Life on the Farm | 9

Reflective Essay Nine

Last class we started off the way I enjoy most. That’s one thing I’m hoping to do more of going into the last half of the semester. While I do like the hands on approach that we get I do find the discussions to be extremely informative. It’s nice to know multiple angles of why we do things the way we do them but also looking ahead at ways we can change or incorporate technology to save time spent cultivating, growing, and feeding, while not, or if possible, improve the quality of the crops while possible making the land more fertile in the process.

I was really intrigued to hear others in the class were interested in some alternative methods of growing. While the current organic process is solid the way it is, I do think through the use of the many different “ponic” systems you can use we could increase the efficiency and quite possibly the quality of the things we are growing. I speak mostly from what I know in regards to farm raised fish. I believe this industry could benefit greatly from the organic aquaponic system.

The current model, to the best of my knowledge, is fueled by the gmo soy and corn farm ops that I’ve taken a stand against. I think the fact that you can raise the fish off from the plants and vice versa with a closed loop system is incredible and one worth putting some more thought and efforts behind figuring out. We went to see briefly how the logging process worked but the machine wasn’t wanting to cooperate while we were there. A few of us went to push the trees further into the woods but wasn’t actually possible by hand unfortunately.

Those that stayed behind witnessed Ian fix it, get it running, and saw a pass on the log. Lucky for us we got a video and it was super cool to see how this powerful machine operates. Hopefully we will get to go back and check that out before the end of the class.

Thanks for readings and let me know how you feel about these issues and solutions.