The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

Bill Evans Chouteau County Executive Director of the Farm Service Agency had an 'employee gathering in the field' where we can have both a district meeting and we can recognize the accomplishments of employees. "We talk over things in general that we need to talk about as an agency. But in addition to that, part of the intent is to also experience a field visit to get out into the country to see some of the stuff that we experience all the time behind our desks, but never really see in real life."

This year the field trip brought them to Big Sandy to the Paul Williams Memorial Park on the hottest day of the year. After their meeting and a time to celebrate accomplishments of their employees, they had a tour of KRACKLIN' KAMUT. After that they went out to tour Bob Quinn's Organic farm. "Where we are going to learn a lot about what they are doing, because right now the FSA is learning more and more to differentiate between organic crops and non- organic crops." So, this is also part of the education process for the employees, by not only hearing about it through conference calls or reading it in a book, but to see it in real life. "FSA is in the process of setting different criteria for Organic Farms and I wanted to show the districts employees an organic wheat farm."

"It's a good day for the employees, because we expect a lot out of them and today we can not only educate them but say thank you for all their hard work. We have wonderful farmers in the area, the difficulty is more in implementing a program that just marginally fits the situation in the county. There needs to be consistency between counties and states on the implementation of those programs."

Other district meetings have been held in Fort Benton, Browning, Chouteau, and now was a good time to bring the district meeting to Big Sandy.