May 31, 2012

Today in class we went to a picnic shelter and each of our groups had to bring 2 dishes that was made with locally grown foods. We had all different types of foods. We had pasta salad, salad, chips and salsa, a bean salad, etc. There was so much food to eat but it all tasted wonderful! Besides stuffing our faces with delicious food we all talked about our different experiences that we had throughout the quarter. It was interesting to see how everyone saw things differently at each field trip we had. It was nice to just have a whole class on discussing all the different things we have done all quarter because it was such a busy quarter especially with all the different field trips. We didnt really get to talk about all of them until now. I really liked having the brunch because it showed me new recipes and it was a great way to familiarize people with different types of foods that they might have never thought about making before. I thought that was definitely a great way to end the last class of the quarter!

May 29, 2012

Today in class we went and visited a dairy barn. This farm has about 180 dairy cows on it. I did not realize how many different types of dairy cows there are but they mainly have the black and white cows on their farm as well as a few brown. We were able to see the new part where they do all the milking, the old part which they now just use for shaving around the cows utters, and anything that the cows don't really like. We also got to see where all the calf's stay and how they separate them based on age. Over all the farm seemed really clean, there were flies like you would expect but they weren't that bad. They showed us where all the milk goes after they have milked the cows. The milk goes into this huge refrigerator type thing that can stir the milk and cool it down at the same time. It can hold about 4,000 gallons at one time. The cows are milked 2 times a day and the trucks come to get the milk from the refrigerator every 4 turns so about every 2 days the truck comes. I thought it was cool how everything worked off a machine pretty much so the machines did most of the work. They even had chips in the cows collars that would help the feeder recognize which cow it was and dispense the right amount of feed based on how much fat and protein was in the cows milk that day and based on how much milk they were producing. So they were doing everything they could to help keep the cows as healthy as possible and get them to produce as much as they could. The facility stays really clean and they have to sanitize everything and wash everything down after every milking. It was kind of cool to see how high tech the dairy farm actually was. This farm is a family run business and you could see how every family member did their part to help out.

May 24, 2012

Today in class we had a speaker from The Dairy Council. She talked with us about the Dairy Council and also about how a registered dietitian can be most helpful when working with the media. The Dairy Council for this area covers the whole state of Ohio and West Virginia. The council is funded through the dairy farmers. I thought it was amazing how many dairy farmers there are in the state of Ohio compared to how many cows each farmer has on there land. Did you know that there are about 3,000 dairy farmers in Ohio? Or that these dairy farmers all have a different number of dairy cows on there land that ranges from having just 5 cows to an upwards of 250 cows?! I thought this was so interesting. To be part of this council you do not have to have a specific number of cows on your land you just have to milk them and then sell the milk. The number of cows on each farmers land all depends on the space the farmer has and the type of land that they have. Ohio has a large number of farmers but more small farms because of the lack of land available for farming. West Virginia has even less dairy farmers but that is because they have way less available space to use for farming. I have never been on a dairy farm before so it will be neat to see when we take our field trip to one on Tuesday. Our speaker today was very entertaining to watch and she involved us a lot in the class discussion. I really liked the games she played with us. She did a different form of Simmon Say's where she would ask if we had a glass of milk yesterday, or had breakfast or had a dark green leafy vegetable. I thought this was a really cool game to make people aware of there eating habits.

May 22, 2012

So today in class we did not have a speaker or a field trip to do. Instead we worked in our groups to get more down on our needs assessment project. We actually got a lot accomplished in just those 2 hours. We have our brochure down for our vegetable, we have our handout down for our nutritional needs for our population and we have most of the workbook finished. I was surprised at how much we actually accomplished in just those 2 hours. We also plan to do our garden plan/layout. We plan to take a picture of our garden and then upload it onto the computer and then put put markers on the picture showing where everything is planted. We also talked about what type of dish we are going to make for our brunch. We are all meeting again on monday so hopefully we can all be just as productive again!

