CHERRYFIELD – After 23 years at the Downeast Resource Conservation and Development Council, Velma Orcutt scheduled her retirement date for last July.

That way, she could turn immediately to her home business of harvesting 13 acres of blueberries and not feel at a loss for something to do.

“I knew I would miss the work,” Orcutt said Saturday evening. The Steuben resident received a special service award at the council’s annual meeting and banquet at the Narraguagus Snowmobile Club’s building.

The council is one of more than 300 across the United States. Its function is to identify and fund local projects that fit the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service values.

The Downeast council supports work in both Washington and Hancock counties. Some of the council’s current projects include upgrading Riverside Park in Milbridge, supporting the planned pedestrian bridge in Dennysville and working to transform the Station 98 railway stop in Machias into a rest area.

For 23 years, as the Downeast Resource Conservation and Development Council’s program assistant, Orcutt has sought to identify projects that could benefit from both private grants and federal funds. She will be replaced by a half-time employee.

Orcutt said Saturday she has missed many people she worked closely with on the local and federal level over the years. But retirement has given her a chance to spend time with her three children and nine grandchildren.

She recently took on a new local commitment. Just last Tuesday she was elected president of the Sunrise County Wild Blueberry co-op. She and her husband, Warren Orcutt, helped found the 20-member co-operative in 1996. She has served as the group’s bookkeeper, secretary and treasurer for six years.

“I’ll probably continue to do those tasks, too, if someone else doesn’t,” she said.

At Saturday night’s banquet, a committee developing a tourist map for the Ice Age Trail and its geologic landscape was singled out as an outstanding project award recipient.

Another award went to the Hancock County towns of Sullivan and Sorrento for their joint project establishing the Sullivan-Sorrento playground along U.S. Route 1 in Sullivan.

For Washington County, the Sept. 2 service providers’ forum held at the University of Maine at Machias also won recognition. The forum drew close to 20 nonprofit agencies and organizations to pinpoint both their differences and duplications of public services.