As a recent college graduate and young professional just starting out in the agriculture industry, I’m learning something new every day. Now that college students are returning to campus for the start of classes, I am really feeling the reality of being a graduate. I miss college, but I love what I do (and I definitely don’t miss the exams!). Reflecting back on the most important lesson I learned as an agriculture student, it would have to be my experience…
Call Me an Agvocate
August 13, 2014PETA released yet another video this week, this time depicting a dairy farm in North Carolina. Whether or not that video was staged is still being debated. Dairy Carrie, a dairy farmer and active blogger, pointed out lots of abnormalities and questionable details about the described situation in the video, and you can check out her entire blog post here. While releasing videos like this is common for PETA, I’ve never really paid much attention to them. They’re usually staged…
Zucchini Pie
August 10, 2014Have an abundance of zucchini? Me, too. I ended up with two of these giant zucks, courtesy of my parents’ garden. Using just ONE of these squashes resulted in muffins, pie, and enough leftover to freeze for more muffins later. Zucchini is really versatile vegetable, and can be manipulated to taste less like a vegetable and more like fruit. This zucchini pie recipe is adapted from an apple pie square recipe my mom made when I was growing up. You’ll…
Recipe: Zucchini Muffins
July 27, 2014Last summer, I talked a lot about living in town for school and having a small container garden on my back patio. Since then, I have graduated and moved to downtown St. Louis. I don’t even have an outside windowsill for a box of flowers, let alone a bigger space for a few pots of tomatoes and peppers. Luckily, my parents have a huge garden- one luxury that comes with living on a farm. I’ve been making the 3-hour drive…
City Life
June 30, 2014The last time you checked in, I had just graduated college and was crashing with my parents while I waited out my job leads. Yep, exciting post-graduation life. Here’s a re-cap of the last month to get you up to speed: I’ve since joined the real world. I accepted a job offer and moved away. New city, new state, new people. That’s right: city. Betcha didn’t see that one coming. Me either. I moved into an apartment in downtown St.…
My Summer Reading List
May 24, 2014It’s summer! I’m finished with college and still a few weeks before I move and start my new job, so that leaves me with plenty of free time (you know, between my two part-time jobs I’m holding down at the moment). I’ve decided that it’s finally time for me to read for fun again. Crazy, right? Considering I haven’t read a book that was not an assignment for class in nearly four years, this giant stack is quite an undertaking.…
WRDA Rundown
May 23, 2014You may have heard that the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) finally passed in Congress this week and is now awaiting the signature of President Obama. And now you’re probably thinking, “Cool, Congress passed something. How does this affect me?”.…
Jumping on the Gluten-Free Bandwagon
May 17, 2014If you’ve ever had the thrilling opportunity to accompany me to the grocery store, you have probably seen me randomly stop in the middle of a packed grocery aisle and exclaim, “SERIOUSLY?!”, causing the few people immediately surrounding us to stop and stare. I’m usually yelling at the product sporting a label in bright, bold colors that advertises it’s lack of a certain product (for example, gluten, which seems to be on EVERYTHING lately). Lately, gluten-free diets have been THE…
Graduation Realities
May 12, 2014I graduated from Illinois State University with my Bachelor of Science in Agriculture Communications and Crop & Soil Science on Saturday. Double major, department honors, university honors, magna cum laude, lots of involvement and professional experience for my resume- the whole shebang. I also moved back home indefinitely for the first time since starting college. I don’t have full-time employment. Not even a job offer in my field. This is the reality today for most of my fellow graduates. But…
The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done
May 2, 2014Growing up, you experience a lot on the farm. Although I grew up surrounded by corn and soybeans, I had an understanding of life and death. We had lots of barn cats and lots of predators: coyotes, foxes, our dog… Basically, I knew that death was something that happened and was an inevitable part of the food chain.…