Day 199

Fully recovered from the allergy attack and with more progress on the nature play area completed, I was ready to move in a new direction for a bit. We just received an email from the gentlemen who drafted our forest management plan (FMP) that it was ready for our review. Our FMP was an essential ingredient to future attempts to receive funding so we wanted to make sure the plan connected to our overall vision. In my quick review, I saw a lot regarding dates, species information, conservation practices, and a plethora of language and vocabulary I didn't quite know enough about to make an informed decision. I decided to share this draft with our restoration partner. I knew he would be more familiar with the process and could point out anything from the plan he felt might need to be tweaked or updated.

He was happy to look it over, though this was a very busy time of year. When he was able to get to the plan, his overall analysis was that it was well written and it fit well in with our plan with a few minor tweaks. 

We connected over a phone call to go over these tweaks and ended up discussing our shared vision in more detail. In that phone call, he mentioned that he saw lots of native vegetation progressing in his latest visit. He said this would save us tons of money in seeding later on. This was great. Money would be saved on our end and any funding we were fortunate enough to receive could be used on other restoration tasks.

With this draft getting approved by someone more knowledgeable than me, I let our FMP writer know we were ready for the next step. He said it needed to go through a few approval processes before becoming official. He would be in touch with any further information.

The FMP process will always be synonymous with an allergy attack. Now that the FMP is out of our hands and moved up the ladder, I wanted to get back to the land. I knew I needed to make it more accessible, especially where tall and allergy-filled grasses grew.