May 15, 2012

Today in class we had Melissa come talk with us. She is a dietitian at WIC in Perry county. She went to OU for her undergrad then became an RD and then came back to OU for her masters degree and now she works at WIC. WIC in Ohio is fully funded by the federal government. WIC is a supplemental nutrition program for women, infant and children who are 185% of the poverty line and who are nutritionally at risk. WIC helps to give nutrition education as well as has breast feeding education. It was neat to hear Melissa talk today because I had her for NUTR 128 and thats the class that made me want to switch my major to Dietetics. I think WIC would be a really fun place to work. She also said she has two DTR's that work in her WIC office so that helps in case I take the exam to become a DTR. She also showed us these jelly belly things. They show you how big your infants stomach is at 1 day, 3 days and 10 days. It is amazing how small their stomachs are on the first day of their live and then to see how fast their stomachs grow in just 9 days. The grow from the size of a large marble to the size of a plastic easter egg. I think working for WIC would be a great opportunity for people who do not get an internship. I think it would be a very rewarding job especially if you do not really like clinical work, which I do not. However, the Ohio WIC program is not well evaluated for how many people they help each year. The are evaluated and monitored by the federal government but they are mostly worried about making sure that the proper paper work is being filled out.

May 10, 2012

Today in class we went to the compost facility on OU's campus. I do not know a whole lot about composting and I had never seen a compost facility before today. It was kind of cool to see how much composting they do and how the reuse the compost that they make. The facility is funded through a grant and then the university. Because they use an in-house (enclosed) composting machine they do not need as many workers because the machine does all the churning. So instead they only need one full-time worker and then they use about 5 student workers. I was expecting the facility to smell extremely bad since they compost everything including dairy and eggs but in general it did not smell that bad. You would get a whiff of something bad smelling every once in a while but in general it wasnt that bad which is good I think. I definitely could not work there with a smell of old food because it just upsets your stomach. They are currently only able to compost for the Central foods facility and one dining hall but they are expanding so that they can compost for everywhere on campus which is really cool. They also use their compost on the intramural fields here on campus which I found to be very interesting! I did not know they used it in areas like that.

Then we went to the Ecohouse. This house uses solar panels and thermal panels, as well as it collects its own water to use for flushing the toilets. They also have a composting pile there and a garden that is free to anyone! Students can live in this ecohouse. Only 3 students can live there a year and you can be of any major you just need to be interested in sustainability and then you can work on a project that interests you. I think that it was good that they allow any major because people are interested in many things besides just their major. 

May 8, 2012

Today in class we went to the extension office over in Health Service building. We had a speaker there that talked about the 4-H youth development and what all it entails. I had never heard of this before but apparently it was originally developed in the 1960s and in the 1960s-1980s it was just for farm children. It was a way for them to help build skills in order to help out their farms. Then in the 1980s it switched to being for everyone not just children who lived on farms. I think this program is neat because it allows children to get to see and learn all different things. The children can have a project and work on it anywhere from 2-12 months. These projects can be on agriculture, sewing, photography, cooking, etc. I think this is a great way for students early on to see what they are interested in or good in in order to find a career/hobby for later in life. I think this would have been very helpful for me and a lot of other students because I was still unsure when I came to college what I wanted to major in. This extension office that we went to is funded by The Ohio State University, the federal government and by the county itself. The extension off who does things like the 4-H, does not always get a whole lot of funding which then means a lot of these projects can not always happen. It is like most things right now, they keep cutting back budgets which then means that other things get cut as well. They also told us that we could look into getting a job working with the nutrition sections that the extension office covers as well. They cover health and consumer sciences, nutrition, the 4-H and finance stuff. We did a little activity in class that showed how they work with some of their participants that are having financial issues. They show exactly how much all those little things you buy adds up in one year, and so you get to see that it may only be a few dollars here and there but then over time all that money turns into hundreds if not thousands of dollars.