Hello again everyone! It's hard to believe we're already half way through the internship, time flies! This was another week packed with new experiences and learning opportunities.
Monday and Tuesday were spent at the Kent and Talbot County Extension Office's preparing for both county fairs. If you haven't seen the county fair schedules yet, Talbot county fair is less than two weeks away, and Kent County begins less than a week after the Talbot County Fair ends. So yes, I will be running around like a headless chicken both weeks, but considering I showed livestock at both fairs for years, the hustle and bustle fair season is nothing new to me. In Kent County, I prepared for the Master Showman competition by labelling the show materials for the competition so they hopefully don't grow a pair of legs and walk away from us at the fair. Talbot County activities were focused on the tedious tasks like organizing tags for indoor exhibits and separating indoor competition entry sheets based on age divisions. As boring as people may think it'd be, it is oddly meditative to do those more repetitive tasks.
I am making good progress with my agritourism project for Queen Anne's County, and have finished a draft of compiled ideas, resources, and legal requirements from the research I've done over the past few weeks. Once I am able to meet with the department of economic development and tourism, I will have an idea of what I can do going forward to fit the goals the department has for agritourism in the county.
On both Wednesday and Thursday, I traveled to the Wye Research and Education Center. Wednesday I was able to listen in on the WREC's Weed Management course and watched Caroline County extension agent Travis Ford work with his drone to do scouting pictures. Thursday I attended the Maryland Crop Scouting school alongside Jenny Rhodes. Both of these days were used to help me expand my knowledge in crop production, as most of my knowledge in the agriculture industry revolves around livestock. During the crop scouting school, I was able to learn about pest, disease, and weed identification and management. Once again, I also was able to watch a drone demonstration by Travis. This time, however, he also put the offer on the table for people to try flying the drone themselves, so of course I had to take the opportunity. At first, the drone had an automated flight path, and did everything literally at the push of a button, after the automated course was completed though, he had me fly it in manual mode. It definitely took some getting used to figuring out what the controls did, but it was impressive seeing the amount of work the drone could do in a short time period.
Coming to Friday, I went with Beth Hill to help run a short character counts class for Kent & Queen Anne's Counties Horizons summer camp program. We were able to spend some time teaching this years group of 7th graders about the importance of citizenship, and although it was a tough crowd, I was able to learn some teaching tactics to help keep the kids engaged and focused.
Heading into the weekend, outside of extension work, I took the next step in my 4-H career. After 12 years being a 4-H member, and one year as a 4-H volunteer, I was nominated to the Maryland 4-H All Star program back in March this year. Over the weekend I was able to officially be initiated into the program, and look forward to the help I can provide to the 4-H program as a 4-H All Star. I will say, the initiation in the program was... odd, to put it lightly, but I am honored to be able to represent 4-H and give back to the program while following the traditions of those who made the program over a century ago.
First photo as an official Maryland 4-H All Star!
Comments
Post a Comment