Wonderful, we'll be looking out for your posts about it. We heard about the grant last year and started researching.

We talked to our extension agent about it and it seemed to us that we would have to follow some soil erosion/soil conservation policies and that they would be inspecting our place.

Our land is sloped and currently heavily wooded. Not to mention, very rocky. We've been preparing small areas slowly by hand with no heavy equipment, just a small Kubota tractor which doesn't help much but to carry brush away.

We're planning on getting our land the way we want it then getting the grant so it doesn't affect our choices on how we handle the forested areas versus the cleared areas.

We built a small low high tunnel haha. The chickens are in there but it doesn't really stay warm in there when the nights are below freezing. Although it warms up fast in there when the sun's up.

This is 7-ft tall and 10x25. Cost about 1k not including labor. The expense was mostly for the wiggle wire and the anti-condensate film. Treated lumber for foundation and planned on turning them into 2-ft tall raised beds. With the USDA's program, you can't have more than a ft tall raised bed(?). Not sure if they're going to come inspect that so we decided to do our own thing.

I'd be interested on how you all set up the rocket mass heater.