Hello folks, the weekly update is here.  This week was winter break for me, so I was not as active with this project as I could have been, but I have been thinking about what direction I want to take the second half of the course.  I addressed this in last weeks post, so I will not be redundant and talk about the same things that I did last week.  I will say that I have to do a little talking with my mentors about what direction I want to take this half, and I will let all of you know about that in next weeks post.   

Here it is, the first of many Sunday updates to all of you out there wondering what this group of Vermont high school students are doing to explore the Vermont family farm.  This week has been the first week since we met to receive the tech kits that Mr. O'Leary put together for us.  And during that week, I have been thinking about what I want to focus on for my project.  In the first stage of the course, I focused on the effects that GE products would have on the Vermont Family Farm, but for the second part of the course, I am thinking I might want to explore a different area of the Vermont Family Farm.  I have been interested in some of the new practices, technologies, and methods that have been developed or used recently.  Some of those include no till, using perennial grasses as cover crops, methane digesters, and to tie it back into the first half of the year, GEs.  I still have a little planing to do to see if this will work out, but I will keep all of you posted about the next project.   

     My name is David Dregallo, and I am a junior at Middlebury Union High School in Middlebury, Vermont.  I am 17 and I participate in three sports, Cross Country running in the fall, Nordic Skiing in the winter, and Track and Field in the spring.  I enjoy being out doors and during the summer I worked on a small organic vegetable farm in Shoreham, Vermont, a town near where I live.  I became interested in this course because of its linking of farms to writing, and from writing to people who may not know that much about farms in Vermont.
     So far, I have greatly enjoyed the experience that this course has provided, one because all of the people in the course want to be there, and are genuinely interesting the the subject matter.  I think that this approach to learning is pretty awesome, because it gives the students lots of independence to go about their research how ever they want to, and to face the challenges that come up on their own, but knowing that there is a great network of teachers the fall back on if necessary.  Also, since you had to apply to get in, that means that you are some what interested in the subject matter, so the research that you do is about something that you really want to do, and that you are interested in.
     I have been exploring the affects of GE products (Genetically Engineered, another name for GMO, or Genetically Modified Organisms) on Vermont family farms, and what they will do to affect them in the future, and how they are affecting them now.  One of the biggest questions that I have asked the people that I have interviewed, is what direction do you think that farming will go in the future, will it go the direction of GE and larger agriculture, or will it be more focused on organic, be it large scale or small scale, agriculture.  What would really help me pursue and communicate my learning would be if someone could help me / provide me with an interview with someone in the Vermont State Government who could talk about GE and their affect on the family farm.