I am super-jacked, because this last Sunday, I finished measuring the corn!!! Yes!! If anyone has read Shanna's really nice entry, they will know a little of how exciting that is for me. Not to mention, all of the interns know full well how exciting that is as well! The story with the corn, for those who do not know, is that a professor of mine at ACU set up a study with Jake Tincher and Jarrod Brown here at Mission Lazarus to test 30 different varieties of indigenous corn to see which varieties grew the best in the kind of climate found at the ranch. The purpose of the study is to identify the variety of corn that produces the most corn and the heartiest plants, so the workers at the ranch can start growing it in mass quantities on the ranch for livestock feed. This allows Mission Lazarus to save a ton of money on feed for their livestock, and it'll also allow them to give corn seed to local farmers to grow themselves, for food and for livestock feed. So. . . my job this summer was to measure the heights of the different corn plants, as well as the heights of the first ear of corn on every plant, then calculate the averages for each variety. That means that I measured a lot of corn, often by myself for nine hours a day, with only the spiders and the corn plants to talk to. Aye yay yay! I like to talk to people a lot, and it was definitely a challenge being alone for so long! I don't know how the other ranch workers do it, hoeing corn alone in a field all day! The worst, though, was being the only one on the ranch for a day and coming home to an empty ranch house for the evening. It made the coming-home of the interns in the evening a really happy event!! But, with the awesome help of some of the interns, (and with new knowledge that I actually didn't have to measure every single plant), I was able to finish all of the corn measuring last Sunday morning! Praise the Lord! So, I'm pretty pumped that the measuring is all done. Now, to finish the rest of the study, I will harvest corn and legumes (beans, peas, etc.) together to see which combination of what will yield the most plant matter and the highest protein content. This is important because which ever produces the most will be used as high-protein silage feed for the dairy cattle. Thus, it's been fun helping with something that will be such a help to the Mission in the future. It'll be exciting to see how everything turns out! Until then, I will remain a child of the corn.

-- Dylan Wann