A Late First Day; June 3, 2014

June 16, 2014 By ksa45@cornell.edu Leave a Comment

My name is Kaitlyn Anderson. Today was my first real day as a Cornell Cooperative Extension intern inventorying invasive species. After a few weeks of getting my paperwork together as fast as I could, I went through a brief orientation with my supervisor, Laurel Gailor, yesterday, and today I was able to go out into the field with her and meet some of the local farmers of Saratoga County. We traveled to a number of orchards, learning about farmers’ main weed problems and concerns. I learned to use the equipment (GPS and data sheets) and methods for recording my findings. It was a productive day making local farmer connections, getting permission to use their fields, and orienting myself with the area.

I am looking forward to learning a lot, very quickly. I do not have any experience working with weeds or how to even identify what would be an invasive weed species. I am getting to know the Extension staff and am looking forward to a beautiful summer in Saratoga County.

Filed Under: Kaitlyn Anderson

Toluma Farms!

June 6, 2014 By Rachel Carrie Sullivan Leave a Comment

This summer I worked at Toluma Farms and Tomales Farmstead Creamery, an organic goat and sheep farm & creamery. I came in with no previous extended farm experience, and minimal previous work with livestock. From June through August, I headed out each Monday from Berkeley, CA for an hour long-drive to the rolling hills above Tomales Bay. I stayed on the farm for half of my week, returning to Berkeley for weekends to bus tables at Chez Panisse Restaurant. Toluma is a beautiful 160-acre series of pastures, with an on-site milking parlor, creamery, farm house, barn, chicken coop, bees, and small raised-bed vegetable garden. Tamara and David, the owners, started the farm in 2003, while simultaneously working as a respective psychiatrist and lung surgeon in San Francisco (which they continue to do) – impressive! When I arrived at Toluma, there were a total of 3 employees on the creamery side, 1 head milker, and 2 alternating herd managers, with additional help from neighbors and volunteers. Officially, I was to be the intern focusing on pasture management, with plans to move them towards a Management Intensive Grazing system.

On my first day, and every following morning, I helped Kristy, the head milker, milk the 120 milking goats and around 50 milking sheep using electric pulsation equipment. Generally, we would begin around 8-8:30, depending on whether the creamery folk emptied the milk tank and began a chemical wash in the tank that morning. On wash days, milking was usually a little behind. With 2 people milking, the whole process could take about 3 1/2 hours for goats, the changeover of equipment, sheep and clean up. The actual milking process involved filling grain feeders and letting in lines of 12 goats, or 6 sheep, into the stalls. To protect against possible infection and mastitis, we would clean their teats with a warm cloth, strip them (3 squirts on each teat), and use a lanolin-based “predip” and iodine-based “postdip.” If we noticed hard, or cracking udders, we would apply udder balm. Before milking, we would have separated all “mastitis girls”, goats (identified as having mastitis with green ankle bands) into a separate holding pen, to be milked last. Once all lines of clean girls had been milked into the tank, we would turn off the pulsing system, and test each mastitis girl, by hand, using CMT testing (California Mastitis Testing). The mastitis milk would be directed into a plastic tub, to be donated to various people — sometimes to feed neighbor pigs or baby goats. Finally, once all milking was over, I would herd up the goats to whichever pasture was being used that day. At the beginning of the summer, I’d say I was a fairly timid herder, but quickly learned the ways. Goats were generally much easier to herd than the sheep (although naughty about sneaking back in the parlor to steal more grain) who were often skiddish or hard to get out of the parlor.

Goats in Holding Pen Waiting for Milking

After milking was finished, I would then switch over to helping Hadley, the herd manager, take care of all other farm jobs. Projects were always switching, many of which I’ll write about in other posts, but we would consistently fill up the gravity fed water tank, and drive it to the pastures to fill water troughs for the animals. On a few pastures at Toluma, water is actually pumped directly into troughs, but there are still many which depend upon the gravity fed system. We would also take care of any sick girls in the afternoons, for example a feverish ewe with parasites or pneumonia, or Blue Moon or Babe (goats who had occasional limps). Daily, we would also lay down straw in the barn beds, put flakes of hay (grown at Toluma! I’ll get into this later) in the feeders, cleanup and reorganize the barn, check on the non-milkers, and then bring down all goats (milkers and non-milkers) to the barn for nighttime.

