First Blog
Since we were introduced to our mentor Patrick during orientation day, I knew we were going to have a great summer internship. I was amazed by the approximately 35 students from all over the bay. On that same day we were introduced to a place that I call "my second home". We learned the history about the farm, which is amazing. Even though its location is next to a construction zone and golf course, it is one of the most peaceful places at Stanford. We have seen a great variety of insects such as bees pollinating sunflowers, since there are a great variety of sunflowers. For the most part we do weeding, which helps the crops have less competition to grow healthy. We also harvest; so far we are harvesting zucchini and sunflower, because if we don’t harvest them when they are ready the plant would give all its energy to the zucchini even though it’s ready ready to harvest. Since the farm has lots of plants we have to find a sustainable way to irrigate without wasting water. To prevent using a high amount of water the farm has a drip irrigation system to prevent water from been wasted and is also irrigated directly to the crop. Corie, one of Patrick's students has tested some of the soil from the farm and she has found that the soil is healthy. She have us a short tour to her lab. She showed us all the processes it takes for the soil to be tested. It takes about six hours to see the results. Every Thursday we have a day that we call "pizza day". We harvest all we can such as zucchini, squash, and basil, and we add those ingredients to our pizza. When we are in the mood we do "journal time," which means we all go to a place that we haven’t been yet at the farm and have a time alone to concentrate and have a reflection on what we see and hear on our surroundings. So far the internship is awesome, I enjoy the environment and also love the connections with all have with Corie, Patrick, Erin, and the rest of the interns.
Second Blog
So far we have been doing pretty much the same things. Of course we have seen changes with our research. For our project is a little bit too early to conclude which soil is best so is still in process.
We have been going to fun field trips with Patrick and his students. So far we've been to Jasper Ridge to identify where and how the center of the experiment is located and we saw how the dilemma on taking it down makes sense. We saw how the sediment that we are testing is almost as the same height as the dam, which is a bad thing because it can erode downstream, which can harm the ecosystem and also reach Stanford's facilities. We came out with the conclusion that is best to get rid of the dam to let fish swim upstream and kind of make the environment as it's supposed to be. On the down side, we will lose the wetlands which is bad for animals that have already adapted and also is one of the a few that we have in California.
We went to another field trip at UC Santa Cruz. We went to their farm and is huge they have a lot of diversity of many plants. We saw a lot of interns working, approximately 60. We took some plants and we will grow them on our own and use it in our farm. We are especially interested in native plants that can attract native species. So far we have been weeding, working in our irrigation system and of course we save those Thursdays to work and have pizza time. We have seen birds; I see different type of species every day. I've seen a deer.
Another mini field trip was walking to the new site for the farm. Patrick came down with his new ideas and new techniques of growing and starting a new farm. We are happy to see the farm go to the next level.
Third Blog
I enjoyed being at Stanford; it was one of the greatest experience I ever had. I enjoyed all the power points all the interns presented- even though I didn't understand some, I really learned a lot. It was sad saying good bye to all our friends, but at the end we learned that we all have someone to lean on meaning that all our knowledge can be shared among each other; we can work together with any type of projects, and it doesn't matter who we choose as a partner. I want to thank everyone for a great experience. I wish I can come back, but I will leave this great opportunity for new students that deserve to be here, new fresh minds that can keep up with this project, and perhaps even discover something that we are close to reach. I liked the history of life projects as well; they had great presentations and were happy with their projects. I want to wish everyone a good luck at AGU; it is the most amazing place on earth, maybe after the farm. I love Stanford and the farm became my second home. My favorite project for the history of life is Melody's because she has data collected from our backyard which is Baka California and some other parts of California and has recent data, rather than that from millions of years ago. Yet, I loved all of them. For the general program, I enjoyed Catherina's project (she is good at talking) and of course her partner, too; they had a really cool project, which I kind of don't remember now much, but I liked how their data was collected from the bay. Something I like is that now I know a little bit more about what we have near our home. Finally I want to say that we all did it!!!!