Finding my home in the College of Ag, Food and Environment

       On the close of the first week of the brand new academic year, I find it fitting to share with you my personal experience thus far with UK and the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment.  

Choosing to attend the University of Kentucky was automatic for me.  My older brother and sister both went to school here,and consequently I grew up visiting them in Lexington and hearing about their many experiences.  When it was my turn, I was so excited to finally come to UK, but a part of me was apprehensive.  I knew that UK was a large university with hundreds of opportunities, which intimidated me as an incoming freshman coming from a small town and a high school where everyone knew my name.  

I quickly learned in my first week of school as a freshman about the family atmosphere of UK Ag.  Walking into my introductory biotechnology class, I was astonished to see that only about 40 other freshman students were in my major.  I loved that I was able to know almost every student by name by the end of the year.  Not to mention, some of my fellow classmates are now my closest friends.  The apprehension I had once felt faded away in no time.    

As I continued my journey as a UK Ag student, I began to appreciate all of the amazing attributes of the college.  My advisor here in the college, Dr. Bruce Webb, has made a huge impact on my academic experience.  Not only does he help me schedule my courses, but he also informs me of opportunities that he thinks would interest me.  He knows me personally and my goals for the future so he is able to be so much more thanjust a class scheduler.  Not to mention, he ended up being my genetics professor in the ABT program! Other faculty members in the college have gone out of their way to get to know my fellow classmates and me.  In fact, our Associate Dean for Instruction, Dr. Larry Grabau, even attended our Ambassador retreat at Red River Gorge this past weekend.  This is the kind of family environment that has been cultivated in our college since its very beginning.  

Enrolling in the Agricultural Biotechnology program here at UK Ag was the best academic decision I have ever made.  I have most definitely found my home within the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment.  I am so very thankful and proud to be a member of this wonderful family.

Toria is a junior Agricultural Biotechnology major from Hebron, KY.

UK Student Thankful for UK's Agriculture Residential College

How I Spent My Summer

View of mountain ranges via the farm

I can still hear the Congo music, see the Ngöbe Buglé Indians walking past the house I lived in, feel the warmth of the Santa Clara people acting as a second family to me, and of course not to mention the beautiful mountain landscape covered with farms.

For 3 months I lived in a very small agriculturally centered town called Santa Clara in Panama (the country) which resides in Central America.  I lived and worked on a mountain range 1200 meters above sea level on an Arabica coffee farm.  Arabica coffee is grown on mountain ranges above sea level typically in a misty-type climate in tropical areas around the world.  But that’s crazy, I am an Ag Econ major; where is the math and statistics component of this job?  No, just labor on the coffee farm. 

I am interested in coffee so I figured if you want to get into a business it is vital to know the foundation of the business (i.e. coffee farming).  So first, I contacted Dr. Roger Brown in the Ag Econ program at UK about his new class which focuses on Ag-based tourism and had a required component to go to Panama in Central America for one week for a hands-on field work in March (Oh darn, a required trip to Panama!).  I told him I am interested in getting into the coffee business, and I asked if there would be any opportunities to find a job on a coffee farm via this new class).  Dr. Brown connected me to Mr. Alex Thor, who would also be our tour guide in Panama.  I signed up for the class and got into contact with Mr. Thor immediately.  Mr. Thor himself didn’t know a lot about the farming part of coffee so he connected me with Mr. Nico Armstrong who has been living in Panama for 7 years and started off working in the Peace Corps.  Mr. Armstrong then knew a family (the Lezcano’s) that would be willing to take me in to get experience working on a coffee farm.  And that is how I got the job.

Life on the farm was simple.  I wake up and drink coffee and eat at the farmer’s house down the road.  After that we may spend some time sharpening the machetes before we start working.  Leito Lezcano (the main farmer) owns an organic farm so most of the work is done by machetes; no machinery!  Plus, you won’t ever see a tractor on a mountain range, right?  Everyone in Santa Clara shares the scars they have via a machete, including me now.  Even with experience you can easily cut yourself; and oh boy does it make you a stronger person.  

Jesse on the coffee farm after chopping Plantain down to sell

As far as work on the farm; I pruned coffee and plantain trees, helped chop weak plantain trees to the root and re-plant them in different areas, planted new coffee trees, mixed fertilizer in the barn, etc.  Very labor intensive work, given the fact that you are walking up and down a mountain range (i.e. the farm) possibly with a 100 lb. bag of fertilizer on your back. I was in shape!  It was back-breaking but peaceful working on the farm and I gained an even greater appreciation for the hard work and passion farmers put into their farm.

As far as life in Panama, the pace was slow and people value family time very highly.  Yes, you have to work for a living, but don’t work too hard because then you can’t spend as much time with your family; this is how they think.  North Americans work really hard during the week and once they get to the weekend they are too tired to even enjoy it.  When I returned to the U.S. I was like “Wow, why are people eating so fast and in a hurry to get to places?”  I was experiencing reverse culture shock.  Overall, I miss Panama dearly…

Jesse M. is an agricultural economics student at the University of Kentucky.  He is from Louisville, Kentucky.