The Plan
I believe the plan for today, besides researching, is to go out to a neighboring apple orchard and tell them ways that they can improve their orchard. It was only briefly mentioned but from past experience I have a feeling that that is what will be happening. I by no means expect this trip to be informational but rather just another opportunity for me to see what all goes into being an apple producer and what their job entails. Depending on how long the meetup lasts I plan on doing more research on Elaine, as well as finish finalizing my bug specialist notes, and ask Pascal questions I’ve come up with during my research.
What I Learned
So today I ended up going to the neighboring apple orchard and it was what I expected it to be: Pascal and Stephanie talked with the producer and I stood around listening and observing the apples. I did try to make my trip a little bit more valuable though because whenever I saw a mark on a leaf or an apple, or a bug I thought was noteworthy, I took a picture of it so I could later ask Pascal what it is. I never ended up showing Pascal the pictures simply because when he and I were together we were both absorbed in something else, oftentimes it was asking/answering questions or interpreting a French article. Besides the orchard and asking questions though I also did some more research on Elaine, the main thing I learned from her is the idea that lichens and moss are the start of the evolutionary process of developing more sophisticated vegetation such as trees and shrubs are grasses. Another main thing that I learned from Elaine is that in order to grow different types of vegetation such as vegetables, shrubs, hardwoods, etc. you need to have a certain ratio of bacteria to fungi. An example of this is that a mature tree needs a 1000:1 ratio while a small shrub or crop may need a 1:1 ratio. I wasn’t able to go very deep into the article due to the complex ideas and the added difficulty of translating everything but according to Pascal, most of it is just a summary of what I’ve learned, things along the lines of “when you mess with the environment it’s bad for the microbes” kind of thing. In addition to reading up on Elaine, I also looked into the idea of redox which is a shorter word for oxidation-reduction and, in short, is all about the plant finding a balance between everything. The best way to describe it is that there's a point where the plant is in perfect balance with everything, it’s not reducing too much, and it’s not oxidizing too much. If it goes out of this balanced point then that’s when problems start because the plant will put ALL its energy into getting back to that perfect point, in doing so, it stops putting energy into photosynthesizing and putting sugars into the ground which then doesn’t feed the underground ecology that usually protects them. That’s the simplified version, the real thing is more complex and too hard to explain through writing.
Reflection
Compared to the other days I don’t feel like I accomplished as much. I have a feeling that this is partially a result of the trip coming to the end, for, in the beginning, there was so much to learn, though as time progressed and I started to understand more and more, everything started to tie together, and I didn’t have as many loose ends to follow and look into. I also think part of the reason that I wasn’t as productive today was that a considerable amount of my time was spent writing the previous day’s blog as well as translating french articles. I found translating to be especially time-consuming seeing as I had to constantly switch pages and copy and paste, as well as spend extra time trying to interpret translation errors in already complex topics. To expedite this translation process I ended up asking Pascal for help whereupon he proceeded to read through one of the difficult articles, and as he did so, summarize what was being said. I found this very beneficial because not only did it increase how much I was learning, but it also increased the level at which I was understanding what I was learning. (To give credit to where it is due, Stephanie also did something similar where I would come to her with a sentence I didn’t understand and she would end up reading the whole paragraph and explain to me what the paragraph was saying.)