Hello Everyone!
As a part of my Adult College Education Program, I am presently taking the most wonderful class! It is called Environmental Heritage which covers a wide range of topics pertaining to our New England area.
Due to the nature of our study in this particular class, two field trips are included as part of the accredited experience. Sunday, January 31, 2010 we went on our first field trip. Did I tell you that the Instructor for this class is brilliant? Well, he is! And, the reason why I tell you this is because his brilliance, his ability to answer questions and to provide his students with good and interesting information is what set this educational experience aside for me.
I enjoyed this field trip more than any other because of the Instructor's passion for the subject matter. His amazing enthusiasm was contagious.
We first visited an actual working farm in South Hampton, New Hampshire. We had the opporutunity to pick the brain of a Farmer who is actually making his living by farming the land. In his hothouse, where we actually saw radishes growing in the ground on the last, (freezing) day of January. And, for the first time in my life I heard the word "vole" and just had to ask, "What is a vole?"
Well, let me tell you, a vole is a rodent with chopped off ears and a chopped off tail and looks like a sausage.
Farming is a tough life, but Andre is passionate and dedicated to the cause of growing his own food, knowing what and where his calories come from, and he will continue to farm as his life's work.
Adult Education Programs become relative to the individual. That is for certain.
I have never known a farmer from my generation and if I had not taken this course as a part of my Adult Education Program I might never have met Andre, at his farm in South Hampton, New Hampshire.
After our visit at the farm, we journeyed further south to Plum Island in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Have I told you how blue the sky was or how crisp the air was on that day? It was a perfect day for our brisk yet cheerful walk along the board walk to the bird screens where we looked out toward the Parker River and saw huge mounds of Marsh Grasses that we think were built by muskrats. Because the Instructor of this particular Adult Education course is so knowledgeable, combined with the fact that I was not in a good position to take notes, I have actually forgotten the name of the grasses (sorry to say). But, I did take photos for the notebook I am creating for this course.
We observed SCAT. Now, scat is not for everyone. But... this course does give you a better understanding of what scat teaches us about the habitual underpinnings of wildlife. In nature, scat marks territories and... if you look very, very closely at it.. and I mean get right down there on the boardwalk and take a look at it.. you can actually discover what the animals are eating which tells you what the food sources are for wild life in the area. So, if we recognize fox scat it is because we know what they eat and we know they are there with us ... somewhere.
I loved it best of all, when I learned aabout the squirrels and how they actually discovered maple syrup! We watched as Dan bit into a very old Red Maple tree with lots of "bruises" on it. He then told us how squirrels bite into the tree to eat the sap. It was by watching squirrels do this and asking why, that sap was discovered, reducing it was discovered and Maple Syrup was born.
My Adult Education Program is a gift from my husband but it is so much more than that to me because I just love the learning process. So far, I have taken Portsmouth NH classes and Rochester NH classes through Granite State College and I am very happy with them. I make every effort to get the most out this experience as I can.
Learning is vital to my experience of Adult College Education. It is one of the joys in my life.
As a part of my Adult College Education Program, I am presently taking the most wonderful class! It is called Environmental Heritage which covers a wide range of topics pertaining to our New England area.
Due to the nature of our study in this particular class, two field trips are included as part of the accredited experience. Sunday, January 31, 2010 we went on our first field trip. Did I tell you that the Instructor for this class is brilliant? Well, he is! And, the reason why I tell you this is because his brilliance, his ability to answer questions and to provide his students with good and interesting information is what set this educational experience aside for me.
I enjoyed this field trip more than any other because of the Instructor's passion for the subject matter. His amazing enthusiasm was contagious.
We first visited an actual working farm in South Hampton, New Hampshire. We had the opporutunity to pick the brain of a Farmer who is actually making his living by farming the land. In his hothouse, where we actually saw radishes growing in the ground on the last, (freezing) day of January. And, for the first time in my life I heard the word "vole" and just had to ask, "What is a vole?"
Well, let me tell you, a vole is a rodent with chopped off ears and a chopped off tail and looks like a sausage.
Farming is a tough life, but Andre is passionate and dedicated to the cause of growing his own food, knowing what and where his calories come from, and he will continue to farm as his life's work.
Adult Education Programs become relative to the individual. That is for certain.
I have never known a farmer from my generation and if I had not taken this course as a part of my Adult Education Program I might never have met Andre, at his farm in South Hampton, New Hampshire.
After our visit at the farm, we journeyed further south to Plum Island in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Have I told you how blue the sky was or how crisp the air was on that day? It was a perfect day for our brisk yet cheerful walk along the board walk to the bird screens where we looked out toward the Parker River and saw huge mounds of Marsh Grasses that we think were built by muskrats. Because the Instructor of this particular Adult Education course is so knowledgeable, combined with the fact that I was not in a good position to take notes, I have actually forgotten the name of the grasses (sorry to say). But, I did take photos for the notebook I am creating for this course.
We observed SCAT. Now, scat is not for everyone. But... this course does give you a better understanding of what scat teaches us about the habitual underpinnings of wildlife. In nature, scat marks territories and... if you look very, very closely at it.. and I mean get right down there on the boardwalk and take a look at it.. you can actually discover what the animals are eating which tells you what the food sources are for wild life in the area. So, if we recognize fox scat it is because we know what they eat and we know they are there with us ... somewhere.
I loved it best of all, when I learned aabout the squirrels and how they actually discovered maple syrup! We watched as Dan bit into a very old Red Maple tree with lots of "bruises" on it. He then told us how squirrels bite into the tree to eat the sap. It was by watching squirrels do this and asking why, that sap was discovered, reducing it was discovered and Maple Syrup was born.
My Adult Education Program is a gift from my husband but it is so much more than that to me because I just love the learning process. So far, I have taken Portsmouth NH classes and Rochester NH classes through Granite State College and I am very happy with them. I make every effort to get the most out this experience as I can.
Learning is vital to my experience of Adult College Education. It is one of the joys in my life.
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