Thanks for a great semester, Fall 2011 class is on its way out the door!

Take a look at the fall photo album through snapfish!

http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/projectshareewelcome/l=3777562027/p=57381323379259118/g=7040307027/cobrandOid=1000/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/otsc=SYE/otsi=SPBKlink/

Wrapping up the Semester

We are wrapping up everything for the end of the semester here on the farm! Rachel is working on finishing up her barn quilt and it is being hung today!  Stop by and take a look. Our final business meeting is happening today as we get ready to pass things on to the spring semester!

Customs committee explains auto steer

Today the customs committee present over the auto steer in our John Deere tractor.  Each committee then went out and got to ride in the tractor and see it in action.  In the video Lee is explaining as he goes along. 

The garage gets a new roof

The Buildings and Grounds Committee did their teaching project on applying a steel roof over existing shingles today. The process was very straight forward and each committee took their turn learning and implementing the steps. The steel needed to be handed to the people on the roof, set in place, and finally screwed down. 

With everyone helping the project took a quick three hours with only a few last minute details left to finish up on Thursday.

Hope, Jordan, and Barry lift steel up to the finance ladies.

Ben measures out screw placement while Anthony & Heidi line up the next piece of steel.

Matt puts screws in to hold the steel in place.

The nearly finished product!

Check out Facebook for some more photos

100th Anniversary Celebration of Agricultural Education

With around 275 people attending the tailgate, we as a class feel the celebration was a huge success!  The food was great, the decorations were beautiful and the speakers did a fantastic job promoting and explaining the success of AgEd and Ag 450 farm!

Meet the Public Relations Team

Once again each semsester starts with 7 new committee teams with new ideas and agendas. This semester's Public Relations committee is busting at the seams with energy, talented, and cute smiles. :) From planning this year's 100th year of Ag Education Celebration Tailgate to ordering T-shirts, designing posters to blogging, each member has learned to contribute so much!

From Left to Right-Mackenzie Dierks, Heidi Schaben, Shelby Johnson, Rachel Enfield, Laura Underwood, Lily Randleman

Committee goals for this semester are to update picutures and sort existing, update social medias such as Twitter, Facebook, Blog and Snapfish, establish email accounts for other committees, and create a farm resume. The girls all come from different backgrounds and didn't know each other before this class, but have bonded together not only as a team, but as sisters. With everything they have to other, they should be able to accomplish their goals easily!

Ag Orientation Tours

First farm tour of the semester! On Tuesday Dr. Retallick's AgEds 110 orientation course came to the farm. They had the chance to meet the different farm committees and learn a little about what we do out here on the Ag450 Farm. They also had a chance to walk around and see the different facilities.

The tour included a look at the shops and a short introduction by the farm's Graduate Assistant Dustin.

Compost shed is moving along!

Construction on the compost shed us moving along.  The building and grounds committee got the headers up and will continue working on it through out the fall.

LETS GO CLONES!!!!!!!!!!

The first official Iowa State football team was created in 1894 and beat the University of Iowa that same year 16-8. GO CLONES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fall 2011 Ag. 450 Farm Class

It's kickoff time at the 450 Farm! Fall committees have been assigned and are already hard at work!

The Start of the Compost Shed

Construction on the compost shed started today.  The buildings and grounds committee had a budget approved last week and has started leveling off ground for the shed.  Hopefully cement will be poured next week and the structure can be put up. 

Monday, June 13th, the PR committee gave a tour to TRIO.  The students really enjoyed themselves!



Slow week at the farm

It's been a pretty slow, rainy week at the farm. All the committees have been working hard on their state of the farm reports. They have also been working on some odds and ends around the farm. The machinery/crops committee is fixing the cultivator today, while the PR/custom crops committee is doing some yard work.

We're going to go out and scout crops this afternoon. The crops are pretty young still, so we'll be doing some population counts and check for weed growth.



