Winter Has Come

Like most of you in the Northern and Eastern US, we got hit with snow this weekend, bringing to an end the fall that we thought would last us at least through Thanksgiving. Unlike our usual first snows in Minnesota, this snow (and ice) has stuck, with daytime temperatures hovering in the high 20s at most.

A picture of my walk into St. Paul campus taken from my phone.

Despite this, things are heating up in my Plant Production class and being able to work under the sunlamps a few days out of the week is a godsend. I definitely picked the right major for that reason. My crops are doing well now that I've learned what I need to do in order to fertilize them properly and our lettuce crops are about ready to take home for salad. Now I just need to find a way to get my boyfriend to actually eat salad...
I've also got an eggplant, two cucumbers and some cherry tomatoes that I'll be taking home next week. I'm not a huge cucumber fan so I'll have to find something creative to do with them, or just find a person who likes cukes more than me to take them. If I have the time, I'd love to try frying the eggplant that I have with my roommates deep-fryer.

For my World Food Problems class, my end-of-term paper is looming ever larger on the horizon and I'm still torn about what I want my topic to be. I have to have it finalized by next Tuesday so I'll have to dive into some research this weekend. My original idea is researching the importance seed-saving has in African cultures and how that relates to food security... But if I can't find enough written on that I might have to change to something else. I have a lot of strong feelings about GMOs (although not in the normal hell-bent against them sort of way) that I could write a paper on... Speaking of which, I will probably at least post something here about my opinions on them soon. Regardless, I need a topic that I can research and write about easily because I want to make this paper actually meaningful.

The last few things that have been happening lately have all been reminding me that I'm almost done with school. I met with my academic adviser to finalize my class schedule for next year, I register for those classes tomorrow and, after next week, I'm done with the regular season of marching band for the last time. I don't really know how to handle all of these emotions because there's just a huge, jumbled, confused mess of them. I'm happy and sad and nervous and everything else all at the same time. As many of my friends would say "#SeniorProblems".

And speaking of being done, yesterday was my last home football game as a member of the University of Minnesota Marching Band. Symbolically flipping my uniform overlay to the maroon side of a graduating member at the game was so bittersweet and leaving the field after my last halftime show was one of the hardest things I've had to do. This group has given me so much over the course of my college career and I've made some of the best memories I think I'll ever have of college as a member of it.

Me and my family who came down to see my final show.

I think that's what this winter has mainly brought with it: the realization that I'm going to be done with this stage of my life soon and I have this huge stretch of uncharted territory in front of me. It's not really like the rest of life where I have a set system to work inside of. There's no school where I can just work my way through a more-or-less comfortable set of hoops. Basically I have to be a real person and that's sort of terrifying. Exciting, yes, but definitely terrifying.

New Semester, New Classes!

Hello all! Apologies for being quiet on the blog front lately, but the beginning of the semester has kept me with very little free time for blogging. (Pro tip: Follow me on Twitter, I'm much more active there in busy times than on my blog!) But now that I have a quieter night to myself, I get to sit down and attempt to capture your interest with the new classes I'm taking.
First up, we have Successful School Gardens. If you saw my last post, you'll know that I'm traveling to England over spring break in March to learn about and teach in schools there with school gardens. This class runs for the whole semester, so we'll be preparing for our trip, as well as writing the lesson plans for teaching a class to students in multiple schools there. After we come back from London, we'll be paired up with schools here in the Twin Cities and will be teaching lessons about apples and microgreens to K-12 students. All the schools we will be paired with have existing school garden programs so we can learn how they work as well. I don't have too much to report on this since I've only been to the class once. It only meets once per week and the first class got cancelled due to extreme cold. (Don't even get me started on how cold it's been in Minnesota this winter!) This class also has a blog so I'll post links to those updates when they start rolling in.
Next up is Organic Farm Management. This is a class that really ties together a lot of things I find interesting. The first thing is, obviously, food. We're learning how to best grow good food in the climate we live in. The second thing, is organic farming. This class works specifically with the "Cornercopia" Student Organic Farm on campus to help them start a lot of the produce that they raise and sell over the course of the summer. Expect a lot of pictures from this class once we start growing all of those.

One of the seedlings from our seedling identification lab. Hard to tell it's an eggplant when it's that small!

Plant Physiology is the most lab intensive courses out of everything I'm taking. The course is actually classified as a "Writing Intensive" course (we need a certain number of these in order to graduate) so a lot of emphasis is put on scientific writing for lab reports. Most of our lab work is focused on environmental effects on crops such as amount of light, nutrient deficiencies, heat/cold, and how all of this affects the plant's growth. We've got a lab going right now testing germination and growth of plants with 16 hours of sun, 8 hours of sun and zero hours of sun. Pretty easy to tell what's going to happen, but the results are interesting to watch nonetheless.
Last but not least is "Sustainable People, Sustainable Planet". This is the only non-Horticulture class that I'm taking this semester and I LOVE it. We talk and read about sustainability as it relates to all different parts of life. Social justice, economy, environment, food systems, you name it. We've only been in class for around three weeks and I've already learned so much. My next post is probably going to be a bunch of stuff I've learned so far that I think everyone should be aware of. Our readings are incredibly interesting as well, so I'll definitely start posting links to those on here and on my Twitter account for you all to check out. Most are very accessible and thought-provoking reads. One big thing we started out looking at is planetary boundaries. I've included a diagram below. It's pretty self-explanatory, but basically the outer ring is the ceiling of where we should keep ourselves to stay within the Earth's resources and the inner ring is the floor that we should be above in terms of poverty, individual rights, education, etc.

Then this is where we are in terms of the inner circle. This means we're below where we should be when it comes to these things.



And then this is where we are in terms of the outer circle (the planetary boundaries) for things related to the environment and our impact on it.



Quite the difference, huh? This class has definitely put a lot of things in perspective for me. There's a lot I still have to learn about sustainability, but I really hope after this class I know how to communicate these ideas to people better so we can all work together to help change the way we interact with the natural world.
And that's all folks! You'll likely see more class related blog posts coming soon, and in the meantime don't forget to follow me on Twitter and Pinterest to keep up with my day to day activities and see what interesting things I've found around the web!