.

[22:37] And they also could not be impacted by prairie dogs. And so that really limited our areas where we could choose to do range land applications.

[22:47] And then the east county line road there is the quick silver property in red, and that's where we were able to do implement the crop land treatments.

[22:59] So, the experimental design here, on the range land, basically we have four treatments.

[23:08] So, we set up areas where we had compost and no compost.

[23:13] And then within that there were areas of the field that were allowed to graze,

[23:17] and then set up a grazing exclosure.

[23:19] So, on both range landslides, we had the same experimental design,

[23:24] where we had basically four different treatments there.

[23:35] Here's just a couple pictures. These are both up north on the Debarri property on the right there

[23:40] You can see kind of what the compost looks like

[23:42] Applied on the range land and they're on the left. That's

[23:46] They hauled CSU did most of this work

[23:50] Triton, I just did a little bit, but they hauled out the compost and spread it. I think we have

[23:56] Here does this video? Let's see if the video

[24:00] So this is the small scale applications that's Mark Easter from CSU. They're applying the

[24:05] compost on the range land on the Debarri property.

[24:13] And that's where I'm going to stop and

[24:15] pass it over to Blake to talk about the irrigated crop land.

[24:23] Okay, so we had the irrigated crop

[24:27] land and I'm going to try to bring you up to date on that little section of the project.

[24:33] This is, as Vanessa mentioned, we spent quite a bit of time in 2017 finding properties that fit the criteria.

[24:43] And on the crop land side, it had to have overhead sprinkler irrigation, and you might be able to equate that that caused some difficulty with tree wind break planning.

[24:53] But, after looking at several properties, we settled on the quick silver property, which is between

[25:00] 119th and County Line Road, just on the southeast edge of Longmont.

[25:05] That field is really unique because it's the only one in our system that we have a linear

[25:11] irrigation system on, and that makes laying out and designing experiments much easier to do.

[25:17] So, the tenant is an excellent family, the tenant on that property are the Schlado family, Paul and his son Scott,

[25:27] and just for reference, what we're standing in there is about a ten ton to the acre for a sorghum window.

[25:34] We'll come back to that a little bit later.

[25:39] Whoop!

[25:40] The wrong arrow direction.

[25:43] And in terms of timeline, and we're going to go through this fairly quickly, as I mentioned

[25:48] in 18, we spent a good deal of time planning and site selection, and in the early spring

[25:56] of 18, we actually did a baseline soil study, and we'll talk about that in just a second.

[26:04] We didn't really get this experiment really up and running until the last spring, but we applied

[26:11] 16 tons to the acre of compost. It's a lot of compost. After that, we drilled a Ryan

[26:18] Harry Vetch cover crop, the tenets did. Corn was planted with the intention of taking that

[26:23] to grain corn, but about halfway through the season,

[26:29] the farmer had a change in plans. He works a lot

[26:32] with front-ringed dairy, out in Plattville, and they wanted to take that corn off for installation

[26:38] and then replace it with another crop. So the the cropping plan changed a little bit and that's

[26:44] pretty typical for a lot of agriculture. You just kind of have to go with the flow and what the

[26:48] year gives you. But the corn was planted. It was three days after it was planted.

[26:58] We sprayed that field. The entire field was sprayed with round-up to kill the cover crop.

[27:02] And then, as I said, in the September, we harvested it for insolage instead of for grain corn.

[27:10] After the insolage is taken off, we planted tritakaily, and we applied an additional four tons per acre of compost.

[27:19] So, by way of kind of going back through that time to line now very quickly, the upper little corner there is a satellite map of this property.

[27:31] And I think, have a, do I have a,

[27:36] doesn't look like I have a, like, oh, there it is.

[27:41] You can see that little line right there.

[27:44] This is dry creek, left-hand creek intersects

[27:48] with the saint rain up in here.

[27:50] So it's pretty obvious looking at this

[27:52] from a satellite photo that there's, this is the field right here.

[27:56] It's a 128 or field one mile long by about the tent,

[27:59] a little over two tenths of a mile wide with a linear that runs this direction, it literally takes a

[28:06] week for them to make a pass with the sprinkler system to irrigate it. But you can see that there's

[28:13] a very distinct difference in soil type here, and so we wanted to go in and get a baseline. And

[28:20] we went out and we took 30 samples, 30 gridded samples of GPS, hold those samples,

[28:27] and symptoms off the ward lab and had the soil analysis come back about right at

[28:34] 50 different things that were measured in each sample. We took that data and put it

[28:39] into a statistical program and for every one of those 40 50 traits we were able to

[28:45] generate a two-dimensional map that showed the approximate gradient of that

[28:51] material. So this one's phosphorus but there's 44 other ones of these that

[28:55] that out. So that's literally a mile, a mile long, oop,

[29:03] going the wrong way. That's a mile,

[29:08] long, and about two tenths of a mile wide. And based on that, we were able to identify

[29:16] the extreme eastern end of the property, and the extreme western end of the property,

[29:20] had areas that were uniform enough across the trades that we could, we could set an experiment

[29:25] and have two uniform pieces of ground to work with.

