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WEIRENS | Just Peachy: What Cornell Can Learn From Their Orchards

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I dragged the cutters behind me, leaving behind a small divot in the dirt. Despite a lifetime of weightlifting, these were far too heavy for me to hoist with ease. “Aren’t these what criminals use to steal bikes,” I wheezed to Aleks, my fellow intern. She shrugged, pulling a cart weighed down with rusty metal stakes. It was a beautiful, sunny, 95 degree day and we were in the vineyard. Our task for the day? Remove hundreds of heavy metal stakes, each driven through the center of an individual grape plant. A tragic minority of the stakes could be pulled out with our hands, while the rest had to be chopped at the root with iron bike lock cutters.

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WEIRENS | Sow Much to Discover: The Flourishing Agriculture of Cornell

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On my first day ever at Cornell, my family and I got a bit lost. It was the day before move-in, and we were exploring campus for ourselves, far off the beaten path toward the easternmost part of campus where the teaching barns are. A Minnesotan family of animal lovers, we had seen farms on the campus map and were determined to investigate them ourselves. Finally, after a long walk in the rain, we stumbled upon a collection of several different barns, sheds and greenhouses.