814-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, September 20,1986
SCS Technician Works To Implement
Bay Program Through Farm Improvements
BY JOYCE BUPP
York County Correspondent
YORK - When Ann Meyer
enrolled in Penn State as an en
vironmental resource major,
manure management was not at
the top of her career goals list.
In fact, the young woman from
Erie had no real idea what she
would eventually do with her
degree. But she did know that
working outdoors appealed to her
far better than a job at an office
desk.
And, while Ann now has her own
desk at the York offices of USDA’s
Soil Conservation Service, the part
of her job she enjoys most is being
out on farms. In her role as an SCS
technician, one of only a few
women holding that position in the
state, Ann is currently working
with the implementation of the
Chesapeake Bay program. Her
primary responsibility is to con
vert the designs and drawings of
such conservation measures as
manure storage areas, diversion
terraces and sod waterways into
workable on-farm improvements.
Ann’s affinity for the outdoors
traces to the 90-acre family farm
her father purchased when she was
a child. While her dad had grown
up during the Depression-lean
farm years and had no desire to
leave his job to return to farming,
he saw the land as a retreat, for his
family.
A basic agronomy course, part of
her required studies, further
nudged Ann’s interest in a soils
related career.
“It included a lot of land use
planning. The professor was very
good working with students and he
talked about the Soil Conservation
Service’s student intern
program,” she remembers.
In subsequent semesters, Ann
enrolled in additional soils courses.
She also signed up for the SCS
internship and was chosen for a
position the summer she com
pleted her junior year of studies.
Her assignment sent her to distant
York County, where she worked
with the conservationist and
technicians in surveying,
designing, planning, and absorbing
SCS policy.
“The likelihood of my coming
back to work in the same county
after an internship here was nil,”
Ann relates.
But with SCS internship comes a
greater likelihood of a job offer
after graduation. Ann’s was an
offer to fill a position in mining
intensive Cambria County.
During the year she spent there,
Ann’s primary responsibilities
Ann Meyer and her two-year-old "helper" at the family's 20-acre sheep farm take a break
*** W il* *
’* ■•” - ' <>n ‘
While helping lay out manure management pits as a
technician for the Soil Conservation Service, Ann Meyer
sights up depth levels using some of the tools of the trade.
focused on work with strip mine
land renovation through the Rural
Abandoned Mines programs.
After a year, marriage to her
college sweetheart Ray Meyer
took Ann from the Cambria County
reclamation work. Ray was then
managing a hog operation in
Marietta, and later accepted a
position as a troubleshooter for
Pennfield, working with the firm’s
swine producers.
Jobs in the soil conservation field
were oversupplied, and for a
period of time, Ann was unable to
return to her field. Instead, she
worked through the winter in a
fabric shop, while also holding a
job with a nearby hog producer,
assisting in the farrowing and
processing of baby pigs.
“By July of 1982,1 really wanted
very much to get back to a job in
conservation,” she remembers.
While it took a few months for her
to find what she was seeking, in
early 1983 Ann went to work for
Baltimore County. Hired as a
planner for the county’s own soil
conservation offices, Ann was
responsible for designing ponds,
contour stripping, diversion
terraces and related soils-saving
improvements.
When a position in the York SCS
office became available several
months later, Ann put in an ap
plication, and in December 1983,
took her present position as an SCS
technician.
Ann finds she prefers her work
as a technician to that of a con
servationist, for which she had
originally trained.
“It includes much more of the
outside work, and not as much
paper work,” says Ann. “I like it a
lot better,”
With the implementation of the
Chesapeake Bay program in York
County’s several watersheds,
manure management installations
have become Ann’s specialty. One
of the biggest challenges she finds
is pulling together all those in
volved in the construction of such
facilities, from the designer of the
manure handling facility to the
farmer who will work with it and
the various contractors involved in
moving soils and installing pipe
and concrete.
There are established guidelines
for conservation programs and
facilities which technicians like
Ann must follow in laying out the
manure pits, diversion terraces
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