[29:33] We established, again, for treatment combinations,

[29:36] with and without compost, and with and without a cover crop.

[29:40] So that gave us the four combinations of a control

[29:42] or nothing was applied, compost only,

[29:45] compost plus cover crop, and cover crop only.

[29:48] And we had two reps, one on the east side of the field,

[29:50] one on the west side of the field.

[29:52] And those, the bigger blocks are about basically approximately about a 10 acre book.

[30:00] Walk, out of that 120-acre field.

[30:06] This

[30:10] is a complex video.

[31:13] So literally, that was February 28th of this year, of last year, 19, the next day, the

[31:21] Schlegels went out with their other tractor, GPS tractor, and a big air cedar, and they

[31:27] the cover crop sections into a straddle part of the compost in place where there wasn't any compost.

[31:34] So, they planted in two passes with their drill, a Harry Vetch cover, and then they offset literally the rows were seven and a half inches.

[31:45] They offset with the GPS, three and a half inches. So, every 3.75 inches, there was either a row of Harry Vetch, and then a row of Rye and then a row of Harry Vetch and a row of Rye.

[31:55] So we really densely planted that.

[31:59] And when Scott's in the tractor and Paul's on the back

[32:03] and when he got off, he looked like a West Virginia coal

[32:06] miner because those two passes pulled up a lot

[32:09] of that compost thus far.

[32:12] So about 40 days later, on April 12, this is everything

[32:15] it emerged.

[32:16] And you can see a Harry Vetch plant, the little lighter yellow

[32:20] one there, and a couple of right plants.

[32:23] Our tenants are, most, all of our good tenants are already practicing three out of these five practices, and you can see a lot of trash on the surface because they do minimum till they're faithful about doing minimum till.

[32:38] Another 40 days later, a crop had grown fairly tall, you can see the veteran now starting to grow up underneath it, and the riot was starting to join up.

[32:46] And then on June 25th is what this look like, this would have been after we had sprayed the crop with round-up to kill the thing.

[33:00] The ride died very well. The hurry of etched did not, particularly in the compost areas. The compost actually protected the hurry of etched from the round-up.

[33:10] So, we learned something there, we learned that there was an interaction between compost and plants and there are buildings to protect around them.

[33:20] So, now we're going to turn it over to Trent.

[33:21] He's going to talk to you about the building.

[33:26] Hello, my name is Trent Kishar, I'm an AG Resources Specialist with County.

[33:31] So, I was not with the County when this whole project first started.

[33:35] So I joined this year, so I just kind of got in on the whole implementation of this whole project.

[33:44] So on July 2nd, we hosted a field day where we went to various properties showing different projects that we're going on.

[33:52] And one of our stops was add our carbon sequestration projects.

[33:55] And at the field day, John Slagel, our tenant, as well as Mark Easter with CSU and myself,

[34:06] shared about the current project and all the different treatments with all the farmers and people from the community about what's all going on there.

[34:17] This picture was taken in August, Vanessa and myself host soil health monitors and so one

[34:25] of our field days we went out to the Quick Silver Project and did soil health samples

[34:34] in the different treatments and this was in the treatment where like Blake just mentioned

[34:40] the Harry Vege was not killed by the round-up application.

[34:44] And so it started acting more as a companion crop instead

[34:48] of a cover crop with the corn.

[34:50] So this is a picture of that Vege plant growing up

[34:54] the corn plant.

[34:58] I'll Blake mentioned earlier that the original plan was

[35:00] for this corn crop to go to a grain harvest,

[35:03] but then it was decided to go to be harvested for silage.

[35:07] So on September 16th,

[35:09] Farron's dairy harvested, the crop.

[35:13] And for our purposes, we wanted to collect yield data

[35:18] from it.

[35:18] And so what we did was a one pass through with the silage

[35:21] cutter, and each pass be harvested separately,

[35:26] weighed, and have a sample taken from it,

[35:29] so that we could have nutritional data taken,

[35:32] and send it to a lab.

