. Thank you. . . . . Thank you. I'm going to call the meeting to order. It's about 335. We are short a person right now in order to have a quorum. We can have our meeting. We just can't vote on anything or take any actions. We have some reports that are on our agenda for today anyway, so we will carry on with those. Let me remind the board members first, see if you can sign in, see if your screens are working. Even though we're not going to be voting, just make sure you're here. The other thing is, if you don't have your little IDs, ID tags, if you'll make an appointment, they can help you do that across the hall. remember again to always let the staff know if you are coming or not coming and we have one resignation do you have that letter handy beth the resignation letter and i'll pass that for you to read john mcnamara from visit lex has conflict with his regular job so he has resigned and he has sent us a letter. And they did get that via email. Okay, and Beth says that you should have gotten that via email, so you have seen that. And I do encourage everyone to download your agendas and the information Beth sends you to save on paper and time here. We cannot vote on the minutes right now because we don't have enough folks to do that. So what we'll do next is right on into our presentation. Elizabeth Jensen is here. Elizabeth closed on her farm in January of this year, 2019. She's on Evans Mill Road. She and her husband, Mark. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your farm. and she's brought a video that I think she gave Chris, and he can start it when she gives him the signal. Welcome, Elizabeth. Thank you so much. Thank you for giving the opportunity for me to come and talk to you. I know I've talked to you for the last two years, and you've heard a lot about how passionate I am about our farm and conservation in Fayette County. I moved here about 20 years ago from California and wanted to actually have a job in the horse industry. I had horses my whole life and got tired of working really hard to make enough money to give them my paycheck to eat. And this was the place to be if you actually wanted to have a job and a career in the horse industry. My husband is from Kentucky. His family grew up on Cleveland Road, the Guilfoyles. They still farm on Cleveland Road and McCall's Mill. They have generations that have been in the Athens area that have been cattle farmers and tobacco farmers and are still working really hard to make a living doing that. When we decided to buy a farm a few years ago, we spent a lot of time looking in Scott County and in Clark County, and ultimately the decision that we made to come to Fayette County was because if we were going to invest in the last stop in our life where we were going to spend the rest of our lives, we wanted to know that we were going to be in a rural agricultural community and that 10 years from now we weren't going to have to drive through a neighborhood to get to our farm, that the people who were our neighbors and our community was committed to conservation and committed to farming and to rural activities. So we did buy our farm in Fayette County. We went through the PDR process, which was a little longer and more tedious than we anticipated, but it really gave us time to understand our land, and we actually had a chance to work with Charlie Farmer. He also helped us put together a conservation plan and an equip grant application that was approved. So we've also put in a lot of fencing to protect our wetlands and the wildlife that we have on the farm. In addition to the cows that we have, lots of deer, lots of turkeys, foxes. And I don't have any pictures of the birds in the video. We never have the camera around, but we have osprey. We have great blue heron. We have magpies. we have kill these we have mockingbirds we have purple martins we have blue jays just the wildlife that's on the farm is amazing and to have the opportunity to protect that in in this area in Fayette county you feel like you're a million miles away when you're our farm but we're so close to lexington and committed to the community and the farmland and that's why we bought in Fayette county and i think it's important for the future of Fayette county to make sure we maintain that because that's why i came here that's why my husband stayed here and that's why ultimately we made our long-term investment in fayette county and i had figured all of you have been involved in this a whole lot longer than i have i used some information from this book in tagging our trees it's called venerable trees and it's about the the trees and the area that we live in is a natural woodland pasture that's unique in north america there were bison that roamed this area which are all gone now and a lot of the trees are gone now in 19 there was a count in 1978 and there were 370 burr oaks at that point in time the woman who did it at that time estimated that by 2000 there would be only about 30 left well there's actually 43 left but unfortunately most of those are sick and dying and there are very few trees that are in that 30 to 50 year old range of trees which will get older and which will survive so that's also i think part something that's very special to Fayette county if any of you if you haven't seen this there's a lot of great pictures of you can see 50 years ago what it was like and what it's like today and also there's some great pictures of what bourbon county looks like and what Fayette county looks like without a conservation plan so i just put together a little video so you can can see how special our farm is if you can go ahead and start it and and that's all i have if you have any questions afterwards I'll be happy to answer questions. I love you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. With Comeback, I'm sure some of them noticed that for the most part you have black Angus cattle, but do you want to tell them what you wanted for Christmas last year and what you got? I wanted a red Angus cow, so I would know which one is mine. I