Summer Session Committees Assigned

The summer 2011 committees were assigned on Wednesday, May 18th.  There are only 16 students for the summer session, so some committees had to be combined.  This session public relations and custom crops, buildings and grounds and custom swine, finance and marketing, and machinery and crops will be working together. 
Today we are doing some initial committee work.  It rained too much for us to be able to look at some of our crops. 

450 Farm Students Gets PQA Certified!

Today the Swine Committee had their experiential teaching activity. They had Nick Pudenz, from swine graphics talk to us about overall heard health and the 10 Good Production Practices in the PQA Plus Certification manual. Some of these Good Production Practices include use antibiotics responsibility, adhere to medication withdrawal times, and provide proper swine care. During the time out in the barn, students were able to move pigs from pen to pen and learn about working with pigs in a finisher.

The Swine Committee also showed us how to administer shots and how to move pigs from one pen to an other. Some of the students were unable to enter the 450 swine barns because they didn't want to transfer any diseases from the 450 farm back home. For those students, Raven gave us a virtual tour of a hog barn.

450 Farm Gets a New Look!

Today, during class, the Buildings and Grounds Committee led the students in taking down grain bins north of the classroom. The 450 farm hasn't used these bins in quite a long time and the committee felt it was important to get rid of these bins. These two grain bins are 18 feet in diameter and about 13 feet tall.
The above picture, Jared explains how the jacks work and that as we take down rings we need to be careful and that safety is very important. Everyone helped taking out rings, even Paulsen helped lower the bins!

450 Farm Prepares for Spring Planting!

Today, during class the Machinery Committee, consisting of a six member team prepared the 450 farm for the spring corn planting. They used this time to do their Experiential Teaching, which is a required assignment for each committee. Dave Henderson from Van Wall Implement came and talked about the importance of changing the sweeps regularly. Their goals today were to change sweeps on the cultivator and to prepare the planter for the field by changing seed plates.  The class was split into two groups and we tackled the task of changing the sweeps.  Randy explains how to change the sweeps. Everybody had a chance to change a sweep with the help of the Machinery Committee. 

The next task we had to accomplish was to change the seed plates on the planter. Below, Brad, explain how to grease the pivot point on the front and make sure the hydraulic hoses are correctly plugged into your tractor. Students had the opportunity to change seed plants from soybeans to corn so the Crops Committee and the farmer manager can begin planting corn!

















Buildings and Grounds Make Progress!



Today, the public relations committee was able to sit down with the Buildings and Grounds Committee to talk about their goals of the farm and where they see the farm going in the next couple years.

Some of their biggest goals that they had were taking down some bins, cleaning up the farrowing house and shop. They also do a very good job of doing general maintenance, such as repairing latches, and putting down gravel.

This is a lot of work for a six member team to do, but their philosophy is to divide and conquer! Some of the guys in the group would rather do simple maintenance and clean up, while others like to do large projects such as making the grain leg sturdy and taking down the bins. In the future, they would like to see the farm prosper and grow, while also keeping it clean and up to date. Today their main goal was getting rid of the telephone poles on the farm!

Loading up telephone poles

Blog for March 24, 2011 – How to create an effective blog

Today at the 450 farm we interviewed the PR committee. They said that some of the immediate goals of their committee were to prepare for the 100 anniversary celebration and to work on organizing all of the farms internet network sites. Some of the long term goals of their committee were to create a farm resume, which could be used to publicize the farm and what is occurring throughout the operation.

Today, during their presentation, they showed the class how to correctly form a blog. This started with correctly identifying the audience to be addressed and then they proceeded to show us how to correctly take pictures and how to upload blogs. These skills could be utilized throughout the rest of the class and later in life as well. Their presentation was very informational

Lubed, Fueled, and Ready to Rip

The machinery committee is getting fired up for the spring season.  Currently they're replacing the rusty worn shanks that were clearly neglected on the cultivator.  Every tractor has been lubed, cleaned, and inspected in order to prevent any breakdowns.  One goal near the top of their priority list in the next few weeks will be dusting off the planter and making sure it will get the job done.  At any given free moment you can find these 6 greasy guys with a smile on their face and a wrench in their hand.

