This morning was a bit hectic as we were supposed to meet with Mike at around 7:00am so that he could give us a tour of the farm, but he had something he needed to attend to so it was postponed until 9:00am. During this time me, Katie, Marnie, Johanna, and Allister chose to go and get our laundry done since we weren't able to the night before Yosemite. Due to some time complications we didn't get back until most of the way through the lecture. We did learn that mike runs a fairly closed system farm that incorporates the waste from his cattle into growing the corn on his property. He grinds up this corn and mixes it with alphalpha, distilled grain, canola, and cotton seed and leaves it out for about a year before feeding it to his cattle. Mike runs primarily a dairy operation, and as an economics graduate he strives to make sure all his cattle are as profitable as possible. He treats his cattle like a baseball team he says, and if one of the players just can't perform well enough, they get cut and someone who can produce takes their place. It's a different mindset, you cant think of this type of occupation as being cruel, sending cows to be slaughtered when they don't produce enough milk, it is simply a business and these cattle are assets in this situation. Most of the class got to go into the main part of the farm and assist with milking the cows and see how the process is done.
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| Cows in their stalls |
After the tour everybody packed up their things into the vans and we took some last minute photos with the Zylstra's and thanked them for their hospitality before we headed off. Today was another exciting day for everyone as we were scheduled to spend some time in San Francisco tonight so everyone was just trying to spend as little time at road stops as possible to maximize our time in the city. On the way to our hotel we passed through another wind farm, Altamont Pass Wind Farm which is the largest wind installation in California. The site is home to over 7000 turbines all generating power, granted some are much older and less efficient than many of the modern turbines. The site has a capacity of around 590MW, but this site is the worlds most controversial wind site. Many raptors that travel through the area find themselves caught in the area and are killed by the turbines. The site has agreed to relocate many of their turbines in order to alleviate this issue but the site is still despised by environmentalists.
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| Altamont Pass Wind Farm |
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| San Francisco Police Call box from 1931 |
We got to our hotel in Oakland, we put our stuff into our rooms and than left for the city right after. We enjoyed our short time in San Francisco, as usually every one separated into their own little groups and did their own thing. After an unsuccessful attempt to find somewhere to sit-down and eat, Helena, Johanna, Lydia, Jenny, and I all decided just to get some Thai food and take our time walking back to the van to enjoy the city. We got back to the vans and I wanted to stay longer but nobody else did, I was still planning on staying until Tait said the curfew was 10:00pm, for less than 2 hours of extra time I just didn't think it was worth it and we all headed back to the hotel. We got back and talked with each other about where everyone went and what they did. Last thing for the night was everyone working on their journals a bit and trying to get them organized as their hand-in date was approaching, after this I hit the hay.
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