WEEK 3: Short, Simple, & Sweet ;-)

Hey, Hey, Hey...you're back!

This is my third week in good ol' Georgia, which makes it week numero 3 of the NACUFS internship! As you can probably tell by the title of this post, this week was a very active, yet relaxing week. I had to go back to my hometown Friday-Sunday, so this week I'll only be blogging about Monday through Thursday.

Monday and Tuesday we worked on the farm for the first half of the day and worked on the herb garden and our composting projects the second half (after lunch).

Baby goat #24

All farm fresh eggs! :-)

On Monday, we got the chance to pick freshly laid chicken eggs from the chicken pen! One of the workers told us how to look for bad eggs, which we learned are essentially any eggs that are cracked. We also got a chance to feed the baby farm goats their milk through a bottle. I was so shocked to see how fast and frantically the goats grabbed and sucked the formula from the bottles. In less than 2 minutes they completely guzzled about 10oz of fluid. After working at the farm, in the afternoon, we worked a little more on the herb garden and brainstormed alternate ideas of how we could re-create the herb garden and finalized our vision for the herb garden. Monday night Syd and I checked out some local tennis courts not too far down the road from KSU and played for a little over an hour ...until we started getting bit by the infamous mosquitos. -_-


Tuesday morning on Hickory Grove Farm consisted of shoveling holes and planting tomatoes in the field! Since the the farm was purchased by KSU less than a year ago, they're running a couple months behind schedule with planting produce. It may have been a really really hot and humid day, but we had no time to waste - "Zee tomatoes must be planted!" After working on the farm all morning, we finished painting the rocks we collected for the KSU sign and colored one of our raised bed pallets. Out of the paint color options we had, we chose red, purple, and green as the colors for our sign and a pale yellow for the color of our flat, raised bed pallets. After the paint dried on the pallet, We finished planting the dill, parsley, purple basil and some flowers into the flatbed!

The baby Roma tomato plants
 we planted at Hickory Grove Farm

Wednesday was the most lax work day we've had thus far (physically speaking). Aside from the usual assisting at orientation, we spent a majority of our day on the quiet floor of the campus library working on gathering ideas and designing our Plow to Chow blog. The Plow to Chow blog is a weekly blog Sydney and I are required to create and maintain throughout the duration of the summer. Plow to Chow focuses on KSU's sustainable farm-to-campus initiatives, including the 3 campus farms, the KSU farmer's market, and the herb garden! Check our awesome blog out for yourself at: http://ksuplowtochow.blogspot.com/

Thursday was my last day of work for the week since I left to go home from Friday to Sunday. Thursday evening we took our place on our usual corner at Frey Road and were our goofy selves promoting the KSU Farmer's Market. However, our Thursday morning was a little change of pace from our usual outdoor duties. From 8am-11am, we worked within the kitchen with one of the main Kitchen Assistant's Justin in inventory. The duty of "inventory" consists of counting all unopened items that are in stock on the shelves in the various parts of the kitchen. Once each item is counted for, the quantity of the item is recorded on a sheet of paper to be used for determining how many products need to be ordered from week to week. We took inventory counts in the dry storage room, the bakery, the coffee shop in The Commons, and to the DREADED cooler/freezer. Yes, I said dreaded lol. I could not believe how cold it really was in there! Sydney and I went in with freezer jackets and were still shivering to the bone! One thing is for sure...counting inventory can be very time-consuming and at times can be confusing. If food or food items are misplaced, unorganized, or not in their designated spots, they can be mistakenly over or underestimated. Spending all morning doing inventory taught me that though it's a very tedious task, it's a very necessary and important part of a foodservice operation.

Sorry this week's blog is shorter than usual, I promise I'll come back next week with more meat to fill
 ;-) (meat as in content, that is >_<)

Later,
Natalie