look out the window and my husband found that one red Angus, which I got last year. You can see from the video, we love our dogs. They live with the cattle and they protect. Tell them a little bit about them because they are unique. We got them initially to protect the calves from the black vultures. The first year we were there, we had lost a couple calves, and a lot of the other farms in our area had a problem with these black vultures. And they're an ancient breed of livestock guardian dog. They're originally from Turkey. They live outside with the cattle 24-7. And if people see the dogs out there in the winter, they're used to being in the cold. you can't even get them in the truck when it's snowing. They'd much rather be outside than inside. And she raises those. So she has more than cattle that she raises on the farm. And I didn't mention when I was talking about the trees in the big storm in October, we lost 23 trees on the farm and quite a few really big trees that were between 200 and 300 years old just because the soil was so wet. And it's unfortunate those will never be replaced. But we have planted over 40 trees since we've been there, and we planted a grove of pawpaw trees and about 15 apple trees. So we'll be in the fruit business in a couple years, hopefully. Beth just mentioned that that would be a great thing for us to be able to show on the rural land management site. Is there a chance that you would let us have that? No, you can have it. I don't know if the music is, a friend of mine just made that for me, I don't know if the music, you're allowed to use it with the music because it might be copyrighted. But you're welcome to have the images, that little video. Because we can say whose farm it is and that it's our newest purchase and run just the video part and the pictures even. And it's in the PDR program but also the EQIP program that's helped us do the fencing. And thankfully because of all the rain we have to reseed our pastures and we had already worked on that with our EQIP program. so we're ready to get all that done this year, too. Do you all have any questions for Elizabeth? Thank you. I appreciate all that you guys do, and if you didn't do what you do, then we couldn't do what we do. Thank you very much. Is Healy on his way? We can do Charlie's report. Okay. The next thing on our agenda is an update on our easement monitoring, and we are fortunate enough to have Charlie Farmer, a longtime supporter of this program and NRCS for 152 years, right? Been around a while. Y'all have moved up in your digs, I'll tell you, since the 12th floor we used to meet up there, or moved down here on the second floor. I have today a little story about Elizabeth's dogs. As she said, we went out and worked a conservation plan with her and her and Mark. The next time I went out, I was going out to check out a conservation practice that had been installed. I called her and I said, Elizabeth, what about your dogs? She says, as long as you stay up on your two feet and not get out on all fours, you'll be okay. but they're great dogs Lori asked me to come and talk to you a little bit about the monitoring and the status of that and I just want to let you know that I'm under agreement to do 200 monitoring reviews for the Fayette County Rural Land Management Board and I've started on those and in March I did 42 of those And right now in April I'm up to about 53, and so we're about halfway there doing those. And what I'm looking for here is basically is there any environmental issues? Is there a new ownership change? Is there new structures? And so this is kind of what I'm doing in these reviews. And so I don't know what else you'd like to know. NRCS does reviews also, and I'm helping them with theirs too. They do a percentage of each year, a percentage of the farms that have a federal easement on it. And so this year they have 36 on-site reviews to do for NRCS. Any questions? Can I explain? I know. Yeah, good question. NRCS has two different type reviews. One of them is an on-site review, which I just explained, and it's a six-page form that we go through and answer these questions, looking at all three of those things. The other is an off-site review, and this year we have 37 of those off-site reviews. And that is just basically calling the landowner, seeing if the ownership has changed, if anything new is going on just from a phone call, just to call and let them know it's an off-site review. We'd look at imagery. Now, I was out with Don on his farm doing it on site and went ahead and looked at the other farm too. So that's the two different ones for NRCS. Now, for Fayette County Rural Land Management Board, they're all on site. And so we'll go and look at those. Tell us how you go about, do you decide you're going to go Newtown Pike one time and McCall's Mill another? and how do you group those to be the most efficient on doing that? I try to do that, Gloria. I try to get the ones that are in one area at one time. That's not always possible, but I try to do that as efficient as possible, to try to go and get those in one area. I'm calling the landowners and letting them know that I'm coming, and sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not, but they're always notified and contacted. Do you look at the easements, or you know these well enough you don't have to? Do you have a list? Yeah, I haven't been looked at easements. If I see like a new structure or something that I haven't seen before, And a lot of these local easements, you know, I haven't been privy to very long at all. And so I'll send Beth an email or something that, you know, hey, this structure, maybe I talked to Landon. They said they built it, you know, maybe three years ago. And, you know, just a heads up, this is what I found. And so that's kind of what I've been doing on that. How many roughly can you do a day? I know that some are 30 acres and some are 300, so how do you go about how many can you see a day? Well, this morning I saw four, but three of them were in the same family. So it kind