Junetastic Madness

          Announcements, announcements, announcements, second verse same as the first a little bit louder and a whole lot worse.  Just had to get the last of my inner camper spirit out of me.  Wow has the month of June flown by.  It has been filled with work activities, workshops, and camp just to name a few. 

            Recently we held our first ever county livestock day.  Roughly 60 4Hers attended.  This event was put on by the extension office at our local fair grounds.  Interest within the community has grown to raise livestock animals and/or show them at the fair.  Local members from the community who have ties to the livestock industry came and gave their advice and expertise to 4Hers with livestock production books and/or show animals.  With tremendous community support we had animals of every breed brought so the 4Hers could practice on live animals. 

            This past week was 4-H camp at Camp Brule for Bradford, Tioga, Susquehanna, Sullivan, and Wyoming counties.  We had over two hundred 4Hers show up ranging in ages from eight to eighteen!  The days were filled with swimming, canoeing, leather making, fishing, rifle and shotgun shooting, hiking, outdoor cooking, animal dissection, and crafts to name just a few.  The weather wasn’t exactly sunny and 75, but we had a blast in the rain and mud.  Nights were filled with campfire, group skits, and s’more making.  For morning workshop I assisted with animal dissection.  The first day we examined flies with magnifying glasses, broke apart corn stalks to understand germination, and built wooden bugs.  The second day the group dissected two cow reproductive tracts.  One was open meaning it was not pregnant. And the other had a five month old calf in it.  The final day we took water samples and examined what was in the water and dissected two cow hearts and a tongue.  The seven kids in our group had super great questions and it was great having the nurse assist in our workshop the day we dissected the hearts.  It made the learning experience a lot more meaningful than coming from a couple of extension agents.  In the afternoon I ran the fishing workshop.  I greatly enjoy covering this workshop.  Helping and watching the kids fish really is quite the sight and always provides a good laugh.  I can’t begin to tell you the number of fish hooks I tied, the number of worms I hooked, lines I pulled out of trees, and yanking hooks out of fishes’ mouths.  But, it was all well worth it watching a first time camper catch their first fish and helping others with a disability be able to fish.  Only one boy got hooked and he took it like a champ and was greeted by girls everywhere asking about his battle wound.

            With camp now over things are busier than ever in the office still.  We have exactly one month until our county fair!  The dairy entries are piling up and I am submitting them to construct our show catalog.  Dairy day is also this coming Monday and we are all really excited about that.  This year we are changing it up a little bit.  In the morning the 4Hers will learn how to properly fit and show their animal.  In the afternoon they will learn how to read a pedigree and we are going to conduct a mock auction!  With our county deeply rooted in the dairy industry and many of our 4Hers owning registered animals.  We believe these skills are important to possess. 

            Along with all this I am continuing to scout my soybean sentinel plot along with five other soybean fields geographically dispersed throughout the county.  Information such as plant population, growth stage, and disease and insect pressure is then relayed to Penn State and constructed into a field crop newsletter that is put out every week. 

            Enjoy the rest of your month of June!

 

 

Penn State Extension Summer Internship

Its summertime!  And just like a song on the radio it’s played for a few short minutes and moves on.  My summer has been a whirl wind of experiences so far.  A mixtape you could say.  This summer for the second year I am working for Penn State Extension Endless Mountains in Bradford County.  I really enjoy the people I work with and work for.  It is what brought me back for another summer.  The variety of daily tasks, the interaction with the community, and linking it all to agriculture is fabulous.

Lately I have been working in the office getting ready for our county fair the last week in July.  My passion lies in the dairy industry and this year I have been given the brunt of the workload to make this year’s show successful.  Last year we had close to 100 animals for the 4-H show and well over 200 in our open show!  We are hoping this year is nothing different.  I have been constructing mailings requesting sponsors for our shows and getting the paperwork finalized for animal submission forms.  I must say I have become much familiarized with the copier, folding papers, and sealing envelopes.  FYI things go much faster when you use a glue stick instead of saliva.  As much as I like working in the office with the other interns the time I spend outside of the office is wonderful.  And I soak every second of it up.

I have been to numerous schools helping to teach an array of topics.  I have worked with autistic children teaching them the importance of earthworms in the soil.  Bring a classroom full of boys a bucket of dirt filled with earthworms and you have a morning full of things to talk about.  I have also been to numerous field days.  I have taught what the word horticulture means played a game identifying common vegetable crops, and why gardening is beneficial.  These field days are so much fun.  Witnessing the students’ eyes light up when you give them things to touch and smell.  It breaks up the monotony they have had all winter long.  The questions you sometimes get are so off the wall, but make what you are doing so worth it.  At the same time they sometimes surprise you just how much they do know!  Along with the school based lessons I have gotten to travel the county working with farmers.  Since I have been at Penn State agronomy has really interested me. 

One day I traveled with the county agronomist to recalibrate a sprayer a farmer had recently purchased.  He like many in the county was in his early to mid-sixties milking cows and doing most of the work himself.  With his bad knees he wanted to get the most out of his sprayer without having to get out and refill it.  We came in to help with the math and calibrating the smaller nozzles he had purchased.  Its moments like that, that make extension what it was founded on and feel good inside helping someone out who wasn’t too proud to ask for help.  I am also in charge of four or five soybean fields around the county that I will be scouting over the summer and relaying that information back to the agronomist which he will then construct into a newsletter to the Pennsylvania Soybean Association.  Just yesterday I set corn earworm traps in sweet corn patches that I will be checking weekly to see if the owners should spray.  These are just some of the big projects this summer I have while working at the extension office. 

No two days are the same and that is how I like it.  Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I do living it.