🌱 First Week of Research

I drove up to Princeton last Saturday, the 8th, in my newly fixed-up little red Ford Ranger. It was an awesome 10-hr ride through WV, Pennsylvania, some Maryland, and New Jersey. I made a point to only stop at gas stations along the way (packed some leftover pizza and other snacky things to munch on along the way) and thoroughly enjoyed stopping every couple of hundred miles, stretching my legs in a new landscape, refilling the car’s tank and my own (coffee), and running through the regular oil, power-steering, and brake-fluid check. My phone was mounted on the windshield and plugged in so I had easily-visible directions the whole way. I jammed to local radio stations that faded in and out as I crossed county lines. The most notable part of the trip was a stretch of insterstate and state highway after turning East just below Morgantown where the road’s steepness was 5% or greater for a good couple of hundred miles. My little pickup really struggled on the uphills and it’s cruise-control sometimes dropped out if it was having to try too hard to keep the speed, so I was constantly having to downshift and watch out for high-powered cars flying by and lumbering 16-wheelers crawling in the right lane.

I spent my first two nights here in Princeton at a local church family–the Broxes–home. They’re an extremely avid running family, and the Dad’s (Daniel) company was sponsoring a local 5k that Sunday, so we all got up early and ran together before Church. Needless to say, I was by far the most out-of-shape and slowest person in the family. The oldest boy of the family won the race, and the mom (Carrie) won 2nd place for women. I finished in fine form at 203rd place 😂. We went to Church (Hope Presbyterian) after the race and then a Church picnic after the service. Then I took a hard nap back at their house.

I moved into my permanent summer housing on campus early Monday morning and got breakfast with my future roommate (also named Josh). After settling in and unpacking a little bit, I met my research team for the summer and began learning about the research routine. The rest of the week followed the same pattern as that first day, and I gradually worked into the groove of the research we will be doing. Here’s a bit of an overview:

👨‍🌾 Princeton Farm Project - 2019

This summer, I’m a part of the Princeton Environmental Institute’s ongoing Farm Project as an extension of the University’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program. Our project collects environmental, crop-health, yield, and economic data from local Princeton-area farms for a class that’s taught in the Spring semester. We have a number of sensors placed above specific crops that we’re measuring that collect a whole host of information, and we travel to a couple farms every day and collect sticky-traps full of bugs to identify and analyze the biodiversity of specific bug populations around those plants. My personal addition to the project is piloting a drone that collects RGB (regular pictures) and infrared (long-wave light) data about the plants and to develop computer programs that model and quantify the 1) differences between the farms and 2) the biological processes of the plants based on the information we’re gathering.

Typical days look like a morning (9-12) in a lab identifying insects we collected in our traps, analyzing camera-trap videos, organizing and inventorying our supplies, and developing software for the problems we’re trying to solve. I have an hour long lunch break where I’ve been running back to my dorm building and quickly pan-frying some produce and brewing some afternoon coffee. Then, in the afternoon (1-5ish) we as a team travel around to different farms to collect and replace insect traps, repair broken sensors, interview the farmers, weigh and measure their crops, and, my job, to fly our drone. We spray off our shoes with dilute (low concentration) bleach between farms so we’re not transferring bacteria and other micro-organisms between the farms. A few micro-organisms could upset the whole micro-ecology of a farm system and destroy vegetation, so we try to be very careful about introducing any foreign species.

📖 Evenings

Evenings have been pretty chill so far. I’ve mostly been reading about calculating photosynthesis rates, learning Python, and thinking hard about the research angle I want to approach our data from. I have a beautiful dorm room with a desk that I put in front of a big window, so I’ve been spending a lot of time at the desk enjoying the fresh air and my coffee maker.

I started reading Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together” and Butterfield’s “The Gospel Comes with a House Key” this week. The second book was given to me by my campus Christian fellowship as summer reading, and so far (I’ve only read a couple chapters) it’s been quite challenging in its presentation of what the author calls “radically ordinary hospitality.” I can’t say whether or not I recommend it until I finish it, but so far it’s been pretty good. I’ll keep you updated on that.

On Saturday I made it over (East) to the beach with a friend. It was crazy windy so we were basically just sandblasted for a couple hours before deciding to head back to campus. Fun though! It’s weird living in a place where the beach is only an hour away. During the semester the academics were so brutal that I barely left the campus and never thought about taking a road trip, but now in the summer it’s wonderful to have a bit of accessibility to the beach!

👋 Closing

Thank you for checking in and reading about my week! May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you always.