Beets me...

When I began my adventure in gardening, I had no idea that it would soon become much more than just a class. It has changed me in many ways and become a central part of my life. I'm from a small town, and agriculture is a big part of it, and I had never been interested in anything remotely related. I wanted the city, the hustle and bustle, noise and excitement. As I've gotten older though, I've begun to realise that the things you think you want aren't always that great.

Don't get me wrong, I love being in Pittsburgh; I love having places to go and explore... But one thing I miss is the solitude of the country. My college campus is quite secluded compared to most college campuses, but you can still hear cars driving by, people talking, and general murmurs that the suburban city makes. At home, the only sounds you hear are crickets, coyotes, and the sound of my dad or dog snoring. When it's dark out, it's dark. No light but the moon and stars shining in through the trees.

So obviously it was heaven when I took my first trip to the farm with the class. 388 acres of nature. The people in the class made me laugh. I swear that some of them had never even seen dirt before. "Look! A deer!" "Oh my god, it's a deer!" "A bird!" "TREES!" I could look out of my window at any time and expect to see a few deer nibbling the apples from our trees, turkeys roosting the the trees, and bears ripping apart our bird feeders to eat the seed. So obviously I was not fazed.

Neither was I fazed when it came time to actually garden. Which involves, you know, touching dirt, and getting dirty. I swear some people didn't anticipate that we would actually have to do real gardening.

But I started learning about all the different organic gardening practices, and so many other things... I became more and more interested; I wanted to be in the garden all the time. It progressed to such an extent that I took the spring version of the course, which was a ENV class, and offered to go to the garden any time extra help was needed.