My Senior Perspective: Blog 12: Holiday Project Update

My mom and I snuggly dressed as we adventured onto a vacant Cal Poly Pomona Regenerative Studies lot

1. It is important to consistently work on your senior project, whether it is break or we are in school. What did you do over the break with your senior project?

- During winter break, I do admit that I mostly reflected on how my project would develop and how the answer to its essential question as it stands would come to be. As of right now, I am researching plenty of techniques that make urban farming successful at the community level, and at this point, I plan to specify the direction of my project a bit more as my research quota exceeds what I need. Shall I be focusing on the environmental benefits of the practice? How shall I incorporate the economic opportunity the practice represents for many? What aspect of urban farming ties in the significance of its process to the product (s) it delivers? These questions must be answered as I experiment with and analyze the art of my topic, so that I can accurately present on my findings and sort what I have learned with a main idea in mind. As a result of this mind-searching and excitement expressed by family members, I only got to lay down pavers around the perimeter of my garden and visit the Regenerative Studies lot at Cal Poly Pomona and their aquaponics farm (an inspiration for my own scaled down version of this invention) as part of my first independent component, as well as till coffee grains into the soil of some of my house pants (i.e. mint plant). I do have high hopes that my planning will yield more fruitful results for my independent component and beyond.

2. What was the most important thing you learned from what you did, and why? What was the source of what you learned?

- I learned that coffee deposits add important minerals to the composition of soil, and a natural source of acidity. Knowing this, I added two heaping tablespoons to each pot of soil I could find in my house, and since then, have seen an abundance of mint leaf sproutings. The single most important lesson I learned in my thoughts and simple endeavors is patience, as I gather as much data on and current goings of urban farming in anticipation of a definite direction for my project.

3. Your third interview will be a 10 question interview related to possible answers for your EQ. Who do you plan to talk to and why?

- I have no idea who I should talk to for my third interview. I am planning to get into contact with a professor of agriculture at some nearby college though. I am steadily liking the idea of emailing a name I found after venturing into Cal Poly Pomona’s Regenerative Studies lot up above Kellogg Ranch on the hill bearing solar panels. The name is Dr. Maryam Shafahi, and he/she is actually the advisor for an aquaponics senior project. It is in this way that I can look into this particular waterborne approach to urban farming, and how best to complete the aquaponics component of my first Independent component.