Hadley showing me how to herd down the sheep for milking

Thirsty goats

Filed Under: 2014 Interns, Rachel Sullivan

Week #1 in the Life of an Agronomist

June 6, 2014 By Anne Mills Leave a Comment

My first day on the job as a Cornell Cooperative Extension Intern began bright and early on June 2nd. It was great feeling to finally step out the door after several months of planning and anticipation for my summer experience with CCE. My excitement grew as I passed through beautiful farmland on my commute from Rochester all the way to Medina, NY in Genesee County. The first stop in my day was at the farm of Francis Domoy. At the farm, I meet with my boss and CCE field crops specialist Bill Verbeten. My first day consisted of my very first lessons in weed identification and becoming acquainted with malting barley crops.

Throughout the rest of the week I became acquainted with farms across Wayne, Livingston, Genesee, Monroe, Seneca, Yates and Ontario County and got the opportunity to get to know members of the Batavia, Canadaigua, and Newark CCE offices. So far, each day has been very different from the last. From helping to take bunker density samples at a dairy farm, insect scouting, to attending the Small Grains Field Day in Aurora, NY, I’ve gotten a great first impression of the extension work that is done here in Western, NY. I look forward to this weekends Agri-Palooza event in Wyoming County and also to the rest of the summer!

Filed Under: Annie Mills

Seeds, Seeds, Seeds

June 6, 2014 By Christina Lee Hall Leave a Comment

This week found me at a Worker’s Protection training for work with chemicals and an orientation about CCE, but it also found me digging up swallow-wort and screening seeds in the lab. After spending two weeks in the Weed Ecology lab, I have developed two ‘snap’-hypotheses (a little like snap-judgments) about research.

1) Research projects are repetitive and often tiring. That’s all there is to it. I will never look at a research paper the same–I know now that behind every research paper, there were likely students like myself or lab assistants that had to do some repetitive task over and over again, for a long time, to make it possible. If there were a word that put all of my work during the past week into perspective, that word would be ‘seeds’. The seed packets taken out of the ground for this year from the buried seed experiment were dried and we spent a lot of time screening the tiny, tiny seeds from sand. If you want to know what that’s like, imagine this: you have a bowl of tan sand with a quarter teaspoon of black sand mixed in. That’s what it’s like. You’re screening black, sand-sized seeds from sand–they’re only 0.6 millimeters in diameter. That being said, even though a project like this is tiring, obviously the excitement of the outcome of such a project still keeps people interested. The effort is well worth it.

2) Research requires a certain level of humor. One of the students in our lab has a project with plants that had to be all replanted because of timing. The weather wasn’t favorable for too long and her plants got too big, so we spent some time this week transplanting her second round of seedlings. Timing, weather, or other factors can ruin project plans in an instant and change the parameters or possibility of a project. Outcomes of a project can take an unexpected turn, but a person has to be flexible and willing to ‘roll with the punches’, if you will, with a positive attitude and unfailing optimism. Keeping a smile on your face keeps everyone a lot more motivated and focused.

And to keep you optimistic, check out this little guy I found while weeding in the field yesterday. He’s grumpy–this is what not to do.

Filed Under: Christina Hall

Corn Research at Pioneer New Holland

June 2, 2014 By Andrew Mark Lefever Leave a Comment

Pioneer New Holland

This summer my internship is taking place at DuPont Pioneer’s corn research station in New Holland, Pennsylvania. This is one of Pioneer’s only corn research stations on the East Coast. They have about 50 acres of field corn test plots on site. Many other plots are located nearby in surrounding counties in southeastern Pa. Some plots are located in Maryland and Delaware as well. At this station the researchers and their assistants run experiments to test and improve Pioneer field corn varieties for both grain and silage. Four interns are hired in the summer to help maintain the corn plots, collect data, and help facilitate the pollination season.

