POS-500 Topic 6 Field Experience

Answer for POS-500 Topic 6 Field Experience in $14 Only POS-500 Topic 6 Field Experience  Allocate 3 hours in the field to support this assignment. Attend a school board meeting for a local school district. If you are unable to attend in person, you may watch a live stream or an official recorded video of a recent school board meeting. In a 500-750-word reflection about your experience,…

Today on the Wiebe farm we spent quite a bit of time watching the cute baby ducklings and chicks run around their little pens. They don’t stay this tiny for long, so we’ve got to enjoy them at this stage while we can! After saying “They’re so cute!” for the hundredth time, we reluctantly went off to complete other farm chores. Today we tackled harvesting the remaining garlic scapes from the garlic patch. The garlic scape is a little pod that holds the seed garlic. We harvested them for planting time. Garlic is different from most crops since it’s usually planted in autumn rather than spring.

After we collected all the garlic scapes, we moved to winding the cucumber vines around the string trellis system we installed earlier. By winding the vine plants, the plant is given more support. Another benefit is it helps the plant grow vertically rather than horizontally, which saves a lot of space in the garden beds for more crops.

Next we did more weeding. There is always weeding to be done on the farm. I realized how tempting it would be to just use a convenient and quick solution like weed killer to get rid of the pesky weeds. It’s difficult physical labor and is hard to keep on top of. I asked Bruce about how he feels about weeds and how he handles them. He said that in order to alleviate the burden of weeding, there are lots of strategies on how to attack them. The other crucial part is using the right tools and techniques to conserve energy and cause less strain to the body.

8:00am-12:00pm

We started out today with doing some weeding in the beet fields. The beets were tiny little shoots in a row, very hard to notice unless you can identify them by their reddish coloured stem. Bruce has them covered with a mesh fabric sheet to reduce bugs and weeds and to keep birds from eating the seeds. We drew the fabric back and used a stirrup hoe to remove surrounding weeds. I’d never seen a hoe like this before; it has a sharp edge that severs the weed and made it easy to pick out the weeds. 

After spending the morning weeding with Jerome and Mik, we moved on to transplanting tomatoes. Bruce used a drill to loosen the soil and create a hole for each plant. The rows all had plastic covering to reduce weeds which the irrigation drip line ran under. This field was the one we built the trellis system on, and today we were implementing it to use. To plant each tomatoes, we first soaked the plant in water, and put bone meal and egg shells in the bottom of each hole. Next we would take two long strings of farm twine hanging from above and bring their ends into the bottom of the hole. We wanted the twine to have some tension so the tomatoes plant can reliably climb up it and use it for stability. With one hand holding the strings taut in the bottom of the hole, we were passed a tomato plant which we planted right on top of the strings, locking them into place. The holes were filled with dirt and that was how the tomatoes were planted. We did two and a half rows of tomatoes. Bruce explained the way the trellis system worked: the tomatoes plant would have to be pruned so that only one main vine would grow up the trellis. Then we adjusted the drip line to ensure it ran close to each plant base.

After planting tomatoes we transplanted spaghetti squashes into the fields. Again, the plants were given water and bone meal was put into each hole. The holes were not as deep as the tomatoes plants, and we were instructed to only cover the root ball. We adjusted the drip line under the plastic barrier for this crop as well. One extra step we did was make build up the dirt around each plant so that the plant didn’t lean over onto the black plastic. Apparently, if the plant is touching the plastic, the hot surface can burn the plant.

Today we transplanted some zucchini’s and built a trellis system for tomatoes. 

The zucchini transplant we used a 100ft reel tape measure to achieve even spacing for planting. They were planted in an alternated way so that each plant wasn’t overcrowded. A small spade was used to create holes in the plastic overlaid (this was used to keep in warmth, moisture, and humidity in the soil). The holes weren’t super deep, but the zucchini roots don’t grow too deep. So we took each little sectioned off plant and put it into the soil, using two fingers to firmly push it into the dirt. We watered them and put large stones around them to hold down the plastic (that way it wouldn’t move around a lot in windy weather, disturbing the plants). 

Then we did the tomato trellis system. Again we used the tape measure to space out the posts. Bruce did most of the calculating because he knew how many posts we had, and  how the spacing would be divided. Three people figured out the alignment of each post and then they were hammered (ladder, and sledge hammer). My job was holding the post straight while Cai made sure they were aligned and Bruce hammered it into the ground. It made me realize that even a simple job like installing posts requires a lot of man power on a farm, if you want it to be done properly. The technical part of it wasn’t complicated, but hands were needed to achieve the result. 

Next, we put a T shaped metal piece on top of each stake. Its purpose was to support the metal pipe that would go above. The we installed a bunch of metal poles that we connected together with a screw. From these, farm twine was hung down. How it works: The twine goes under the soil when the tomatoes are planted, and then the tomatoes vines grow up the twine and are given support.

Bruce and I were talking about how much produce his farm makes, or how many people his farm would provide for. Its a lot harder to determine that because it varies on how the crop turns out, if there are people to buy… its based more on weekly demand and what’s available.

Apparently, Bruce shared a statistic that at the average North American local farmer’s market, the capacity of food brought to that farmers market can only support 1.5% of the towns population. Thats why farmers markets are fleshed out with other activities. This percentage is apparently seen across all sorts of towns, that only 1.5% of the population can be provided for by local product.

I guess it made me wonder why that was so… was it because there was no way the land could actually provide, was there a lack of interest in local food because its seasonal and requires more effort and involvement than the grocery store? Availability is limited, amount is limited, pick up is at a certain limited time, the prices are not always cheaper.