Field Experiment

One of my greatest pleasures of doing research is going into the field and toil under the sun. The feeling of sweat evaporating off my skin while I observe insects or sticking poles into the ground is plainly enjoyable to me.

Of course, many things go awry in the field. Sometimes hours or even weeks of hardwork can be undone in minutes due to unforeseen mishaps OR just stupidity on my part (hahaha). For example, this summer California experienced a cool start to the summer months, effectively delaying summer agriculture by weeks and my own field work by one whole month! This in a year when I am rushing to wrap up by the end of summer...grrr. Cool weather aside, there were a few days of strong winds. VERY STRONG. Strong enough to justify a state warning.

Then again, who gives a damn about state warnings? Look what the winds did to my cages :(

Top of cage torn open

Oh...but that wasn't the worst. Look at this! I laughed loud when I saw the four poles sticking out of the ground, looking so pathetic and naked.

Where did my cage go?! Damn wind...

So...what was the cause for this undoing of our hard work taken to install these cages into the ground? The winds? Nope. Soft ground? Nope. Our fault? Yes. You see, I designed these cages to withstand strong winds. I am convinced that it would take a hurricane to blow these cages off, if they were installed correctly. The problem we had was that we didn't seal every cage tightly. A small crack that allows wind to blow in will cause the cage to catch more wind, enlarge the crack and soon the whole cage will be catching the full force of the wind like an open sail in a storm.

Nevertheless, my frustration lasted only a couple of hours before I was laughing at the whole (acci)incident. I contacted my trusty group of farmhands and gave them another 3 days worth of pay to dig up all the cages and reinstall them five rows down (because other than the wind damage, the plants within the cages also didn't grow as intended). My farm friends were laughing at the cages too and we had another jolly few days together reinstalling the cages that we built just two weeks before.

Also, here's a picture of three of the five members in my research team this year. An interesting bunch, no? Hahahhaha.

Tierra, Michael, Lucinda