I started work and we were put on a “fast-track” to learn all there was to know about a corn research station. We started at a busy time as corn planting season was in full swing. In a normal year, by the time we would have started helping Pioneer, much of the planting would have already been done. Since it was a wet and cool spring, there was still much to plant when we arrived. In our first few weeks we helped sort seed in preparation for planting, hand-planted individual plots of corn, and rode on the corn planter to plant the big field trials. They plant the corn using a Kinze 8-row corn planter with 8 riders. Everybody had a headset on so we could communicate with each other over the noise of the tractor and vacuum system on the planter. Each person was responsible for dumping different seed packets in one row. Some of the plots they plant are only several feet in length and are either two or four rows wide. Therefore, we traveled at about 1 or 2 mph across the field and dumped a packet of seeds in every 6 seconds to the sound of a timed and automated buzzer.

Planting corn trials

After all of the corn was planted we helped clean up and organize the seed storage and inventory room inside the main building. We spent several rainy days re-organizing seed packets and making an inventory of what they had and what they wanted to keep for next season. Some of what we inventoried would eventually be sent to other research stations. When it is winter in Pennsylvania, seed from Pioneer’s experiments are sent from the New Holland station to other research stations in Mexico and Hawaii, where corn can be grown during those times. This way the experiments and studies continue throughout the calendar year. Also, some of the seed the researchers did not want to keep was discarded in bulk seed bins to later be incinerated or by some means destroyed. These are a few of the things the other interns and I have done and a few of the aspects of the seed research business that we have learned about. It is bound to be an interesting experience as I continue to work for Pioneer.

Filed Under: Andrew Lefever

Jumping Right In

May 30, 2014 By Christina Lee Hall Leave a Comment

My name is Christina Hall and I’m a rising senior in AgSci doing an Invasive Species internship this summer in conjunction with Cornell Cooperative Extension. I’m working in the Weed Ecology and Management Laboratory here in Ithaca this summer and will be working specifically with knapweed. Kaitlyn Anderson (another AgSci blogger) is the other intern working on the same project, but based in Saratoga.

This week has been a whirlwind as I just jumped right in to my internship. I showed up at 8:45 on Tuesday morning and by 9:15 we were in the field cutting samples of rye and hairy vetch. Wednesday then took me towards Watertown where I helped to collect data on swallow-wort at Wehle State Park. Swallow-wort is an invasive species that has caused a great deal of concern over the last ten years. Learn a little more about swallow-wort and attempts at control in this article from the Cornell Chronicle featuring my supervisor and his colleagues.

Thankfully, the weather has been perfect for field work this week and hasn’t left us dying of heat, because Thursday took us back out to the field where we continued work on a buried seed experiment and dug up seed packets from years past. Each packet contains one of four species of weed seeds with sand and simulates seed survival as affected by various cover crops. The seed packets–240 of them–were six inches deep into the soil and were found using a metal detector as each packet was attached to three metal washers.

(This would be the part where I post a hilarious picture from the field of us digging up seed packets like they were buried treasure…but I accidentally deleted the photo from my phone while I was trying to upload it–so laugh anyway at the idea of us digging 240 holes to find seed packets)

This week has helped me to casually get to know some of the people I will be working alongside during the summer and has offered a peek into some of the projects going on in this lab. I’m looking forward to some of the laboratory and other trainings I will have in the next week and am excited to get started on my summer project!

Filed Under: Christina Hall

EC Mapping

August 28, 2013 By Andrew Gardinier Leave a Comment

During the last week of my internship I had the opportunity to learn about electr0conductivity mapping. In field data is collected with the use of Veris Technologies’ EC machine, which can be pulled behind a truck or a smaller machine such as a Kubota RTV. Collecting data with the EC machine allows a farm to map soil type variation within field very accurately. The EC machine allows a technician to make passes in the field every sixty feet, while data and GPS location is collected every second by the Veris Surveyor and YUMA (GPS unit). The raw data is then sent to the GIS group that analysis the data and then makes a map with five different EC values from low (lightest color) to high (darkest color). After that the maps are then sent back to the service manager that works with the farm to make the final say in how the field is broke up into subsections. A work order is then made to have a field technician soil sample within these subsections so there is a more accurate understanding of the variation within the field. Also with these new maps their is the potential for the grower to begin variable rate application of certain inputs such as fertilizer.

Raw data collected in the field.

How the maps appear after the GIS group is done.

Final map with subsections

Filed Under: Andrew Gardinier

Part Two: People

August 25, 2013 By dib27@cornell.edu Leave a Comment

I left off in my last entry talking about some of the important concerns related to the different portions of businesses that the Hosmers own and run. I wanted to learn more about the challenges of running a vineyard, winery, and tasting room not only because I might want to run one someday, but because it would make understanding the lives of fellow employees easier and hopefully prepare me for future employment in one a similar position.