[35:35] And then after the harvest, the shlegels went

[35:39] through and did a tillage pass with their new vertical till machine and then was then planted

[35:49] with a tritakaily and then compost was applied later in the fall.

[35:58] So with all this Blake mentioned earlier, the baseline data and then I mentioned the soil

[36:04] assessment and then we collected a lot of data when it came yield with yields when it came to the

[36:12] silage in the grain at harvest and then we got that for example return back so I gave it a

[36:19] lot of data and as well Vanessa and I went out and took more soil samples to see the difference

[36:25] between our baseline and post treatments. So we had a lot of data to start working with at the end

[36:33] at the end of the year. And so I have a few slides here talking a little bit about what we

[36:38] are able to find. So this is a green yield comparison between the different treatments. We are

[36:47] able to gain this by going through each variety and selecting 10 random years. And I have a picture

[36:54] of that on the next slide. And then from there calculating the approximate yield that each treatment

[37:00] of gotten. And as we can see, it's starting to trend in the right direction. This is a first year

[37:06] of a five-year study, so we're hopeful to see more and more trends as the years progress. But

[37:12] this first year is encouraging to see some differences in the ways we're hoping. So this is a picture

[37:21] of the 10 different years from the different treatments. And you can see there is quite a bit of

[37:25] difference just within one year of the different treatment styles.

[37:32] We were able to get our silage yield back as well. And this one was a little bit harder to see any statistical difference, just based on being very consistent, there are some highs and lows, but overall with the size of the test, it didn't show a lot of differences.

[37:50] has a quick question. What's the one that just has legal on it? Is that just where he

[37:57] pharmed it? Is that the rest of the field where he pharmed the way he

[38:00] oughta thinks it oughta pharmed? Yes that is the average for the rest of the field.

[38:05] That's yep. So he did better than all your test plots if he did.

[38:11] But yeah and yes so the reason being is on the rest of the field he was able to

[38:17] infero fertilized with the drip throughout the year and we did not do that on our test

[38:22] spot. So the rest of his field was soon fed a little bit more nitrogen and as well this

[38:27] was kind of original we thought is going to be a grain crop and for it to be a silage there

[38:33] are some differences in the end. And then we got from Range Dairy sends off all their samples

[38:40] to get tested for nutritional value for their dairy cows and so there's a ton more data

[38:46] there that we had no idea how to even interpret.

[38:50] And so this is just one that we find very interesting now

[38:53] is shows the pounds of milk per acre that the cows could produce

[38:57] on the forge.

[38:58] And so it just kind of goes to show cows are pretty sweet

[39:02] and they can produce a lot of a lot of milk off of just one acre.

[39:06] And so again, these numbers, there is no statistical difference

[39:10] between the trials, but it's still good information to have.

[39:16] So this sign is posted along the, there's a trail going along the north side of this property.

[39:23] And so we periodically throughout the year post updates to what's going on in the project in the field.

[39:30] And so, yeah, if you guys are ever interested, always check us out there.

[39:39] So we're going to finish off here.

[39:42] And again, just point out the fact that the sluggles are super good farmers.

[39:47] and his practice would be really hard to beat, and we did not

[39:53] fertigate in the plot. I think in retrospect we almost wish that we

[39:58] would have done that, but it was interesting like in the silage part and in

[40:04] the grain corn estimate we actually talked, we actually, we were better with the

[40:10] most than he was with his practice, so the bottom line is a mountain of data, soil data, crop

[40:21] data, forage quality data, NIR, and at the end of the day so far we haven't seen anything

[40:29] that relates, it doesn't amount to a statistically different between the treatments, but we

[40:37] have two reps. We were kind of using truck scale science here, so it's not surprising

[40:45] that we do not have statistical significance in some of these treatments yet. Stress

[40:50] again, this is a five-year study so that we're going to continue to look at this over time

[40:55] and we really do expect at the end of the five years we're going to start to see some statistical

[41:01] differences, not only in the soil health, but in the crop yields that come off of this ground.

[41:07] And the real reason that we're doing this in the first place, it's a demonstration project,

[41:12] these kind of things work. So we know from other places around the world that this works,

[41:19] but this is a chance to demonstrate it and show it to tenants and farmers that it works here,

[41:25] and that it can be done. And that gets us back to this slide. And this slide essentially speaks for itself,

[41:30] and its economics. Right now, the compost that we put on was very special compost came from

[41:37] heco cycle, or I mean from A1 compost, outside of the county, very high carbon to nitrogen

[41:44] ratio compost pretty expensive. $40 a ton, we put on 16 tons, plus another four tons. You

[41:54] can do the math on that pretty simply.

