Last blog entry :(

I’ve now been home for a couple days and am getting used to the time change back! The first day I woke up back home it felt weird to not get in the van and go on a tour somewhere.

This trip has been incredible and very educational; things I learned on this trip will stick with me and I think it was a lot of things that I wouldn’t have learned in a class room. Over the time of the trip, I have gotten to know a lot of great people and I have learned a lot.

This trip has changed the way I look at everything. When I was at the store getting milk I thought of the milking parlors, the dairy cows, and the operations (and I wished there was cotton candy milk available). But also various companies at home I’ve thought about what a tour there would be like.

I’m so thankful to have had this opportunity; seeing different aspects to agriculture in different parts of the U.S. is really cool. Checking out agriculture in other countries would be awesome but it’s a much more expensive option so I’m glad this opportunity of staying in the U.S became available. I really hope this trip continues because there are so many things to learn about agriculture in our own country that you just have to be there and experience.

Looking back I can’t even narrow down to even my top 5 favorites because I really enjoyed them all. However, I think my #1 is Triumph Foods; I couldn’t believe how much we were able to see of the process. We saw everything from when the hogs walked in to different cuts of meat being packaged. I had never seen anything like that before and it was very informational.

I would like to say a huge thank you to Matt for even making this trip possible. I’m sure picking out places to go and getting it all scheduled was not easy but Matt did a great job and I would say we all appreciated it and really enjoyed this trip!

I would definitely do this trip again and I would strongly recommend it to others also. There are a lot of things to be learned by seeing it and listening to the owners of each company.