Annual Meeting

Annual Meeting

January 2012

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
New Years Day
8	9	10	11	12	13	14

15	16	17	18	19	20	21
	Martin Luther King Jr. Day
22	23	24	25	26	27	28

29	30	31

2011 General Election Held

The Reggie Grandt family from St. Peter was chosen as the 2011 Conservation Farm Family. Reggie, after getting his undergraduate degree from SIU, and Master’s from the U of I, taught Vocational Agriculture at Amboy for several years before returning to the farm in 1985. Wife, Kathy, also received her undergraduate degree from SIU, and has a Master’s Degree from Greenville College. She worked as a private forester for many years, and now teaches math at Vandalia Junior High School.

Reggie farms nearly 1300 acres in Fayette and Marion Counties. Of that, 88.4 acres are in the Conservation Reserve Program in grass waterways, quail buffers or whole fields. He also maintains 11 grade stabilization structures and many acres of other grass waterways on his farm. Reggie uses conservation tillage on his sloping corn acres, and no tills half of his soybean fields.

Reggie and Kathy have three grown boys: Justin (wife Christina), Patrick (wife Bethany) and Jesse. Both are active in the community. Reggie is an Elder on St. Peter Lutheran Church, a member of the township board, and serves on the Fayette Co. Water Board. He also served on St. Peter Volunteer Fire Dept. for many years. Kathy served as a volunteer EMT for eight years, is a Sunday school teacher, and was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout leader when the boys were active in those organizations.

Congratulations to Reggie and Kathy Grandt.

The Grandt Family received a plaque and a two-sided sign to proudly hang at the farm.

The Conservation Farm Family Award is sponsored by the First National Bank of Vandalia.

Each year county schools participate in a local Envirothon competition. Each school brings five member teams to the event and they are tested on five subjects dealing with the environment. The Fayette County Soil & Water Conservation District provides each student participating from Fayette County with a t-shirt. The shirts this year were donated by Fayette County Farm Bureau. The district is responsible for putting a unique county logo on the back of the shirts. We come up with that logo each year by having a design competition in the vocational art department at Vandalia High School. This year’s winner, and winner of a $100 Savings Bond, is Ashley Smith, daughter of Milton and Catherine Smith.

Every year the Fayette County Soil & Water Conservation District holds a poster contest for all the 4th grade students in the county. A theme for the contest is set by the National Association of Conservation Districts. This year’s theme was “Forests for People”. The idea behind the theme is we all can do a lot of little things to help create or improve wildlife habitat in our backyard and our communities. The students get a presentation on the theme, a poster board, and a deadline to have their posters completed. The district board, employees, and several volunteers then judge the posters and decide on a first, second, and third place. The winners get an engraved trophy and a Savings bond ($100, $75, and $50 for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, respectively). The First National Bank of Brownstown sponsors the event every year, providing the poster boards, the trophies and the Savings Bonds. I think Jerry Reed, President of the bank gets as big a kick out of it as the kids.

This year’s winners were: 1st place, Faith Williams from Ramsey elementary School, daughter of Bryan and Felechia Williams, 2nd place, Adam Moreland from Ramsey Elementary School, son of Roger and Julie Moreland, and, 3rd place, Jared Mason from St. Elmo, son of Tim and Jill Mason.

Each year the district gives an award to a person in the county that has assisted the SWCD in a very special way. This year we honored John Sanders. John has been very instrumental in getting the recycling program going in Fayette County. Not only did he help to promote it verbally, but he actually spent countless hours, and his own money filling his car with gas, to go from one business to the other and gather any and all their recycling. He may have gathered recycling at your place of business, helped unload it from your car, or you may remember him as the guy that poured your concrete, or even as the pastor from Oak Valley United Pentecostal Church. No matter what the task was that needed done or when it needed to be done we knew that we could always depend on John to help. Congratulations to John on his very special award.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them!!

301 South Third Street
Vandalia, IL 62471
618-283-1095 ext. 3
Karen Sanders - fayettecountyswcd@att.net
Tony Pals - tony.pals@il.nacdnet.net
Jamie Elmore - jamie.elmore@il.nacdnet.net