Welcome!

Welcome to Brad's Update Blog! I'm planning on updating the blog around the 1st and the 15th of each month until Brad comes back to the states.

For the first post, here is a letter Brad wanted to share!


Howdy, 3 MAY 2009

I wanted to write something and let everyone know that I am doing just fine. So far, time has been flying by, and now it’s May and we are almost all the way through spring over here in Afghanistan. If I keep as busy as I have been lately, I’ll be back home in no time.

For this deployment, the Army is paying me for my skills in agricultural advising, which is ironic because that is what I do at home…. While Afghanistan is by no means Bosque County, TX, it does keep my life very interesting and gives me the ability to study and learn from an ancient culture everything agriculture related.

I live on a small base in the Ghazni province which is in the central eastern portion of the country about 150 km from Pakistan. The area is controlled by coalition forces, specifically the Polish, so yet again I am a American soldier attached to a Polish Brigade ( if you didn’t know, I was in the same situation in Iraq). Living here is not too bad.
The food is decent, although it is a rotating menu of pretty much the same food every 7 or 8 days. The internet is hit and miss, but for the most part it works good enough to stay in contact with back home. There is an Indian restaurant run by some local nationals on the base that we eat at once a week…..I was pretty hesitant at first since the most adventurous culinary experience I will typically accept is Mexican food, but it is a nice relief from the chow hall every now and then.

I spend the majority of my time in our AG office where we are constantly having meetings with locals and contractors in order to get the agricultural projects we have completed. Most of our projects are aimed at agricultural infrastructure and education. Building feed mills, training extension agents and progressive farmers, developing farmer associations and co ops, and installing practices which will help to conserve water are pretty much what occupy our time. We have over 40 projects we are handling right now that add up to totals in the millions. I am in charge of scheduling all the AG operations, which in turn dictate what the rest of the unit is doing since everything revolves around the team of 12 AG specialists we have in the unit. We don’t run a mission except for AG purposes, which is great for me. We have lots of demonstration farms throughout the province we are developing, so when I do go out on a “ field trip” as Molly calls it, it is typically to visit a farm and do some work out there.

I want everyone to know how much I miss them, and I am looking forward to seeing them. But in the meantime, I am taking it one day at a time, and trying to make the best of the situation I am in, no sense in wasting a day on this earth, might as well do something productive!


Miss y’all, LYPOY!

Bradley