Folks who live in the Delta community, near the Clay-Randolph county line, have long considered the Phillips family good neighbors. In fact, anyone driving along County Road 88 likely would admire the lush grass growing in the Phillipses rolling pastures and the neatly manicured appearance of their seven, red poultry houses. Recently, however, the father-son team of Doyle and David Phillips earned national recognition as one of five regional winners of the Poultry Environmental Stewardship Award given by Tyson Foods Inc. The family will now compete for the national award, which will be announced next month.Doyle, 55, said he never set out to win an award. Instead, he tries to manage the farm in a way that will make his neighbors proud that it’s part of their community.”We try to keep a neat farm, and we try to keep everything looking good,” he said. “We keep our equipment under the shed; we keep our fencerows sprayed; and we maintain a neat appearance around the chicken houses. “We try to be very considerate of our neighbors,” Doyle added. “We do everything we can to be good neighbors, and we work hard to keep communications channels open.”One way the Phillipses have endeared themselves to the people in their community is by purchasing and reclaiming 17 acres of land that had become littered with trash.”Half of it was just a landfill,” Doyle recalled. “It was strewn with everything from junk cars and boats to trash and household garbage–you name it. We cleaned it up, and it’s now in pastureland.”In addition, the Phillipses have planted or preserved extra-large buffer zones along the creeks and branches that transverse their property, and they have installed well-fed cattle waterers to keep their 130 brood cows out of the streams.David, 35, said the family’s attention to protecting the environment was evident when they received the results of a test that evaluated the runoff from their farm.”We had the water tested, and it was as clean going off the farm as it was coming in,” he said.The Phillipses, however, do not take their clean water for granted. They perform biannual soil tests to ensure they apply only the nutrients their pastures can handle, and they have implemented new management practices to reduce the amount of poultry litter that has to be spread on the land.”We have a conditioning machine that goes through the houses between flocks and removes the cake or wet litter and makes a good, dry bed for the chicks,” David said. “We don’t clean out (the litter) unless it is a necessity. We just recycle the litter every flock.”Doyle said he would like to get to the point where the farm could ship all of its litter to areas where it’s needed and use a commercial fertilizer–that’s lower in phosphorous–on their farm. The Phillipses also are considering a trip out West to see how farmers there are burning litter to produce energy for their farms.Mortality is another major environmental issue for the poultry growers, who produce 1 million broilers each year. Doyle and David, however, have virtually eliminated any adverse impacts by disposing of dead birds in an incinerator.”I believe it’s the best method of handling mortality,” David said. “We started out with pits and went to a composter. With regulations getting stiffer on litter, it was more environmentally friendly for our farm and more neighbor friendly to get rid of the composter and go to the incinerator.”Being “neighbor friendly” is a big reason the Phillipses farm took top honors in the Southeast when nine judges flew to Alabama last year to tour their operation. The family earned the right to compete for the regional and national awards by first being judged best in Tyson’s Oxford Complex area.”They toured the farm and asked a lot of tough questions, and we tried to answer them the best we could,” said Doyle. “We work harder on neighbor relations than just about anything,” David added. “Maintaining the appearance of the farm is part of that. We don’t spread litter near homes or landlines, and we have one 75-acre farm we don’t put litter on because we do not want to offend anyone.”Doyle and David have divided their farm into 11 separate fields, and they record when litter is spread on each field and how much is applied. They plant ryegrass in the winter, so there will be actively growing vegetation to utilize the nutrients, and they limit the amount of litter spread to about two tons per acre.The Phillipses’ good stewardship, however, is not motivated purely by their desire to please others. They also live on the land, which makes their commitment to conserving its natural resources something that’s deeply personal.Doyle and wife Sylvia, along with David, his wife Christi and their children, Carley, 11, and Andrew, 8, all enjoy life on the farm. That’s one reason Doyle has taken on another environmental reclamation project–a family fish pond. “We bought some property in 1995 that had an old lake on it that was buried in the woods,” Doyle recalled. “We cleaned it up and stocked it with fish. We’ve made it a family place where we can have picnics. Eventually, I would like to maybe build a pavilion there with a fireplace in it.”The Phillipses also have planted fruit trees to enhance the deer habitat on their land, and Doyle would like to re-establish bobwhite quail on the farm–a species whose population has declined in their area during the past few decades.Even with all of the work he’s done, though, Doyle is modest about winning Tyson’s environmental award. He said the whole poultry industry is doing a good job, and most growers are striving to be good stewards of the land. In fact, he said environmental management of poultry operations is better today than when he started farming.”In 1970, we didn’t monitor how much litter we spread per acre, and there was no good disposal method for dead chickens,” Doyle said. “Now, we have good records. We only put out the litter the grass can use, and we have an incinerator to dispose of dead birds in an environmentally friendly manner.”David said he can think of no better place to raise his kids than on the farm, and he plans to continue working to conserve the farm’s natural resources.”We definitely want to leave the land better than we found it,” David said. “We don’t want to create problems for future generations. If anything, we want to lessen the challenges that might be there.”