The past to weeks have been a little slower than the rest, seeing as we were all trying to recover from the county fair. I spent the morning of Monday, July 15th with my Land Judging crew. I lined up a lesson to be taught by Mr. Sammy Baker who is one of Adair County's former Vocational Agriculture teachers. He did a wonderful job teaching the Land Judging score card which can be very tedious to learn. Later that night all of the agents in the office and myself attended an Ag Alumni meeting where we got an update on "what's new" in UK Agriculture. On Tuesday we had a lot of rain in the county and had to cancel Land Judging practice so I did various jobs around the office. Wednesday, July 17th was a day full of fun!! We loaded down the office van with seven teens from Adair and Green Counties that participate in Youth Leadership and headed to Pigeon Forge to go white water rafting. The trip consisted of a night at the NASCAR go-cart track, a stay in a hotel, a morning at Bass Pro Shops, and an afternoon of white water rafting!!! Rafting was something I had never done before so I was already nervous but I became even more nervous after having a dream the night before that three of my teeth got knocked out. What made the situation even worse was the fact that our water guide had gotten four of his teeth knocked out by paddles. I WAS FREAKED OUT!!! Needless to say I made it out alive and with all my teeth intact and had a great time. We returned home late Thursday night and I had to be back at the office at six o'clock on Friday morning to begin cooking for Farmer's Market. Although I was tired, I still had a blast using ingredients from the market to turn delicious Kentucky Proud recipes into samples for the community. We had a great turnout and the vendors at the Farmer's Market saw increases in their sales.
Throughout the next week I spent a lot of time with the ANR agent making farm visits and figuring some yield estimations on research plots. We visited a farmer who we believed might have some compaction issues in his corn crop but we determined that was not the case. I am not sure what the ANR agent ended up diagnosing. We also visited a farmer who had an unidentified weed in his hay crop and we were not sure what type it was on the spot so we brought it back to the office where I identified it as Barnyard grass. We spent the rest of the week calculating yield estimations in zinc and boron research plots for corn. To do the estimations, we measured 17 1/2 ft. down a row and counted the number of ears. We then took four ears from that row and counted how many kernels up and around each ear had and then multiplied to find number of kernels per ear. We averaged the data from the four ears, multiplied it by the number of ears we counted, and then divided by 90 (medium kernel size) to project the yield. The lowest we calculated was 181 and the highest was 212. I really enjoyed this task because it is something that I am highly interested in. On Friday, July 26th I attended the Intern Roundup where we spent a fun filled day in Woodford County!!! I was so happy to see all of my fellow interns again and hear some reflections from their summers!!!
I will spend my last two weeks preparing my Land Judging crew for the state contest, preparing the sportsman's club for our huge county shoot, and preparing myself for my last day!!! Once again, I am beyond thankful for this wonderful opportunity that I have been blessed with. Best Wishes Everyone!!!
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