The Hosmers have been in the wine industry for more than three decades. When it comes to owning a vineyard, I mentioned that it would likely take at least half a decade to start to see the return on invested time and money. That may not seem as long to Ma

My last day at Hosmer was the 27th anniversary party. By the end of the day, enough wine had been poured to cover one of the serving counters with empty wine bottles.

ren and Tunker today as it does to me. However, it seems pretty amazing that Tunker was no more than a few years older than myself at the time he started to plant his vines, and he must have understood that the longevity of his venture from the very beginning.

It may be a long time until I can feel the same pride for my life’s work that the Hosmers do today, but I think many people can understand a small part of a winegrower’s pride. The feeling of a day well spent, of being relied on and coming through, and of the eventual harvest are things that most people can appreciate. Now, I try to imagine the satisfaction that comes from tending vines that have seen four decades and hope to understand that someday.

The second part of Hosmer’s that I discussed was the winery. Because of the scale of production at Hosmer, Aaron Roisen is the only needed full time winemaker. While pondering Aaron’s job, I realized that there is skill in the vintner’s trade, a great deal of scientific understanding, and all the romance you can imagine. Aaron Roisen even told me last year that (and I am paraphrasing here) “Sometimes one of the best parts of being a wine maker is the reaction you get from other people when you tell them what you do”. While there may commonly exist a high esteem for this trade, what Aaron meant was that, like every other trade, there are many, less desirable parts to the job. After a long day of working in the rain, or a morning and afternoon of bottling (which, if not monotonous, is often stressful), or working weekends to stay in pace with harvest, the recognition for your trade by strangers may seem to be the only consoling thing.

I do not, believe for a second that the “romantic aura” that surrounds a vintner is the main reason for many joining the field and sticking with it. Of much more value to a vintners is not the opinion of strangers that would treat the job with uninformed awe, but the praise of respected peers. Above even that (according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) might be the self-actualization or fulfillment associated with challenging one’s self and the opportunity to be creative. Even the act of trying to make the same style of wine from year to year is a difficult task as harvest brings different fruit each year. Aaron told me that creative freedom is a very important part of his wine-making career earlier this summer, and I believe it. In my classes and experiments over the last few years, learning and making new creations have been endlessly engaging. Unfortunately, wines are not to customers what they are to the people who want to buy it. I learned that it is the job of the marketing and distribution to essentially create the image and sell the wine.

This overarching responsibility (to create value to the product and assure the sale of it) holds as much creativity and variation in everyday work. All employees needed to create an environment were customers want to buy wine, while individuals like Katie worked on the website and redesign the logo. Others like Maren, Ginny, and David keep up with all the required records, and they all have the responsibility to manage themselves in an effective way.

Coming into the tasting room, I was less prepared by my school work than the other areas of the company. However, unlike working in the vineyard and the winery, I got the opportunity to have the same job and responsibilities that any tasting room worker had. As a result, I feel like I learned a great deal while working with my friends in the tasting room and everywhere else at Hosmers. Thanks guys for giving me an awesome summer.

Filed Under: Daniel Boucher

Harvest and a Reluctant Goodbye

August 23, 2013 By Brooke Parsons Leave a Comment

I am happy to say harvest has began! We are just starting to pick the White varieties and the reds for rosé. They are maturing quite quickly now that the heat has really come on. The nights don’t cool down much like they do in California and I think this makes them ripen faster. An important job during harvest season is to test the maturity of the grapes in order to know when to harvest which parcels. To do this we take Berry samples from all 20 parcels. We bring them back to the lab and count out 300 of each bag. We weigh the 300 berries before squishing them into a pulp. The juice is then filtered from the pulp and seeds. The sugar content is measured with a density measure. The more dense the juice, the more sugar content the juice has. Then we measure total acidity and pH. The data is recorded and compared to last year’s data from the same exact date. It was very interesting because this year the grapes are considerably less mature on this date. The sugars are lower and This is probably because the summer has been milder and with more rain. Seed samples are also taken from the grape crush to analyze their maturity. Looking at all of the little labeled piles of seeds from different varieties really shows the difference between them. The red varieties had larger greener seeds that the White varieties. It is typical for whites to ripen earlier and this was clear from the more shriveled and darker Brown seeds. In addition we tasted the seeds and crunched them up in our mouths. The acidity of the Green seeds was much higher than the drier more Brown seeds. The berry samples and tests are done once each week to study the maturation and to know when to expect to harvest. Whites will likely be finished by the end of August and reds will begin in mid September through October.

