Field Trip

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to go on a field trip with my Biorrecursos class. Translated, it is simply Bio Resources. It is about the soil, nutrients, things like that. I will mention that with this opportunity came opportunity cost. I lost the opportunity to go on fun trips outside of Queretaro that were planned by the international programs office. (That's the economist in me. Thanks Dr. Dooley.) This trip was mandatory.

We made a trek out of the city to the south and I believe we ended up either in the state of Mexico or very close. The trip only took an hour and we were in a very comfortable bus (it was only 15 of us in an entire charter bus--awesome!

We ended up at a testing ground for crops. The idea is to demonstrate to producers that modern techniques work better than old ones and they actually save money, time, and resources. He talked our ears off about everything that was going on and then we all got to take soil samples for moisture and use a tool (I forget it's name) to see the resistance to penetration. The idea is to see how compacted the soil is at different depths.

The picture of the hole is to illustrate what kind of topsoil they are dealing with the see what kind of water retention they have and how much room the roots have to grow. Looks like this stuff is a little rough to me. The professor was out off sorts as well when they bought the parcel for experimentation. He has since adopted the thought process that if it works in really bad ground, it should work better in good ground. I would agree to a point. But I won't tell him that, I want to pass the class.

I took some pictures of some gated pipe for the benefit of my Nebraskan brethren. I doubt they read my blog but I thought it was cool.

We hopped back in the bus, stopped at a super market (a really small gas station) to buy coke and pistachios, and eventually arrived at Tec. I then made the journey home, ate some street tacos de barbacoa (a special way to cook lamb), and finally made it home.