Day 1- Laying out the Plan and Research

The Plan

The plan for today is to hopefully clarify with my mentor what I plan on accomplishing throughout this intensive as well as continuing to research the seven terms my host father gave me. I’ve already completed research for two of them (before the start of school) and I feel confident I’ll be able to get through all of, if not a majority of them today. Additionally, I plan to continue writing down any questions that come to mind while researching and looking up any unfamiliar agricultural terms, this way I come prepared with topics of conversation. If I by chance run have any spare time I’m planning on looking up some key French words that I might need on my trip.

Mid Day Check-In

As of now, I am slightly concerned about all the freedom I have as I don’t know if I want to focus on the broad idea of sustainability, hone in on one specific aspect, or even turn it into a comparison about what France is doing differently in terms of sustainability. After discussing these concerns with Ms. Fleming, my mentor, I was advised that that would become clear later on. Ms. Fleming and I also discussed another concern of mine, running out things to do while in France. She advised me that if that did happen, which she felt confident it wouldn’t, then I could do research on topics that my host father didn’t mention, such as sustainable irrigation methods, eco-friendly pest control, and sustainable water procedures/usage. All of this was really helpful to hear and definitely eased my worries. After this conversation, which happened early morning, I proceeded to follow my goals of researching my agricultural terms and made decent progress. With regards to my research, I completed the term “Forage” and “ Crude Fiber” both of which were not terms given to me but rather words I found in my readings and wanted to better understand. (These terms will be able to be seen shortly in a glossary I will be adding to my page.) I also started working on one of the people my host father asked me to look into. I wasn’t able to finish it, but in short, this man name Gabe Brown is a farmer that firmly believes in the Holistic Management idea, and from what I’m picking up, Holistic Management is all about how everything in the ecosystem works together and isn't separate parts but rather one whole entity that balances each other out. I have added Holistic Management as well as tilling, cover crops, companion crops, glyphosate, and broiler hens to the terms I want to research. I would also like to research the difference between pesticide and herbicide.

Reflection

Overall, I think today was a good first day. It was a little difficult getting used to the idea that I am my own teacher as sometimes I would find myself distracted by friends who had an extended break and wanted to stop by and chat. In the future, I think I will become better with this freedom and become more strict in saying “I need to focus” and such. I only found this happened a few times though and thought, for the most part, I stayed very on task. Tomorrow I’m hoping to accomplish a little bit more seeing as I’ll have a whole two hours and a half extra due to the fact I won’t need to have an in-depth meeting with my mentor, have my picture taken, or do an advisee challenge. I think I’ll have all my research done by the time I get to France Saturday morning (assuming I don’t find tons of new terms to research).