Our creative way to count 300 grapes

Nuria sorting seeds

All in a days work

Red harvested for Rosé

The harvesting system is much different than what I am used to. At home a crew comes in to harvest and they are paid per bin they pick. The workers run quickly up and down the rows to dump the grapes at the tractor. Here in Spain the crew is paid hourly which changes the system completely. There is much less rushing and they day in general is more relaxed. In the morning the bins are placed in the rows so they are all ready to go. The crew comes in and picks into the bins which are then picked up by the tractor.

When the grapes are brought to the winery they are immediately crushed. There are 2 large presses that are up high so that gravity can help us and carry the juice to the tanks below. A couple of times we used the small hydraulic press for small batches of grapes. This was much for fun for me because I got to climb into the press and stomp the grapes, “I Love Lucy”- style, as they loaded it up. The juice goes directly into temperature-controlled tanks to wait for fermentation. The first tank took about 3 or 4 days to start. You can tell very easily when it starts because the top gets covered in a layer of white sparkly foam. It’s very pretty.

Stomping!

The Real Press

Harvest is still continuing but unfortunately I had to come back home. School starts soon so I won’t be able to stay for the harvest of the reds. I pretty bummed but that just means I will have to come back to Spain one day! I really had a fabulous time here and will never forget the hospitality that Casa Sicilia showed me. They welcomed me as one of the family and I am so happy to know that I will always have a home here in Novelda. It is hard to say adios but this semester is looking promising. I have wine lab in the shiny new Stocking Hall winery and labs!

I can’t sign off without a little shoutout to my friends in Novelda and my dear Spanglish group. I call them the coffee clan because we met for coffee almost every afternoon, and then filled every weekend with lots of adventures. They helped me so much with learning Spanish and really made my time unforgettable. I dearly hope that one day one of them will show up on my doorstep to visit back in the states. “Spanglish” was also filled with unforgettable people, Spanish and English alike. We got together twice a week and had a great time practicing our languages and laughing…a lot. I can’t wait for the day when one of them calls me in the U.S so I can give back some of the hospitality they showed me.

Heretat de Cecilia

Hasta luego España, nunca te olvidaré.

Ciao! -Brooke

Filed Under: Brooke Parsons

Soil Sampling and PSNT

August 21, 2013 By Andrew Gardinier Leave a Comment

For about the last two weeks or so growers have been harvesting their wheat crop, which gives ACS the opportunity to start soil sampling. Each field that is sample usually has a couple samples to be pulled. A sample is pulled from each section of the field and these section can be broken up topographically, by soil type, or by the electro-conductivity mapping that was done previously to sampling. The procedure for soil sampling is pretty straight forward and the tools we use include soil probe, screw driver, sampling boxes or bags depending on work order, ATV to get around the field, and a GPS unit if necessary. Also on the soil probe there are markings at six, eight, and twelve inches because it is important to be fairly accurate with your depth. When pulling a regular soil sampling it is important to keep your depth between six and eight inches so having the markings on the probe really helps. When actually pulling the samples in each section

Soil sampling a wheat field in Western NY

it takes eight to ten probes to fill a small cardboard box that goes to Dairy One for soil analysis and when we are sending a sample to Spectrum it takes five to six probes to fill those bags properly. When pulling the samples I usually fallow a W or M pattern on the ATV and it is important to avoid wet spots and we also try not to sample in the headlands because they can both alter the sample. Earlier in the summer I also had the opportunity to pull some PSNTs for a couple farms. These are very similar to soils samples but it is important to pull the samples to a depth of twelve inches so that you can determine the full amount of nitrogen available in the soil. These PSNTs are usually pulled around the time when corn has reached the V5 stage just before farms begin to side dress. When pulling the samples you also want to make sure that you avoid taking the sample close to the corn because you could hit the strip of fertilizer they put down while planting.

Filed Under: Andrew Gardinier

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