{"id":1779,"date":"2025-08-08T11:25:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T18:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/?p=1779"},"modified":"2025-08-08T11:25:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T18:25:13","slug":"exploring-oregon-agriculture-one-event-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/2025\/08\/08\/exploring-oregon-agriculture-one-event-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Oregon agriculture one event at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jessalyn Horton<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve settled into a nice groove here at the Benton County Extension Office working with well water. I\u2019ve spent time at several farmers markets testing water samples for nitrates and talking about treatment options, health impacts, causes of high nitrates in water and other potential contaminants with folks. I have made it out to Brownsville, down to Harrisburg for Summer Sounds, up to Stayton and more.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"A\n
Jessalyn at the Philomath Farmers Market on June 29th. Photo: Jessalyn Horton<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

When I\u2019m not out testing water, I\u2019ve mostly been in the office creating and mailing advertising materials for our testing events. Lately I\u2019ve been cleaning up the mailing addresses we use from old well logs using ArcGIS and my mad Microsoft Excel skills. That stuff is all necessary but not very exciting. What\u2019s more exciting is when I get to go out on field trips.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been able to join Crystal Kelso, who works with Small Farms and Forestry here at Extension and also coordinates activities for local Veteran farmers, on a few of the Veteran events she\u2019s organized. So far I have attended a beekeeping event at OSU\u2019s apiary at the Oak Creek Center for Urban Horticulture and a farm tour out in Albany. The beekeeping event was particularly interesting since I was coming from a level of zero knowledge. I got to get up close and personal with one of the hives. By the end I was very ready to get some personal space back! I really liked the farm tour as well, I got to provide some information on an updated Oregon law that should help the farmer out and enjoyed listening and learning all about his land and the different things he\u2019s trying out. These events provide a great opportunity to not only share resources with one another, but to help build community among people who have shared experiences. I look forward to continuing to attend these events even after my internship is done.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"A\n
Jessalyn Horton is beekeeping at the Veteran Farmer Beekeeping Workshop on June 27th. Photo: Crystal Kelso<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

I also went up to the North Willamette Research and Extension Center\u2019s (NWREC) Blueberry Field Day in late July. My fellow intern Taiva and I learned a ton about blueberries, best strategies for common pests and machine harvesting and saw some exciting research from PhD students. It\u2019s an event that\u2019s tailored to Oregon blueberry growers, so the information was fast and furious, but I appreciated being a sponge and seeing firsthand how OSU Extension bridges the gap between research and farmers. This week I\u2019ll be attending a similar field day more locally on organic agriculture, heading back up to NWREC to offer nitrate testing at their open house, to the West Salem farmers market (more testing) and finishing up the week strong posted up at the OSU Extension information booth at the Polk County Fair on Friday evening. I\u2019m excited to keep learning all summer long!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jessalyn Horton I\u2019ve settled into a nice groove here at the Benton County Extension Office working with well water. I\u2019ve spent time at several farmers markets testing water samples for nitrates and talking about treatment options, health impacts, causes of high nitrates in water and other potential contaminants with folks. I have made it out… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14885,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,146],"tags":[296],"class_list":["post-1779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benton-county","category-groundwater-protection","tag-jessalyn-horton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14885"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1780,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions\/1780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/extintern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}