Since 1992, more than 100,000 acres of agricultural land in Ada and Canyon counties have been converted to urban use—many of them to small-acreage residential properties. That adds up to thousands of people who have purchased their piece of the American dream— and the same is true across the region.

Left: Randy Raptosh, Nampa, works to be an environmentally conscientious landowner.

The universities’ response: A 16- week short course called Living on the Land: Stewardship for Small Acreages that is being piloted regionwide.

Ada County Extension educator Kevin Laughlin, who is co-facilitating one of these pilot classes in Boise, describes his 23 students as “either two or three generations off the farm—or they grew up on a farm and bought a small acreage so their families can be close to the land. They want to do the right thing and they’re eager to learn.”

“They moved out into the country to either escape the big city or get a little bit of the rural lifestyle,” says co-facilitator and Canyon County Extension educator Scott Jensen. “But few of them have seen the big picture of what it takes to be successful —productive and environmentally friendly—on a small acreage.”

Indeed, in a pre-test questionnaire asking them to rank their level of knowledge on 23 topics, the students’ most frequent response to 17 topics was “nothing.”

Jensen says the Living on the Land curriculum “does an excellent job of bringing out what people need to do to maintain a quality environment.”

“This class sang to us,” says student Lynn Young. “My joy is to live off the land.”

During the day, Young is a liaison between marketing and engineering at Hewlett-Packard. On evenings and weekends she is soaking up a love for the land on a 7-acre farm in Emmett she shares with husband Chris.

Mike Gamble’s passion was simply to protect his privacy and views. The Qwest network technician was living on an acre near Homedale when he had the chance to buy several acres next door. He admits he “doesn’t know what I’m doing” when it comes to land management, but it beats watching someone else put up a house next door.

Maryann Cole, station manager for the Garden City Post Office, says she and dentist husband Jerry could “write a book” about the challenges they’ve encountered on their 12-acre retreat north of Caldwell. But they don’t doubt the payoff.

Left: Maryann and Jerry Cole live on 12 acres north of Caldwell, a 35-minute commute to work.

“It always feels like we’re on vacation out here,” she says. “We look out our windows and we don’t see anyone else.” Yes, the taps go dry and the toilets stop flushing when ever the power goes out. Yes, mice chewed up their telephone line, leaving holes they could hear other conversations through. And, yes, their first year’s garden washed into the creek as soon as the uphill neighbor decided to irrigate. “Half the time I’m near tears because there’s so much I don’t know and the other half of the time I just love it,” she says.

At one point, Cole says she felt so overwhelmed she thought, “OK, I can’t ever grasp this, so I won’t care about anything except the inside of the house. But the next thing you know, I’m thinking about gardening and we’re talking about additives to help things grow.”

Now Cole handily burns weeds along her ditchbanks, the couple has constructed berms that direct the neighbor’s irrigation water around their property, and they’ve invited their other neighbor’s cattle to trim back the 8-foot-tall grass that would otherwise block their views. The Coles are even talking about developing a retirement enterprise, like raising dogs, horses, or crops.

Realtor Larry Coelho of Eagle registered for the class so he could better advise his clients, whose demand for pastoral havens has driven up the cost of 5 raw acres to $225,000. Coelho describes three types of clients: tradespeople who use their rural properties’ elbow room to build shops and sheds necessary for their businesses, “lessaffluent” people who occasionally find lower-priced small acreages tucked here and there between gentrifying bedroom communities, and professional people who buy several acres as a respite from city living.

The last group “tends to leave after three years because the workload is so overwhelming,” he says. Helping owners of small acreages clarify goals and prioritize what needs to be done is central to the class. Three out of four students said they wanted to learn more about well care and wellhead protection, nutrients and animal waste management, septic system and pest management, weed control, erosion control, and bare ground revegetation.

Consequently, Laughlin, Jensen, and fellow instructors Susan Bell, Toby Green, and Mike Stanton assigned students to draw physical layouts of their properties; test their soil, water, and forages; calculate fertilizer requirements for their pastures, and survey for erosion, weeds, and pests. The students also visited land-management agencies and took field trips to well-managed small acreages. Zamzow’s, D&B Supply, UI Analytical Sciences Laboratory, and the State Bureau of Laboratories all lent a hand.

Randy and Robin Raptosh own 34 acres at Nampa. Because they’re putting a new irrigation system on 20 acres and planting it anew, the couple decided to enroll in the class.

“Most of us are trying to be a little greener about how we treat our ground,” Randy says. “Adding fertilizers we don’t need is costly and polluting. Now I can take my own soil samples.”

The Raptoshes’ household water samples yielded a surprising result: their water is contaminated with bacteria at the tap but not where it enters the house. Now they know they need to hunt for a problem somewhere in between. “That’s something I never would have discovered without this class,” he says.

According to Jensen, one of the more complex topics to teach is Idaho water law. “If you live in the city, you just turn on the faucet but, with water rights, you only get so many shares of water to irrigate with,” he says. “Those concepts are totally foreign to people who didn’t grow up farming.”

Water isn’t perplexing to student David Kebler of Boise. He’s educated in hydrology, “but I need to know more about how to grow pasture grass.”

Jensen says newcomers to country living often have to rein in their expectations—especially when it comes to making a living on their land. But while they may overestimate how much income their small acreages can bring—and how soon—rural “lifestylers” can’t overestimate their impacts on Idaho’s environment, Jensen says.

Every small acreage in the Treasure Valley impacts the quality of streams, and every one alters weed populations, he says. “By the end of the class, I hope the participants will view their land as a resource that is theirs to have, to use and improve.”

“We’re still dealing with the state’s natural resource base. But the land has had a change in ownership, so we’re working with the new people who are managing it today,” Laughlin says.

© 2002 University of Idaho, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.