[41:55] That's $800 an acre of fertilizer costs, OK?

[42:03] At that current price, we're not

[42:05] any more close to being able to break even.

[42:08] So in order to make this take off,

[42:11] I don't know that it's going to work.

[42:13] So the only linchpin to making this really work great

[42:17] is getting the cost of that compost down

[42:19] to where it pays for itself.

[42:21] So if we can get that compost in the future down to $10 a ton or underneath, all of a sudden,

[42:28] this doesn't have to be pushed uphill, it pulls itself.

[42:32] In fact, it should pull itself to the point that farmers will be able to actually replace

[42:40] a good deal of the synthetic fertilizer like we did in this case already, because we didn't

[42:52] So, cost is the key.

[42:57] Quick question for you.

[42:59] Will the same sort of thing could the same sort of thing be done on your organic?

[43:05] Yes.

[43:07] And so what would, I mean, other than that spring with round-up,

[43:11] would you have to get organic compost that would cost more or more?

[43:15] You would need to have organic NLP certified organic compost and it will be a lot more expensive

[43:22] to have even if even I don't know where the county will be if if we get this internally

[43:29] going but yeah it will cost more to have NLP certified compost than this would be.

[43:36] So if we met our goals for the number of acres of organic with that overall tick down

[43:43] the number of acres that we can sequester carbon on because it would be really expensive

[43:48] for them to be able to do that.

[43:53] That's a good question, Jan. I'd have to do a little bit more math. I don't know that. I can answer that entirely.

[44:01] I think from the carbon sequestration standpoint,

[44:06] an organic approved compost is going to be about the same kind of carbon, carbon and nitrogen ratio, put that same amount of carbon into the soil.

[44:14] So I think from the carbon balance and point, which is where a lot of the economics and stuff

[44:20] were driven in the feasibility study and even in the subsequent study is based more on carbon

[44:27] balance and it is on farm economics.

[44:30] But at the end of the day, if you can make the farm economics work out, and organic has the

[44:37] other advantage, I mean, yeah, the compost may cost more, but theoretically the produce coming

[44:41] off is also worth more.

[44:43] so there's still kind of a balance to be achieved there. Part of that balance is the carbon balance sheet,

[44:51] which we have want for obvious reasons, and then the other way to drive that in large scale,

[44:57] whether it's on organic acres conventionally.

[45:16] So, one of the things that was contemplated in this study was they recognized that in order to make this work that they were going to have to have a lot of good compost developed locally.

[45:29] at a price point that it would make sense.

[45:33] And so part of that, this is just a stock photo,

[45:36] this is not there yet, this is just a stock photo

[45:38] of a compost facility, but as a portion of the deliverable

[45:44] that see issue delivered, they subcontracted

[45:47] with a denmage of Ecosycle and Calaroso Stranger

[45:52] of the Marine Carbon Project.

[45:55] And they did a very sophisticated

[45:57] had actually a business analysis of where to locate that compost facility locally. They looked

[46:06] at several possible sites. And I mean, I was actually very impressed by what they did

[46:14] in this phase of the deliverable, because they almost returned to business plan that showed

[46:20] why they needed a located at a certain place, preferentially over the other places, and projected

[46:27] a cost that they could deliver compost in quantity to make this thing really take off.

[46:35] And so of the sites that they looked at, and part of this, again, it's really, it's driven

[46:41] by the carbon side as much as it is the farming side.

[46:44] They need to be able to be close, proximity to the municipal waste streams.

[46:51] So part of what makes sense for that little red dot out there is that it's kind of more

[46:56] less liquid, distantly located from Longmont Boulder, Erie, Lafayette. It's within travel

[47:03] distance of the trash or the compost, the input. They also did very detailed studies

[47:10] on traffic patterns. At the end of the day, this was their preferred site, and it's a property

[47:17] that we had acquired, not that long ago. It's basically just east of Highway 287, and just

[47:24] about a mile south of a mineral road or highway 52 and it's the Rainbow

[47:30] Tree Nursery. So that is the site that they have you know projected and I

[47:36] think they're now starting to look at what it would take to make that site

[47:41] really take off and run.

[47:45] I guess the other thing the outbound side then we don't

[47:50] have it on the map here but you can tell that the outbound side is very close

[47:54] proximity the farms. So you've located that facility in an area that allows it to effectively

[48:03] and efficiently move the compost in, compost it, and then move it back to the farm.

