Howdy!

Week two on the Stiles Farm has been filled with lots more learning experiences and getting ready for the farms big field day. This week I have helped prep the front entrance and area of the farm for field day, although the rain and bad weather has been holding up a few of our projects for the week. In between thunderstorms I was able to learn how to use the weed eater and how to do maintenance on it. I also went with Mr. Collett to pick out some flowers and trees for landscaping the front of the farm. I just finished planting them today and the property is already starting to look great. We are going to pick up some mulch in the next couple of days to finish the gardening project! Our other projects for field day will continue on throughout next week. I additionally checked in on the cows a few times throughout the week ensuring they had enough grazing food and water. With the temperatures warming up we will have to make sure that the herd has plenty drink.

McKenzie -Summer Intern

Week 2

Makenzie comes to us from Tarleton State University her major is biomedical sciences with a minor in animal science. Makenzie will be here at Stiles farm until the end of August, so glad you on the farm

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Help us welcome Riley Eggemeyer to Stiles Farm Foundation Staff. Riley just graduate from Texas A&M University 2021 with a degree in, 

Ag Systems Management. We are very happy to have him here at Stiles Farm.

Help us welcome Nathan Carroll to Stiles Farm Foundation

Since the high school is now able to come out here a lot more often we’ve been putting a lot of effort into getting the farm project up and running. Every dirst half of the day we’re putting in irrigation and planting transplants/ direct seeding vegetables.

Our current transplants are golden acre cabbage with blooms fake spinach in the ground already. After we get the garden completed we can start work on the other aspects of the farm. 

The garden is up and running good. Every day we’re adding more and more irrigation and transplants still. We now have 5 rows of spinach planted and a couple of rows of golden acre cabbage and early jersey cabbage transplants in the ground. We think the spinach was too hot when we planted it so we will probably re plant it in the coming week. Broccoli transplants should be coming up this week as well so we can plant them.

We’ve also begun work on clearing out part of the fish house to make a chicken coop and making metal stands for the aquaponics system.  Lots of people from town have been really helpful with the project as well. A local sign maker even offered to make us a sign for the produce shop when it comes time to harvest.

The Thrall ISD Agriculture Science Practicum students have been spending their mornings working on the “Tiger Pride Farm” area at Stiles Farm. The past two weeks, they have worked on irrigation and planting spinach and cabbage. We are very happy to have this class out here at the farm.

Blog 3.

This past week I’ve been working on fixing fences to move cattle in the coming week or so. Dove hunting season is in full swing and we have several public hunters using the farm to hunt. I’ve placed several buckets around the hunting sites to gather up shotgun shells to prevent littering an its worked very well. We have clearance for the high schoolers to begin coming out to the farm in the next week so that’s exciting. We also got the old dodge running again so we have a spare farm truck to work with now. Last week I also got some experience disking some of the fields to plant cover crops for the winter at a later period. Cotton is still in the ground here and will continue to be until we can get a solid chunk of dry weather. Things are going well otherwise and I’m ready to begin work with the students.

Kory “Red” Kiernan  – Fall Farm Intern