Today, I drove out to central Illinois with three U of I research employees (who, when I asked, said they preferred to remain nameless in this post). I went to interview soil scientist Bill Becker, they to take samples from fields he has been treating. I ended up helping to take the samples, and as I’m now a bit too tuckered out to write a proper post today, I thought that a simple list of our day (à la Harper’s Index) would suffice.

Fields visited: 3 (one corn, one soybean, and one alfalfa and clover)

Vehicles: 2

Undergraduate students: 2

Graduate students: 1

PhDs: 2

Individual soil samples collected: 90

Fungi species Bill Becker has named: 2

Percentage of times soil got stuck in the end of a tube while taking samples: 50%

Four-leaf clovers spotted: 9 (only 4 were picked)

Corn stalks dug up for root structure examination: 4

Test patches marked off in the alfalfa for sodium testing: 8

Subway lunches purchased: 3

Number of times we heard the NPR story on the new US employment report: 3

Bug bites and sunburns: too many to count

Tune in again on Monday for a look at the Woody Perennial Polyculture site!