I am with you whenever there is a historical significance related to the pending behavior story. There is a lot of history in Caswell County to learn, all you have to do is slow down and pay attention.
For example, until I interviewed the “workers” at 11 Hodges Dairy Rd., Yanceyville last week, one story seems to be enough about the local agri-business.
“This house was built in 1846 in Watlington and they were distant relatives,” said Kin Watlington, coordinator of agribusiness at Piedmont Community College. He was speaking on his way out of the 158 W out of Wilson-Watlington Farm to Redsville.
I was an ag teacher at Bartlet Yankee High School and left there to start an agribusiness and technology program in PCC. With agriculture and being a FFA consultant, everything was hands-on, so we had to have a place to work, ”said Watlington in the shade of a huge oak tree.
“We have a farm where the students can go out and work. The main focus here is on small vegetables and flowers in small quantities. Unlike Delard Middle School, there is another farm on Hacht Road, and that’s even more, where the students learn to grow things like potatoes, where we work on a service education project. We have corn and soybeans there.
We sow soybeans as a ‘trap crop’ because deer pressure is so heavy (trap-crop distracts attention from the main crop).
He continued, “The main focus is on the Pelham station, where there will be a place for our students to work until the CIA (Education and Agricultural Development Center) is set up.
It provides the place as “finger-in-water” until this farm grows and works, and here we can make our mistakes. Then as we prepare to move to Pelham, we can say that this will work, and this will not work.
“This farm was primarily a tobacco farm. The last person to live in the house was H. Wilson Watlington, who grew watermelon and cantaloupe.
We have two Marigold apartments ready to be planted there, and we also planted some late tomatoes as a project. These are things that the Green House students have built since they left. Here are 14 hectares that we can work on. Five, six, seven students are beautiful little classes. ”
Joe Jeffris has been working on the ground in PCC programs for two years, and as a student he is paid for his work.
“It’s great on this farm and it makes you want to work. I like it very much. Before I started here, all I wanted to do was sit at home and relax. But go out here and make money for your farm, sell your products and woooooooo, I just love the outdoors! ”
Regarding Jeffrey, Watlington said: “He was a graduate of Bartlett Junior High School and he was a welding student, but he wanted to continue and he took classes in our program. There are 13 courses in our partner’s degree program, one of which is work-based learning. Students have the opportunity to go out and work, to be paid. That’s what Joe did here, ”said Watlington.
You get your rooms, and you get paid to get them! Not too embarrassing, huh?
PCC’s Luke Bernard, who worked with Watlington on agribusiness projects: “They hired me last summer to help teach and fix everything. Gardening is my specialty. I taught gardening at Dan River Prison (work farm) through PCC, and then when Covy came, they took us out. Kin needed some extra help on this site, so I came to work for this program.
Bernard goes on to say, “A lot of things are ‘how to grow plants’ in all the processes like ‘fertilizer and pest control’. We do not use any chemicals or pesticides on this farm. We use biological or organic pesticides. Or a flame! We will burn them! We have a flame retardant, known as a weed torch, which leaves a small amount of carbon and potash to enrich the soil. We use environmentally friendly bacteria as pesticides.
“One of the 13 courses here is soil science. One of the missions is to go out here and collect soil samples. Soil samples are free for anyone in North Carolina from April to November, give or take a few days. After the analysis, people can see that the government office in Raleigh is interested in the soil or does not recommend it for better growth, ”added Watlington.
“Farmers need to use this service if they want to get the best out of their crops or not waste what they really don’t want. It prevents them from storing too much nitrogen (if they don’t need it), or phosphorus or anything. To get your ph right, it depends on how much lime you need in your soil or not, ”added Bernard.
“Here in North Carolina, we want to have a lot of clay. In fact, we are going to make some rhetoric this fall. Southern states can go out and drive their trucks on it, or if we look at improving small plots, we can buy sealed lime and implement it ourselves.
“Lemon Pig-Back is one of our courses where business management is and basically all math.
“If 90 units need nitrogen, and you wear 120, and your ph is not correct, then the nitrogen-phosphorus and potassium fertilizer will not work until it is fully depleted. It’s a tight budget in agriculture now and you have to be an agricultural entrepreneur now. Not just being a farmer of 1846 and having basic experience.