[48:12] How many of you are familiar with the term green manureing? This is basically the last slide.

[48:18] So green manureing is effectively just taking a green plant, like that 10-toned forage

[48:25] Oregon wind row that Paul and I were standing over.

[48:29] If we would have chopped that up very fine

[48:31] and blown that out on the ground

[48:32] and worked it back into the ground,

[48:35] that would be green maneuvering.

[48:37] So that 10 ton per acre,

[48:40] a forage-sorghum crop is about 40% carbon.

[48:45] This is one of the practices that I think

[48:47] that we want to explore as we move forward

[48:50] and we'll see a shoe.

[48:51] I honestly believe that there was a bit of an effort

[48:55] to make sure we get to this compost piece, and I think they may have stepped over some other

[49:00] possibilities of sequestering carbon. So I think we need to take a look at this and they can do

[49:05] this very easily with their comet prediction tool. They have a computer program that will allow them

[49:10] to predict this, but that tinted forage sorghum would have been equivalent of 20,000 pounds per acre

[49:17] and at 40% carbon that's 8,000 pounds of carbon that could have been dropped right into the soil.

[49:22] And instead of composting it off-site and then hauling it back or sending it off to a dairy

[49:28] and running it through a cow and taking the brown manure and composting that, putting it back on,

[49:32] you compost it in C2 and it'll take 5, 6, 7 years for that to happen. It's a slow process.

[49:39] But that 8,000 pounds of carbon over about a 7-year period will basically compost in the field

[49:47] down to leave about 3,000 pounds per acre of very resistant,

[49:52] humid, acid, humid, humid, that won't degrade any further, and that carbon will essentially

[49:58] stay in that soil for millennia. So I think this is an area that we want to explore

[50:05] with CSU. I think we can kind of do it on paper. It may or may not pay out.

[50:16] There's

[50:16] But I think this is getting us closer to another method that might, that might pay.

[50:23] And it really relies, as most of these things do, whether it's biochar, compost, or whatever,

[50:30] the ultimate source of this carbon is photosynthesis.

[50:35] And so it's just a matter of how that carbon is dealt with after it's photosynthesized,

[50:40] Whether it's, you know, harvested, fed to a cow, manure brought back on, there's a lot of

[50:46] different ways to get that, but at the end of the day, the reason it works is because

[50:50] photosynthesis is super efficient and it takes carbon dioxide out of the air and puts it into a

[50:56] form that's stable. So we need to take a look at this. That's the last slide.

[51:04] Thank you. And any

[51:07] questions that you have about kind of where we're headed on it.

[51:12] Let's leave my, I think we explored this last time you presented on this about irrigation

[51:18] practices and it correct me if I'm wrong, all of this was done under unirrigated with the irrigated

[51:26] sprinkler.

[51:27] I just correct one of the requirements that see issue specified was that we have overhead

[51:32] sprinkler irrigation.

[51:34] And that is because of, if you can imagine putting on this much compost or leaving this much

[51:40] trash in the field to surface irrigate that with furrow irrigation, you could get into a lot

[51:46] of problems with trash build up and not be able to move the water through the field correctly.

[51:52] That's the same reason why a dream and you might only be able to do it one year out of 7 or one year

[51:57] out of 10 because you're going to put so much trash on top of the surface, which is good because

[52:02] to protect the soil, but it makes it hard to run water with a fur or irrigation.

[52:08] So sprinkler irrigation was kind of a requirement.

[52:11] Just thinking ahead about these kinds of practices on either Donner, Gatedland, or surface

[52:17] irrigated or flood irrigated properties and how much of that would be transferable.

[52:23] I think we're going to start to, we did deliberately, we were not asked to find a dry land

[52:28] side.

[52:30] But I do believe Steve, that this year we're going to take a look at least at the cover cropping portion of this on some dry land acres. We have about 3,000 acres of dry land in the system.

[52:43] And a lot of that land is fragile. It could definitely use more organic matter. It could definitely use right now a lot of the dry land in the county is.

[52:58] wheat, summer, fall, all alternate years, and so you have a year when you have pretty much

[53:04] bare soil, a lot of erosion to wind and blowing and stuff. And so I think we're going to start

[53:10] to look at what some of these practices could do on dry land in the system. And I think clearly the

[53:18] covercropping will help some of that. I think the compost will go there as well. Again, the potential

[53:26] to recover and invest a return on the investment for those inputs is a lot lower in dry land.

[53:34] So it's got to be figured out how to make it work. But the same principles that apply

[53:38] under irrigation should work as well or maybe even better in terms of protecting the soil on dry land.

