HELP at the farm

[Timothy Mulligan]

Each growing cycle is 4 months, this month we are going to switch from growing Arabidopsis to maize in our greenhouse. We are going to take all the tables out, clean them and put them into another greenhouse, bleach the walls and floor, wash the glass and set out about 1,000 12-inch pots of custom made soil. Then we will plant the maize crop over the next couple of weeks. This takes a lot of manpower. I've never had an assistant but I get wonderful support from facilities. Over the summer I usually get a college or high school student and they would tell me they could work in the field but after 4 or 5 days they would wilt and that would be the end of that!

The cat is actually on the payroll. He is part of our integrated pest management. We attract a lot of mice and rats because of all the stored maize ears. Since we had the cat there has been no activity at all. We tend to over feed him and then he gets lazy but if you hold a bit back on his food he gets going. The rats are actually afraid of him because he is so big. We used to have rats that looked like they dropped dead of a heart attack! There was no physical damage to them but they were scared to death by the cat.