It's In My Nature

The American chestnut tree was an iconic species to the Appalachian ecosystem; known for its rapid growth, high yield harvest and quality of timber. Chestnuts are an important keystone species to hardwood ecosystems because of the nut abundance and their nutritional value. Chestnuts also had a very economical importance because the wood is highly rot resistant. This made chestnuts very popular for building structures such as log cabins and railroad ties. At the start of the twentieth century, it was said that one in every four trees in Pennsylvania was an American chestnut. In the 1920’s, the chestnut blight had found its way to the United States from the Chinese chestnut and had begun to move through the landscape. By the 1940’s, the American chestnut had been removed from the Appalachian forests due to the devastation of the chestnut blight. Biologists suggest that this one of the greatest ecological disasters in history. Today, groups such as the American Chestnut Foundation, the U...

Jim Walizers chestnuts are proving to hold very similar characteristics of a true American chestnut with fast growth, high nut yield, and timber-like growth characteristics. His trees average 8-16 inches of growth in a year and by year three are mature enough to produce nuts. This is a perfect example as to why oaks were unable to replace the loss of chestnuts from the ecosystem. Chestnuts will have high fruit yields consistently every year, will produce nuts by year five and are extremely fast growing. Oaks on the other hand, are super slow growing and are commonly outcompeted because of that and they do not have consistent fruit yields. Oaks need to be at least 20 years old to produce acorns and only once every 3-5 years will have high harvest yields. The other years will be small and low acorn harvests.  In the early stages of Walizers research, he had planted one of his successful blight resistant chestnuts. The first-year growth was not straight and was simply not th...

On our way to the rain out shelters with the Millennium Scholars to learn about root structure, something interesting happened. When the students were arriving, they were blown away by the wheat field in front of the bus. After talking to these students, many of them were from the city and this was their first ever time even stepping into a field. All the students wanted to touch the wheat and feel it. This was a great opportunity to quickly teach them about wheat and what wheat is used for!  This is the key point as to why Teach Ag is so important. Teaching the leaders of tomorrow and helping them to answer questions like “Where does our food come from?” is imperative for the future. Out of this group of 35 students, there were only two that were in the College of Agriculture. This experience then leads to teaching that students in the college of engineering can learn applicable skills for the field of agriculture. There is an interconnectedness between all of the col...

The UV Light program was a huge success. The Millennium Scholars were a great group of kids that had phenomenal questions about the Russel E. Larson Agricultural Research Farms and just agriculture in general. After talking with some of the students, a lot of them had no agricultural background at all but they were all super engaging and wanted to learn. The UV lights with the beads were a lot of fun; the students were super engaged and wanted to learn more about how the plastic makes a difference. They were asking great questions to Kathy about not only how the plastic blocks UV light but also looking at the bigger picture and looking at how the high tunnels work.  In UV Blocking Plastic Full UV Light  Putting a teaching hat on, I really liked how the program worked but there are some changes that could be made to make the whole program better. The biggest was more time. I think we needed more time for discussion at the end. We were tight on time due...

The Millennium Scholars also had an opportunity to learn about root structure with different varieties of corn. Alden Perkin, M.S Candidate, lead the program and explained his research on corn varieties root structure in correlation with drought. We went to the plant science rain out shelters in Rock Springs to learn more about the project. Rain out shelters are really cool; they are moveable high tunnels that can be moved back and forth with a winch system and can block rain out to help simulate drought.  After learning about the rain out shelters, students then were broken off into groups to look at root structures with different varieties of corn. Students would remove the plant from the pot and wash off all the dirt from the roots. This would allow the students to graft the roots and be able to see the tap roots. Seeing the roots first hand helps the students to fully understand root structure. This then helps the students to connect the amount of root growth with...

This year at the Pasto Agricultural Museum during the Pennsylvania Timber Show, we had a great opportunity to be destinations for kids to receive their Forest Merit Badges. The requirements for the merit badge are, students would have to identify at least 10 tree species, examine tree growth, tree rings, stumps, and tree cores, and be able to understand tree damage from tree pests. We noticed a unique opportunity to not only teach any potential boy scouts but also teach the general public about Pennsylvania trees!  The first discovery station was tree identification. There, people could go species by species to examine pictures of the bark, flower, fruiting structure, wood grain, and a live sample of what the leaf and branch look like! Then read an identification description that had a picture of the species range and tree silhouette. 15 common hard wood and soft wood species of Pennsylvania were selected with the intention that people could identify these species in the...

Ted Turner is known for launching CNN, TBS, being the owner of the Atlanta Braves and for launching Turner Enterprises, among other entrepreneurial pursuits. What many may not realize is, he also owns 2.2 million acres globally, spread across ranches and plantations, which is more land than the entirety of Yellowstone National Park. One of these ranches is located in southwest Montana, Flying D Ranch. We were blessed with an opportunity to tour this 115,000-acre operation, which is home to 5,500 head of bison. Bison Bull from Flying D Ranch As we toured the property, ranch manager Danny Johnson shared some fascinating details about the bison herd. This bison operation can grow to 7,500 head during the calving season. These bison even have an astounding 96% conception rate. The herd is rotating from pasture to pasture in order to properly manage grassland resources. Also, four of the famous Ralphie the Buffalo, the mascot of the University of Colorado Buffaloes, have co...