– Heirloom seed workshop March 16
An Heirloom Seed Workshop will be offered on Thursday, March 16, at 10 a.m. at the Mary Wood Weldon Library. Julie Maruskin will conduct the workshop on starting heirloom Appalachian garden plants from scratch and saving seed from these often-endangered varieties.
The program features a 30-minute presentation on the history and practical husbandry of tomatoes and other Solanaceae. Participants 14 and up receive their choice of seeds from six varieties of heirloom, open-pollinated tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and tomatillos. Participants will also take home live plants that they’ve transplanted during the program.
– June 1 deadline for enrollment in DCP
Sign-up for the 2006 DCP program began on Oct. 1, 2005. Enrollment is required each year to be eligible for annual payments under DCP.
Producers on farms with crop acreage bases of corn, soybeans, grain sorghum, wheat, barley, and oats may enroll in the DCP program.
Producers may request a 50 percent advance payment in any month with the final payment to be made in October of 2006. The deadline to enroll into DCP is June 1. All required signatures of owners, tenants and the farm operators are required before contracts can be approved.
– Undeliverable Phase II checks list now updated
An updated list of 2005 undeliverable Phase II checks that remain unclaimed is now available.
The Governor’s Office of Agriculture Policy is seeing the results from the initial posting of the list a month ago.
In June 2005, Kentucky sent out over 164,000 checks to certified recipients of the Phase II Tobacco Settlement program. In the past month over 800 checks have been claimed and as of today, there remain approximately 2,400 checks that did not reach their intended recipients.
The reasons for the undeliverable checks include: no forwarding address left; expired forwarding address; the recipient is deceased; the recipient is not known; or the P.O. Box was closed.
The list is sorted by the last name within the county in which the farm was registered according to USDA Farm Service Agency.
If you should locate your name as a certified recipient, please contact the call center toll-free at 1-877-549-2537.
The representative taking your call will verify some personal information, and then collect the correct mailing address information in order to mail you the check.
In addition to the name of the recipient, the list also contains the claimant ID number, farm number, and check number. Please have this information available when speaking to a call center representative.
Please call quickly because these checks will expire on June 20, 2006.
