So first, Tim sent me a reference on the fungus from our last episode. The fungus is of a group called Stinkhorn fungi. They are kind of common and there is no prediction as far as where you can see them. I had never seen one on the farm. It does say that the spores are in a sticky goo on the end (I did reference the sticky end), and flies land there and get spores on their feet, and then fly off to where ever flies go, and deposit the spores. According to the pictures, this one is a Dog Stinkhorn. Well I do like dogs.
In addition to all of the prepratations for the Research Field Days coming up, Stephanie and Tim took a couple of days to attend the Farm Journal Corn College down in Coldwater. They enjoyed it and it was a good learning experience. So you can ask them anything on corn and expect an accurate answer. Here they are with their diplomas. There were some others from Liquid that went too.
On Friday, Dr. Karen Renner of MSU came out to visit intern Kirk and see if we were treating him well. She is his advisor and was making sure we weren't just running a sweat shop. Well, I have seen him sweat I guess. But it went well. She came last year too to see Jeff and Amanda. I think I said then that Karen and I were in graduate school together at MSU, well let's just say it was a few years ago. Stephanie took this picture of them in the apple orchard where Kirk explained his tasks there, which were recorded here.
Later on Friday Stephanie, Tim and I took a drive around the farm to see how the plots for the tour were looking. Here is Tim in the soybeans on Farm 7. Things were pretty dry until we got some rain recently, as Tim shows in the tall soybeans there.
And still later, we took a driving tour around the farm to make sure that the drivers knew the routes. Here we see Stephanie, Kirk, Nick, Phil, Tim, Brian, Ron and Doug at the sugarbeet stop. A big thumbs up from them. (As ordered.)
But the sugarbeets do look pretty good. We have never grown beets here before, and used Nutri-Till to put them in.
Well that was quite a week wasn't it?