of depends on that. Some of these easements are different tracks. They're right next to each other. You can do several of those, and so some are spread out. And, you know, you may go to one or two a day, you know, so it kind of depends. Are the property owners, for the most part, very accommodating? They help you. They'll go with you. They'll. Very accommodating. I had one, when was that, Tuesday or Wednesday that I didn't have a good number. In fact, I called the number, and it was Becky in Miami, Florida. And so she said, no, this is not who you're looking for. And so I said, I'm just going to go to the farm because I'd been to that farm. I'd been to that farm and went there, and the owner was very receptive and, you know, knew me. And so most of the time it's a good, you know, the landowners are open for us to be doing this. Good. Yeah, it's a good visit. What can we do on this end to help you? Well, I think one thing that I think is very helpful is that on the website I noticed that this impervious percentage has been posted. And I think as much as that education of that can be out, I think that's good. And I try to let landowners know to make sure that they understand that. And so I think that's a good thing. Most of these farms in Fayette County are clean, good farms. I mean, they're trying to do a good job. We've got a great agricultural community here in Fayette County, a progressive community, and they're not wanting to impact the environment in a negative way. So I think there's a good stewardship among the landowners in Fayette County. So when you said you did 42 in March and you're up to 53, that means a total of 53 that you've done so far. Do you start in the spring and just go? No, no, 53. Oh, you did 53 more in April? Yeah, so I'm about half done. That's 97. And do you do this spring through the summer only, or are you trying to do this year-round? Well, the agreement that I have with the Fayette County Rural Land Management Board runs out June 30th. And so right now, I'm just doing them as much as I can right now, getting these done. We've talked about renewing that. Okay. So is this the first year you have done this? Second year. Okay. Under this agreement. Yeah. I've not seen the agreement so questions anybody how'd you I will just add one thing for Charlie so his contract with our board was a two-year contract that we originally signed and we will I'm going to share that with Tracy to find out exactly if we just need to amend it or how we extend it we have funding to go on through the mayor put money in her budget or in the city's budget for that to continue and she is actually known Charlie for years and years and so when I said in the hearing that he was doing our monitoring she was very excited to hear that and so we will have that on the May agenda to update his contract. Thank you. Well, we are still short a person, Tracy. You want to comment on that? Well, your bylaws and the ordinance say that in order to transact any business, you're going to have to have now, because the ordinance has passed the council that requires you to now have seven to establish a quorum. So at this point, everything else on your agenda would require you to take some kind of vote or transact some type of business in terms of your operations and things, so I don't think you can do that at this point. So you're probably going to have to adjourn. Can the committees not give reports? We don't vote on those. They just make a report. I think because that's part of your operating business, it would be better to just pass those on to May. Well, how do we take a vote on that if we don't have enough to, how do we adjourn? Well, I mean, I think you're just going to have to adjourn the meeting. Mr. Simpson may want to make a request that you obviously can't vote on, but you can hear before you adjourn. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. I'm Bruce Simpson. I was here today on behalf of Elkhorn Farms 5055, Old Frankfort Pike. We were seeking approval for a primary residence. Obviously, you don't have a quorum. And the next time you meet, I think, is a month from now. I was, because of some contractual obligations that are associated with this particular situation, I would simply inquire if the board is of the, and I know you can't make a decision right now, if there was a prospect of having a meeting but prior to the may meeting to consider our our request for this primary residence if that's would be within your all's purview to to do we would be most appreciative don't have to vote for a special meeting we would that would still require a vote bruce we i understand we would need to talk about that with the whole group see it would require a special meeting and we'd have to vote on that so that's yeah i think the procedures would allow you could notify people and they could correct me if i'm wrong tracy vote by email or something i'm not trying to burden you trust me and i wouldn't ask it if there weren't um special circumstances involving the person i'm representing that's the reason i'm asking for his behalf. You can call a special meeting, the chair can call a special meeting, but it has to provide seven days notice to the members. And I would need to make sure when I do that that I'm going to have seven people in attendance before we do that. So that's what I said. I would have to contact these to set a date to make sure that was. Anyway, I just appreciate your consideration of that request. Thank you. I think based on the fact, yes, Phil. If we can talk about perhaps moving the next meeting, if there's not an agenda. I can call a special meeting. What I'll need to do is e-mail all of you and see who could. I can pick some dates and you all can answer me if we can do that. And then we have to at least a week ahead, since it's a special meeting, post that and advertise that. And include these items. Yes. Yes, we would have to include the items on this agenda that we did not finish today. So I'm sorry. And thank you for coming, you loyal folks. Thanks. Thank you.