Finance....Making it Rain

After interviewing the finance committee we discussed how much work they havc done.  In the first half of the semester they concluded the work on the buget, balance sheet, and cash flow.  Now they are starting to slow down and are stuck paying bills and working on the net worth statement.  There red folder of confusion is becoming smaller.

The finance committee is great group of people, they get their work done on time. They seemed to have worked hard during the first of the semester catching up on the previous classes unfinished business. They really care about the 450 Farm, having lost our insurance money by a 1/10 of a bushel they seemed upset.The rest of their semester looks to consist of more bills and lots of thrills.

Custom Crops Lasting Impact

The Customs Crop Committee here at Iowa State 450 farm has been very dedicated to making positive changes on the farm. Some of their biggest and main goals are to graduate here in May and to leave an outstanding impact on the farm. They said the farm when they got here has improved from their contributions and just recently accomplished there experiential teaching exercise where they taught the class how to be safe when working with machinery. On a daily basis they come in and work towards some of the things that need to be done in the classroom as well as trying to find liquid manure handling transportation system. So far they have talked to Mark Honeyman and Ken Burns helping getting the farm in good shape.

Holy Crops!!

The swine committee had a very enlightening meeting today with the crops committee. In an interview style format, the swine committee had some questions for the crops team:

What are your goals for the rest of the semester?

- We would like to learn the mobile GPS system, tile options for the fields and get a plan for spring planting.

What are your main strengths/weakness?

- A main strength is working in a large group that always works as a team to accomplish our goals. A weakness relates to waiting for fertilizer from their supplier

What is the main issue you expect to have this year during planting season?

As always, weather is the main concern as in Iowa it changes often. This week we've had tornado warnings and now we're looking at snow in the forecast. Hard to plan around that!

Squeal Pig Squeal

What does your group do on the 450 farm?

 Over-see daily chores and working operations.

2.     What do you like/dislike about your group?

Not a lot to do specifically “vaccinating pigs is not any fun”

We like having our hands on the operation

3.     What type of things do you want to accomplish this year?

Expansion and alarm system for the swine buidlings

The Ag450 Farm Spring Semester Class has officially started!

This semester has 44 students eager to get out of the classroom and get their hands dirty. With the nice weather lately, many of the committees have been outside doing things on the farm working hard to make the farm look nice after the long, cold winter! During the first couple weeks of class, the students were divided into eight committees based on their interests. Since those first few weeks, each committee has been very busy accomplishing tasks, both in and out of the classroom!

Buildings and Grounds Committee: Has been busy cleaning up the shop and working on tearing down some un-used grain bins. They also worked with the Swine Committee in hanging a curtain on the finisher.

Finance Committee: Has been working hard at putting together a budget for 2011 and paying off bills as they come up. They have been really good at staying organized and keeping every committee award of our financial status.

Public Relations Committee: Has been working on the 100^th Anniversary Celebration plans of the Agriculture Curriculum at Iowa State University. They are continuing with updating their web resources and taking pictures of the students.

Custom Crops Committee: Has been doing a lot of work with researching manure handling, and possibly cattle. They have been also planning which fields we will be planting first.

Swine Committee: Has been doing a lot of work with our pig provider, making sure we do our best for the pigs. One way they are trying to reduce problems is by hanging the curtain on the finisher. Their latest activity is looking into installing a Call System in the finisher for the farm manager.

Crops Committee: Has been busy doing research on buying new SMS mobile devices. These devices, which were approved for purchase March 1, will help with soil sampling and crop scouting during the spring and summer months.

Machinery Committee: Has been working with Buildings and Grounds Committee in getting the farm shop organized. They also recently ordered parts for the tiller and will purchase parts to repair the ripper. They are eager to get everything ready for the spring planting.

Marketing Committee: Has been busy selling the last of our beans and meeting with the co-op about insurance and our current grain situation from last fall.