[53:49] Scott? Scott Miller. On your, you were talking about your composting facility potential.

[53:56] I know the big issue that keeps coming up, armors are obviously just the volume, do they, in their study of the, you know, they say that and they, is there any gauge as far as whether or not there's enough sources to come in,

[54:16] I should have gone back and re-read that in detail, but the answer to your question is yes.

[54:24] There is almost an infinite supply of input coming from the municipalities.

[54:33] And in order to meet some of the zero waste bills,

[54:37] makes a lot of sense to see this happen from that side of the equation.

[54:41] So I think they have the volume there.

[54:44] And I think that getting the volume there is part and parcel

[54:49] of getting the cost, the unit cost, uh, per tonne down.

[54:56] And it's, so it part of its quantity.

[54:58] And I think that they're in analysis said that it was plenty of quantity.

[55:02] I think the other part of it is quality and it is a farmer.

[55:06] You know that one of the things that a lot of times, guys, will bark about chunks of plastic

[55:14] and the sort of things in the compost that they don't like to see, I thought this compost

[55:18] that we put on.

[55:19] There was a few little blue newspaper wrapper things in there, but it was pretty clean.

[55:24] It has to be not, it has to be not just cheap compost, it has to be high quality.

[55:30] Yeah, we talked about some from Western way back when and it was basically

[55:34] Like putting on saw dust when it was they're just did there wasn't any value

[55:38] Yeah, it all said and done really if you guys are interested I that that documents actually public now

[55:45] We can figure out a way to get you a copy of that it was the next is probably the best bang for the buck

[55:51] We've got out of this so far because it I thought it was extremely professionally done

[55:55] Virtually a business plan right like I said right down to the oh the traffic

[56:00] is going to work going in this way and going out that way, others. Very thorough.

[56:11] Yeah, Trace Baker. So your last slide. Check my understanding, please. That was one direct

[56:20] estimate of sequestration. This slide? Yes. Now, this is just to show what would happen if

[56:28] you took a green living crop like that 10 tons per acre of sorghum chopped it up. And instead of

[56:35] taking it, feeding it to a cow, just put it right back in the ground.

[56:38] And so that's what the carbon from that 10 tons of sorghum would do over a seven-year period.

[56:45] It would compost in the field, and some of that carbon goes back into the air, unfortunately,

[56:53] just as it would in a compost facility.

[56:56] But at the end of that seven years, three-eighths of the carbon that you dropped in to begin

[57:03] with would be in a form that would be there forever.

[57:07] It would be like Mother Nature's biochar.

[57:11] Okay, so then as your study progresses,

[57:13] will you be measuring this directly?

[57:16] Well, number one, we haven't done this.

[57:19] Okay, okay, this is, I think we'll do this on paper first

[57:23] because CSU has this comment program

[57:25] and they can actually come in and say, all right,

[57:29] if we did this every so many years,

[57:31] this is how much carbon we would save, how many megatons per, you know, I mean they can calculate

[57:36] that and they can estimate what the cost would be to do that.

[57:40] And so I think we can do this on paper.

[57:43] I think we can see whether green minoring makes sense on paper.

[57:47] I don't think it can be done every year.

[57:49] I think it could be done every so often because if you put that much green matter in every

[57:56] year, it's going to do a couple of things.

[57:58] It's going to tie up a lot of nitrogen.

[58:00] So it'll be hard, you'll tie up some nitrogen in part of this process and you'll get such a

[58:06] duff or such a layer on top that's going to be hard to farm. So you can only get away with

[58:12] that to about a certain extent, but if it's cost effective and we're already telling guys to

[58:18] grow cover crops, it's almost a way to measure what that cover crop effect is if the cover

[58:24] Trump's turned him under as opposed to taking it off as an off take.

[58:30] Thank you.

[58:37] One more, one more.

[58:38] Sorry.

[58:39] The other.

[58:39] How much telling is required in green and the new ring?

[58:44] Well, you obviously would need to start to work that into the soil where it will break down.

[58:49] Right.

[58:50] We mentioned a little bit about this new Dingleman vertical tillage machine that the Sholegels purchased.

[58:57] They purchased it used $90,000, brand new as a $100,000,

[59:02] kind of shows you what kind of an investment

[59:03] the our tenants are willing to make to see this happen.

[59:09] That trick is to work that into a shallow part of the soil.

[59:12] I'm not really, you know, disturbed the deep part.

[59:18] And get it to a place where you can farm.

[59:22] You can do other activities like planter,

[59:24] whatever you're going to do the next step.

