Jonathan VanBuskirk - Week 4

I feel weird saying this because the other interns seem to have had busy weeks, but Week 4 was the least busy week I've had so far! My mentor, Andrew Kness, was away at the Wye Research and Education Center doing... whatever important ag agents do. I don't really know. But while he was gone, I had a lot of time to work on smaller projects around the office.

I spent most of last week programming and setting up a weather station for the office. The station records wind speed, rainfall, temperature, pressure, humidity, and a handful of other metrics in real time. As a severe weather and meteorology nerd, this was one of my favorite things I've done so far during the internship.

The weather station set up outside of the office. The 4H sign is marking where the soil moisture meter is pressed into the ground, to protect it from mowers.

Now, every morning when I walk into the office, I start by turning on the dashboard set up on my desk and reviewing the weather readings from the previous day.

The weather station dashboard, sitting on my desk. Here, weather data is updated every 60 seconds, displaying temperature, humidity, pressure, rainfall, and other data points from the weather station outside the office. 

In addition to the weather station, I also set up a paired soil moisture meter. This allows for real-time readings of relative soil moisture, between 0% and 100% saturation. Unfortunately, I had to install it in compacted, almost entirely clay soil, so I don't imagine the readings will be very representative of the surrounding area.

The rest of my time this week was spent working on a one-page report for my mentor about last year's soybean fungicide trials. It was cool to see the formal formatting of the paper come together at the end. It felt very... official.

Other than that, I spent a LOT of time exploring and reading this week. I wandered the trail outside the office, finding pawpaw trees, wineberry bushes, and even a chicken-of-the-woods mushroom! I also found one of my favorite plants ever: sticky willy. Now, I know the name is questionable, but trust me, it's an amazing plant.Sticky willy, also known as goosegrass, velcro plant, or, for the nerds out there, Galium aparine, is a small, almost-vining plant with two unique features that make it my favorite tool for messing with people. First, it has microscopic recurved spines that make it stick like Velcro to almost any fabric surface. This makes it a delightful tool for getting stuck all over people's clothes. Second, it is COVERED in little seeds (what some people call hitchhikers) that stick to anything they touch and are an absolute pain to remove. So, sticky willy... it's a fun plant.

Sticky Willy!!! The vining plant in the middle of the image with tiny, spiky balls on it, the seeds, found just outside the office. 

The weekly connection and guest speakers continued our conversation on AI and technology, going more in depth into the science of precision agriculture. Technology seems to be everywhere in my work in Extension. Probably 90% of my time this week was spent in Microsoft Word creating a paper, working with a weather station, or using apps to help identify one of my favorite plants.

I believe technology is a good thing, but it's also incredibly easy for us to rely on it completely. One thing I continue to appreciate about Extension is that I'm almost forced to use technology as a tool while still relying on communication and people skills that will benefit me in the future.