Morgan's Baptism

A few weeks ago, Morgan had here 8th birthday and was baptized.  Grace and Tony came to help celebrate the day and then drive with Heidi and I to their new home in New York state.

Morgan on her baptism day 2011.

Ashlyn on her baptism day 2006.

Heidi and her girls.  We missed not having Marcus here for Morgan's special day.  He is coming home in less than a week.  Hurray!

Polyface Farms

Several of us took a field trip to Polyface Farms in Virginia.  They are pretty famous for their sustainable practices of meat production.  It is family owned and run for three generations.  They raise cattle, chickens, pigs, and turkeys.  The farm is in the Shenandoah Valley on about 450 acres.  All but about 125 acres are in forest.  They use a rotation method.  Cattle are all grassfed and moved to new grazing daily.  The egg mobile follows the cattle.  It supports about 450 layers.  They scratch through the cowpies and control parasites and flies.

These two eggmobiles have roosts and laying boxes for about 450 chickens.  They are free range in the day and then they lock them up at night.  The eggmobiles are moved nightly.  They also have some chickens in a permanent building and range.  They are guarded by a dog to keep predators away. 

View inside the eggmobile.

The pigs are kept in the brushy area and they are rotated also.

All animals are controlled with a single wire electric fence powered by a battery which in turn is charges with solar panels.

The cattle are moved daily.  They are trained to come when called and one person can rotate them to new pasture.

Polyfarms buys day old chicks, piglets, and calves from surrounding farms. 

Here they are moving a portable young chicken and turkey pen.  It is moved by hand 12 feet every day.  When they are very young, they raise the turkeys with the chickens.  He says it takes 5 chickens to raise one turkey.  The turkeys have their own area when they are about 5 weeks old.

What a day!

I had a very full day today.  I went to work at NSF this morning.  I walk about a half mile to the metro and then ride another 30 minutes to get there.  At noon, I rode the metro and walked to deliver some papers to Triangle Coalition (they are the agency that manages the Einstein Fellowship).

Then it was back on the metro to Capitol Hill where I sat in on a hearing in the Senate Building of a group of young people that were or had been homeless and still trying to go to school and get good grades.  Their stories were so potent and heartbreaking.  No matter how dysfunctional their families were, or how hard their lives were just to survive each day, they still went to school, because they knew that an education was the only way they could have control over their lives and make a change.  Everyone in the room had tears in their eyes and hearts in their throats and these young people told their stories.

Then I rushed home (on the metro again) showered and got dressed up so that I could go to the ExploraVision Science Awards and Banquet.  Back on the metro to downtown DC.  Exploravision gives awards to student teams from K-12 grades for innovative ideas in science.  Each student on the winning teams gets $10,000, a video camera, and a laptop computer, from Toshiba.  Bill Nye the Science Guy was the keynote speaker along with the president of Toshiba.  4300 teams entered, only 8 teams won on the national level.  Everyone was dressed up.  They served us a four course dinner.  It was all very exciting.

My camera's batteries died before I could get more than a couple of pictures.

Then it was back on the metro, and walk a half mile home.  It is about midnight now, but I have been so busy and it has been so exciting that I am still not ready to go to sleep.  I cannot believe how wonderful it is for me to be here working at the National Science Foundation and living in Washington DC and having all of these experiences.

Ground Zero

One other place I visited on the New York trip was Ground Zero where the World Trade Center was before September 11.  You cannot get very close and there is a high fence all around it.  Heavy equipment is going in and out and there is a lot of noise and construction.  It is almost impossible to imagine the buildings that were there before and what that day was like.

On the side of a building across the street is a relief Memorial to the rescue workers that died.

On the other side is the church that opened its doors to anyone that needed help or a place to go.  It has several exhibits in memory of what happened.

Statue of Liberty

While in New York, I also had time to take the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  The cruise boat was only $15.  There is no charge for the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island.  The weather was cool and overcast, but it did not rain.

The skyline view of Manhattan is pretty cool.  Just like I expected.  I think if you look carefully, you can see the top of the Empire State Building.

The Statue is very big.  I only had a ticket to get to the top of the pedestal.  To go inside the Statue itself was booked for the rest of the month.  

Ellis Island is beautiful.  I did not have time to really explore it like I would have liked.  Inside are places where you can search to see if your relatives were processed through Ellis Island.  I did not have time to look.

This was such a short trip and I tried to see as much as I could, but there is so much.  I need to come back again.  I was very impressed with NY.  It was clean, busy, and noisy.  The subway system made it easy to get around and was not very expensive.  I bought a weeks pass for $29 and could ride the subway and bus as much as I wanted.  There was so much to see and do and eat and hear.  Central Park is gigantic and beautiful.  Things were much closer together than I had thought.  People were not rude to me.  It was not like what I had seen on TV.