Week 4

 I have definitely learned a lot from doing this senior project. Even though it was only four weeks, I feel like I got a good view on what it is truly like to work on a farm. Through doing things myself and watching Lyn, Juvencio, and Polly, I saw how much goes into running and operating a successful farm. I wrote a little bit about this last week, but one thing that I really realized was how much weather impacts the work. It is a big factor in whether or not things will grow and when they need to planted. It also really affects wildlife within the farm as well as your own work (if it is really hot it is a lot harder to do work in the greenhouses whereas if it is super cold and rainy it is harder to do stuff outside). 

I am really glad that I got the opportunity to do this as my project. It gave me an insight into what the first step in the food industry is like. I feel like I didn't really know very much about it before because this part of the food industry isn't widely discussed or known about. Being able to work and be apart of it showed me how much work and organization and knowledge it takes. I would definitely recommend this project to another student. I think that it is a great contrast to the school environment that we are always in. You also gain a lot of knowledge about plants and how to grow them which I think is information that is helpful to know throughout your life. 

I also got to do some things that I never would have thought throughout these four weeks. Yesterday we got to feed the calf again. This time we got to make the milk ourselves. We put a bunch of milk powder that was made for calfs into a pot of water and warmed it up. We had to make sure that it wasn't too hot or it would make the calf sick so we ended up having to cool it down a little too. Then we poured it into his bottle and fed it to him. Between yesterday and the time we fed him last, I think that he has also been learning to eat grass too. 

We also drove to Pumpkin Ridge yesterday to do the afternoon seeding there. Usually Polly comes to La Finquita but this time we came to her. It was kind of nice that we got to go to both of the farms for our last day. We had to load up Lyn's truck with a bunch of plant starts and we put the flowers in the back of my car (Lyn makes bouquets for the farmers market too). When we got to Polly's Tulip and I got into the back of a truck that had two of the big bags of dirt, and we filled a bunch of flats. We had to do it in the truck because the bags are so big that they are really hard to get out of the truck when they are completely full. Here are some pictures from the last day!

Warming up the milk:

Feeding the calf:

Flowers in the back of my car:

A cucumber from the cucumber plants we weeded in the morning:

A fig tree at La Finquita that has so many figs! not ripe yet though:(