[59:25] So again, it's a five-year process.

[59:28] It's setting in, it's setting in Triticaley today.

[59:32] One of the things that happened because of that,

[59:35] the entire 120 acres is plunged to a cover crop.

[59:39] And that's great.

[59:40] The bad part is that we've now lost our ability

[59:43] to measure the effect of cover in the interaction

[59:45] of cover in that for this one season.

[59:48] But that's okay.

[59:49] That's normal.

[59:50] That'd be part of a normal farming practice.

[59:52] just like we would have, just like we made an adjustment this year, so hopefully that

[1:00:00] Prop goes ahead and maturs is coming off as a seed crop next year. And you know, what goes in after that, there could be a cover crop planted of maybe a millet or another 4-age crop could be planted prior to this, prior to the sorghum that you saw, when we were getting ready to start this in 2018. That was a, that was a, of course, Mart Marti, partly field. And you remember in June 19th, of 2018, they got it.

[1:00:29] 1,000 acres of crop land held out in the county that barley field was wiped out and what was left of it was taken off for silage and then there was a surrogum crop planted

[1:00:39] So the one thing we've done on this thing since its inception is we've been very close to the idea of having a living room to a living crop in the soil cover it all time

[1:00:49] But as close as we can get so what we what we do now

[1:00:54] We'll kind of partly be up to the tenant because we promised the sluggles when we did this

[1:00:59] We we wanted to ask them if they would help us participate with this experiment

[1:01:03] We promised them that we would try to make it as transparent to their operation as we could and they've been over backwards doing special things and

[1:01:12] They turned rose different and did all kinds of stuff for us, but

[1:01:16] You know what they have planned next year. I mean the year before it was in Barley it was it raised 40 tons sugarbeats

[1:01:23] Good sugar beet field. So where it heads, I mean it might get another shot at beats. One more, you might have one more go at beats at some point before those are gone.

[1:01:34] It could go back to corn, it could go to barley again. I mean, I don't know exactly where we'll go, but we'll figure out a way in the next cycle to put in a control strips again that will allow us to measure the effect of cover and compost and the interaction between those two.

[1:01:51] So it's a five-year study and to sit down and say, well, you know, we know exactly what's going to kind of have to, you kind of have to adjust as you go.

[1:02:08] Thank you.

[1:02:10] Directors reports.

[1:02:25] Good evening, everybody.

[1:02:27] Happy new year.

[1:02:30] Just a few things that have happened in January.

[1:02:33] People know the Boulder Area Trails app is out.

[1:02:37] Right on, has anybody chance to use it?

[1:02:41] And?

[1:02:44] I'd much rather create my own maps and use them in events.

[1:02:49] There's just not enough information in the trails out of the

[1:02:53] about your elevation gain, and I did put these

[1:02:59] my comments in when it first came out.

[1:03:02] So, okay, but I'm not fond of that useful.

[1:03:06] All right.

[1:03:07] We'll look at those comments for Vrigen 2, too.

[1:03:10] I mean, I have to get first quick.

[1:03:13] I have to, you know, where to go, let's open.

[1:03:17] Mm-hmm.

[1:03:20] Okay.

[1:03:21] All right, so.

[1:03:22] Okay.

[1:03:22] All right, so.

[1:03:22] I don't know.

[1:03:23] I don't mind when you're going to contact that.

[1:03:26] Yeah.

[1:03:27] Okay.

[1:03:28] Well, I encourage the rest of you to take a crack out at some time

[1:03:31] and give us your feedback.

[1:03:32] So far, the feedback that we've gotten is largely positive.

[1:03:35] Thanks a lot, Trace.

[1:03:36] You're bringing the average down.

[1:03:38] But I appreciate the substantive comment, so that's really great.

[1:03:42] It took a long time and a lot of work to get there.

[1:03:45] Who knew that creating an app with, you know,

[1:03:48] it doesn't public agencies could be so difficult, but we got there.

[1:03:53] So we're happy with that.

[1:03:55] Happening at High Valley Ranch.

[1:03:57] We have a big forestry project that's up and running.

[1:04:00] It's about a million dollars, most of it is all grant funding, and they've started the work already.

[1:04:09] It will be like the Potasso project, which will require a helicopter to pull out the logs given the steepness of the slopes.

[1:04:16] So there'll be some trail-crop closures at the hyle when the helicopter is operating.

[1:04:22] Right now, we're looking at early in the February, and that could last four to eight weeks, depending on weather conditions on the ground.

[1:04:28] So far, it's been a pretty dry winter, at least of late.