“We have four caves (plastic greenhouses) on the farm. Three standing, one on the ground. Those caves were purchased with PC and are very easy to move. We rotate them and that helps students on the math side, they go up and down easily and easily. It takes about a week to do this, but it teaches them the necessary math skills, such as calculating what space will provide.
We really get a great mix of students not only in the farms but also in our classrooms. We were from an individual county, a woman was an older student, and we met new graduates and everything in between: some had agricultural backgrounds, some had no experience.
“I think people really need to know, we have a lot to teach,” Watlington said. We don’t know all of them, but we have two greenhouses in high school (BY), and six are out here. We have 70 acres on Hacht Road, and we have 14 here. For ag mechanics, we have six types of tractors, here we get drip irrigation. That goes back to sustainable conservation, which is another course we teach about water conservation and our natural resources.
“We have a lot to teach a student who wants to learn about agriculture. And we bring our extension, we bring our market position (the most effective ways), we bring in a variety of people who are professionals like the Department of Health. We try to bring in a lot of knowledge from abroad. I don’t think our story is enough to tell these students. We have production and plant science, sustainable ag and agribusiness management (“all our fall courses”) in place. What we use to teach is the harvest of potatoes that Mr. Bernard brought with us for our fall crops and many programs – grafting and growing shitake mushrooms and pruning apple trees.
“In alternative-ag teaching, we show them unusual things that we would not normally think of as mushrooms. Either we cut oak or sweet gum logs, follow them with shitake mushroom mycelium and show them how to grow mushrooms if you want to do that as a side business or as a whole business.
“We will show the students how to paint an apple tree with a pear tree. We buy pear and apple root stock and then cut down the local apple trees. There is a small orchard here on the road, we get scion cuts and we prune them to start new trees. Bernard added.
“All the apple trees have been planted for hundreds of years and the old roots are weak and prone to disease, so they are planted in new roots. But plant them in a disease-resistant root canal, and they all go inside. You can’t wait to plant an apple seed and get a certain type of tree. There are so many different genetic variants in that genome where so many mutations can be made.
“There are a lot of growing apples here, but they are very resistant to rust from the apple-apple and apples like honey-creeps.
“It all depends on what you are trying to do – are you trying to dry them or make apple butter or are you trying to melt them? One of the things to keep in mind is his purpose. We found an apple tree in a local orchard, and I know we did prune some, but the tree was half-broken.
“So, in this fall, we will probably build these ten steps before that tree dies. If you hold the bark correctly, and wrap it up, it will heal together, and you have a new tree that you have betrayed.
Watlington gave me a small pot that was successfully carved into a clear, healthy root canal.
Apple’s genetics are awesome, and the organic honey crapes I buy with the lion cub never started like this!
“You just make the pieces and line up, secure and seal the right cambium tissue and heal together.
This is one thing I have thought about in any course I have taught — if you know where it came from, you know what happened to it, you know the effort it took to grow it, you appreciate it even more. It gives you insight,
“This will be our fourth fall. Let me tell you what we did last Tuesday to promote the farm – the advisory committee was convened, but he was a better cook. The timing was right and our barbecue, green beans, corn and sweet potatoes, we put everything out of the field.
“For many of us, and not just for the Advisory Committee, it was an opportunity to meet again. We had a group of Shumaker girls on the County Home Road. And here we were with A&T Dr. Antoine Alston.
Speaking of Dr. Alston, the students will complete their two-year PC program, and those class credits will be transferred to North Carolina AT&T. Then, they only have to go there two more years and have a BS degree!
Emmanuel “Mani” Martin is our first student and he will complete all AG classes in December. He may be the first student to use the A&T program. I can see him working with the state – state inspectors, soil scientists, there are always ag extension agents in the state.
From the United States Department of Agriculture or NCD. Working with, working with the office of the state ag commissioner Steve Trocler, there are federal jobs, we don’t have enough people to fill, there are a lot of vacancies. The state is attracting new workers from across the country, some with alternative careers such as biology.
It’s a wonderful time to graduate high school students who want to come to our program on PC; After graduating from high school, you will receive a two-year scholarship.
“We are now in the middle of enrollment so that students can contact the campus. It’s not too late to sign up for our fall classes! ”Quoted Watlington.
After spending a lot of time with Ken, Joe, and Luke, farming and caring for any high school student would undoubtedly be a great career.
For more information: www.piedmontcc.edu or call 336-694-4013.
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