Projects, PowerPoints and Plots in Daviess County

Hey everyone, Brad Hagan here, this is my second blog post from Daviess County. It doesn't seem like 4 weeks have already gone by. Since my first post, traveling around the state has slowed down, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy. These last 2 weeks have had a lot of interactions with local farmers. My project is on irrigation systems used in the area and I am to give surveys to the farmers. This can be more difficult than how it sounds. Meeting up with busy farmers is very challenging and relies solely on weather. If it’s raining, I’m usually calling farmers.

            Besides working on project surveys, corn and soybean plots have been planted too, though not nearly as busy as previous plots. We’ve finished the corn plots, but are just now getting soybean plots underway. Plots work out great for meeting farmers, especially those who I will eventually attempt to interview on irrigation operations.
            Not all time has been spent in the field however. In our office time I spend a lot of time working on a PowerPoint that will be shown too everyone wanting to become a Private Pesticide Applicator. Putting a 113 page handout into PowerPoint slides can be time consuming, but I am happy to be able to contribute to something many farmers in the area will see.
            By far the coolest thing I’ve been able to do in extension so far was to check out the military base in Muhlenberg County. Darrell Simpson, the Ag agent there, put together a class on recognizing the signs of meth and marijuana production, safety precautions and self protection. This class lasted all morning and was very informative considering agents never know what they might walk up on. After lunch they took us around the military base and showed us the shooting ranges. We then split up into two groups. One group took a handgun shooting training class used for police; the other group took a machine gun shooting training class used for the military. These trainings took place inside barracks. The guns were real handguns, M-16s, M-4, and a 50 Caliber machine gun; however, they didn’t shoot live rounds, instead had air compressors to stimulate the kick of a real gun. We were all placed in front of a huge screen and were too shoot at “the enemy” in certain scenarios. Once the scenario had played out he would replay the scenario, this time showing where the shooter had shot, and how good or awful the shot was. They were usually awful shots. Regardless it was a very cool experience.