[1:04:32] So a lot of our field operations are moving at rapid pace.

[1:04:35] If it continues, same thing, we get a lot of weather, good slow things down.

[1:04:42] Point of interest, I think Deborah Price has given a presentation before to you on the work

[1:04:48] she's done with local school done dark skies. And she actually just gave her presentation last

[1:04:53] Friday night, I think, in birth, but we've installed a sky quality meter at Walker Ranch

[1:05:01] Homestead.

[1:05:02] It's by the National Park Service Natural Sounds and Night Skyest Division, and that meter

[1:05:07] is going to continuously collect data throughout the spring into the summer measuring light

[1:05:11] pollution and reflection from the light off the clouds from the city.

[1:05:17] And if you have more questions, Deborah Price is the one to reach out to.

[1:05:21] You're probably aware that we held our annual Prairie Dog stakeholder meeting a couple of weeks ago.

[1:05:25] There were over 70 people who attended, and this year we invited the Birds of Prairie Foundation to come and give a presentation on how they use the Prairie Dogs that we donate to them and they brought a live red tail hawk, which always makes a meeting better.

[1:05:38] We can probably ring that for you if you like.

[1:05:42] And then I wanted to remind you, until the end of this month, we're accepting nominations for the Land Conservation Awards.

[1:05:50] Categories are land conservation, environmental stewardship, and historic preservation.

[1:05:55] You've all gotten a stuff on the email, hopefully the brains have been churning.

[1:05:59] Kind of last call.

[1:06:00] We haven't told the end of the month to accept those.

[1:06:02] And then we will be presenting the awards on April 21st at our park building.

[1:06:08] If you haven't been, it's one of the best events of the year.

[1:06:12] There's nothing better than honoring people who've made a real contribution to the community

[1:06:16] in a lot of different categories.

[1:06:18] So I invite you to that and then last I just want to let you know we're working on a draft for the agenda for your annual February retreat

[1:06:27] And I think we'll probably have emailed to you with topics in high level times lots next week so you can see what we're packaging up based on the feedback and suggestions that you provided to us.

[1:06:38] We're just kind of organizing it at the staff level.

[1:06:41] So that's what I've got. What do you got?

[1:06:49] Well, Sue Anderson, for my usual request, any updates on the Madag and DMO transition project?

[1:06:56] Oh sure, no thanks for asking. So our goal in the fall and early winter was to work with all

[1:07:06] the farmers who are affected by the GE transition to work with Madag to develop an initial

[1:07:14] farm vision and determine if taking the essentially the two-year extension on GE

[1:07:21] corn as a mechanism to transition and partnership with us and and supplied by

[1:07:28] technical support for MATA.

[1:07:30] Ag was acceptable. All of the producers would be exception of two. One of whom is John Slegal, who's retiring from farming.

[1:07:41] And the other is doing Kishman, who does way more grazing and hasn't really done a lot in the way of corn and hasn't been a sugar reducer.

[1:07:52] All the other producers have signed on to Alisa Denham that gives them that extension and commits them to the process that we outlined through the Board of County Commissioners.

[1:08:07] So now actually the board and I just met with Phil and Tanner from Attack today to kind of catch up for the new year and start plotting out what's happening in 2020 and I think things are in a good place where

[1:08:20] Some of the initial workshops which are which bring in an outside expert to talk about a particular aspect that would be of interest to many of them to think about how to improve their operations or new things that could be done.

[1:08:34] Those are starting up starting next week.

[1:08:38] There's a lot to do to sort of put the finishing touches on sort of mapping out

[1:08:47] experimental plots for people who are doing things like beans, or non-G, E-Corn, et cetera.

[1:08:52] So there's a lot kind of up and running during the quiet months to be prepared for 2020.

[1:08:58] So it feels like it's in a good place.

[1:09:07] Kind of.

[1:09:07] Thank you.

[1:09:09] Hi.

[1:09:09] I

[1:09:13] could just, no, it's fine. It's going to be adjourned.

[1:09:19] I want to make sure we recognize Vanessa.

[1:09:23] And she's basically irreplaceable.

[1:09:26] But we're still going to get to work with the conservation districts.

[1:09:30] And so, you may know that when you leave parks,

[1:09:33] you get to select a photograph.

[1:09:35] And this was the photograph that Vanessa selected

[1:09:39] and all of the parks and open space, staff, sign the back of it.

[1:09:44] So Vanessa, here's your photograph.

[1:09:47] Thank you for four plus years of very, very good education.

Boulder County, CO meeting

Transcript