Samuel Denherder

At the MACCA tour, I met some of the other interns.

This past week has been quite eventful at my internship. From working on multiple different

trials and meeting new people here at the Wye REC, to going to OC and touring farmland all

around Crisfield. The beginning of last week started with me traveling to the Somerset County

Extension office to meet up with my mentors, some of my fellow interns, and many other

Extension agents and employees. All of us met there to go on the MACAA tour. I had a lot of

fun on this tour and was able to meet many extension agents from all over the state and talk

about their different roles and responsibilities. I was also able to meet 6 of the other interns on

this tour, and we were able to share our experiences that we've had at our internships. The

tour started out with us taking a ride and looking at how saltwater intrusion and sea level rise

are heavily negatively impacting the communities and agriculture in the area. We then took a

tour of a local oyster farm and were able to see their full operation and ask lots of questions.

The day ended with everyone discussing and chatting about their everyday lives at dinner.

This tour was very fun and interesting and I cant wait to meet the other interns again next

week at the Campus tour. At the Wye REC, Dr. Vollmer and us interns are getting ready for

the field day coming up next week. For this field day, we need to have booklets prepared to

hand out to the participants and viewers. These booklets are a great form of communication

and will be very important during this tour to allow the participants to understand each trial

and go to each trial study without needing a speaker always with them. This will make it

easier for the participants to understand each trial and to understand what went into each trial.

Another great form of communication I observed was at the MACAA tour, at each of the stops,

the extension employees always had lots of questions for the speakers and would always ask,

which I thought was incredibly important and very useful for themselves and for the group.

Having an active discussion throughout the entire group is very important and allows

everyone to understand the topic at hand, and even allows people to exchange similarities

between their jobs, and personal experiences. I thought this was a great example of great

communication.

Rating a residual pesticide rotation trial on watermelon that we planted a few weeks prior.

Me and one of Dr. Vollmer’s other interns were working with the farm crew at the Wye REC to put stakes and wires up for a blackberry yield variety trial.