Adrienne's Blog

Blog Post 1

It is hard to believe that three weeks of working on the Stanford Farm have already come and gone.

Perhaps the most fascinating of the jobs we have worked here at the Farm has been the creation of a compost pile—rich, steaming, and chock full of all that nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium (NPK) nutrient goodness. This compost pile is part of an ongoing compost research project at Stanford, a project that was born out of the desire for two things—first, to make use of the horse manure that the Stanford Barn spends upwards of $60,000 a year removing, and second, to develop a cheap way to produce fertile, organic soil for the Farm’s crops.

Creating the perfect compost pile is an art. It requires finding the perfect balance between the essential nutrients of a compost pile (the most important of which are nitrogen and carbon) and managing (among other factors) the moisture, temperature and pH content. The problem that the Farm is facing is an imbalance in the nutrient content. While the carbon levels are through the roof, the nitrogen levels are too low. Fixing this problem will require adjusting the ingredients used in the compost pile.

The Farm is currently experimenting using different amounts of horse manure (rich in nitrogen), horse bedding (rich in carbon), and yard clippings (rich in nitrogen). When building the pile we opted to layer it using the lasagna method—one layer of manure and bedding followed by a layer of “greens” (yard clippings). We repeated this process about 7 times, spraying the pile with water after each layer.

As with any compost pile, only time will tell how successful this trial ends up being; for now we will just have to wait while the pile works its magic.

Blog Post 2

Hello!

These past two weeks on the farm have flown by.

Lately we’ve been knees deep in fresh produce, from pale green cucumbers to scallop-shaped summer squash, and even to will-set-your-tongue-and-mouth-and-whole-body-on-fire padron peppers, which may look small and innocent and harmless (but they’re not!).

Above: A few of the cucumbers that we picked.

Last Wednesday we took a break from the weeding and harvesting and hopped on the bus to the Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey. We wandered through the tide pools, which brimmed with life—crabs scuffled and scuttled from side to side and mussels clung to the rocks, while in the distance a pack of sea lions sunned themselves on the rocky shore.

We also got the chance to see and hold a few echinoderms: sea stars, brittle stars, urchins, and sea cucumbers (which I’m convinced must be the strangest creatures I have ever seen!).

Above: A sketch featuring a sea star, brittle star, and sea urchin

Interestingly enough, sea stars begin their lives not as the penta-radial creatures that we are accustomed to seeing, but as bi-laterally symmetric larvae. These larvae are miniscule, measuring a mere 1 mm. During metamorphosis, the baby sea star keeps its gut, but the rest of its body is transformed into a star-shaped figure. It’s quite an elaborate process.

A couple of days ago we also stopped by the cactus garden, which featured an impressive assortment of drought tolerant plants.

Above: A cactus from the garden (photo courtesy of Sonia)

My favorite—simply because it looked ridiculous—was the agave plant. Although often labeled as a cactus, the agave plant is actually a succulent, similar to the aloe vera plant.

It’s also called a “century plant” (which is slightly misleading, because it doesn’t bloom once every century, but rather once every 15-20 years).

Above: An agave plant blooms.

That’s all for now—I’m excited to see what the next few weeks will bring!