Tight Knit Community
#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk
This week, I worked on nearly all aspects of my hosts’ operations. On Monday, I cleaned the trailer, which took me much longer than expected. In between, I helped drop off a tractor to the mechanic. It was fascinating to see how much differently a tractor mechanic operates from the conventional mechanics that I am used to. There was much more input and help from the customer. We loaded up a tractor and dropped it off to a friend, and then picked up a different tractor.
On Tuesday, I helped to extrude corn. Now that I had seen the process be performed a couple of times, I was able to help more. This time, we focused on production speed and efficiency while maintaining a good output. While I have worked in a manufacturing facility before, being involved in the full process was helpful for me to see, as it highlighted the big picture process as well. After we extruded several thousand pounds of corn, I helped to fix the swather to prepare for cutting which will begin soon. We replaced the worn out blades in the machine to have it ready to cut more grass.
Wednesday was somewhat of a maintenance day. I did some work on the camper in which I am staying and then helped clean up the area surrounding a pasture. Much of my day was spent replacing old fence posts. These posts were made of railroad ties, so they were much heftier and required the use of a skid-steer. We repeated this process again, although it went much faster the second time.
To begin the second half of the week, we woke up extra early to get ready to move cattle. We loaded up the horses and drove roughly 45 minutes to where a large amount of the cattle were kept. We gathered the cattle, and I was able to use my drone to capture some footage it. I was fascinated by how the cows intuitively started going in the right direction together. To round out the day, we continued fixing more fence posts.
On Friday, I travelled with my host to Casper, WY, to pickup 10,000 feet of irrigation tube. We then dropped it off to a rancher two hours outside of Casper. We then drove back to town and visited a cattle auction in Torrington. Although I had watched videos of cattle auctions before, seeing it in person left me in awe of how fast the cattle are sold and how fast the buyers make their decision.
This week was an interesting one for me because I was able to see a wide variety of the work done. One of the ideas that this week got me thinking about was how tight the agriculture community can be with each other. While many of the ranchers and farmers do not have websites or an online presence, many of them seem to know each other. Word of mouth seems like one of the strongest tools in the community.
Submitted by: AJ Mishra
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team
