Last Monday, November 15, 2015, Mr. Stewart's 6th period Sustainable Agriculture class was taken over by guest teacher Mr. Slesinger. During the class period we continued our unit on Companions. A Companion can be a pest or beneficial to our farm. Companions are both plants and animal which inhabit the farm.
During the class, Mr. Slesinger started playing a documentary entitled More Than Honey, which has had three main points so far. The first point of the movie was dedicated to teaching viewers that honey is essential to humans because they pollinate our food. Bees carry pollen from our Almond trees and apple trees. Bees are often held on Almond farms and Apple orchards in order to carry pollen from plant to plant pollinating it in the pursuit to get their food.
The second point was that Bees are great for the economy. This is because Bees pollinate only one type of plant in their lives which makes them perfect for mass production of crop. Bee's are the most efficient at pollinating opposed to butterflies and wind.
The Last point so far in the documentary was that bees are subject to parasites and disease while farming. Varroa mites are blood sucking parasites which feed off the bee like a vampire. When a bee is subjected to these mites they cling to it almost like a tick, however in comparison to the bee the mite would look like a rabbit attached to a human.
On wednesday, November 18, 2015, the class met for the usual farm day. During farm day, the groups were asked by Mr. Slesinger to conduct the usual jobs around the farm like composting, water, maintenance and companions. After completing these tasks we tended to our one beds and worked on community parts of the farm to dig out older beds and prepare the beds for winter crops.
On Friday, November 19, 2015, we were set to complete the documentary, More Than Honey, which we are all looking forward to.
No comments:
Post a Comment