Summary of the Interview with the local farmer Martin Keller
The journey to the local farm was a great experience as we learned a lot about apples and gained knowledge about farming. Martin Keller didn’t just told us the answers to our questions, he also showed us the apple plantation, other fruit trees and told us about differences between the sorts, he gave us apples and apple cider (Apfelmost) to try and he told us different stories about his job which actually is also a big part of his life.
Arriving at the farm, first of all, Martin showed us around. Interestingly, the local farmer owns more than 12 different sorts of apples as well as pears, cherries, grapes but also horses, cows and the naughty (frech) cat called Flocke.
The lifecycle of an apple trees starts with choosing and growing the baby tree, they are grown in tree nurseries (Baumschulen) and can bought with an age of one or two years. Martin Keller personally tend to buy two years old trees as first apples can be harvested from the apple trees third living-year on. More...
What are your today's goals? Who is responsible?
- This post, definition of our goals for this lesson (Simone)
- Do the imagination-step (Stefanie)
- Answering e-mails
- to our teammate from India (Stefanie)
- to Strickhof, Lindau (Tamara)
- Typewrite questions 1 to 5 of the interview we made with a local farmer (Simone)
- Finalize questions for the survey we have planned (Tamara)
At the end of the lesson we will check if we reached our goals:
Goal achieved
Goal not achieved -> we achieved every goal! :-)
Tamara, Stefanie, Simone
Zurich, Switzerland
Have you ever been to a farm checking out how apples are growing? An apple is always worth it since all of us know: "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." We went to a local farmer recently, he showed us the plantation and told us about the harvest. It was very interesting to gain more knowledge about the relation between climate and the apple lifecycle. Stay with us and we keep you posted, cheers!
Next Wednesday, 13 November 2019, we are going to do a interview with a local farmer. We hope to get a closer view of the lifecycle of apples and gain more information about how those fascinating trees are grown. We prepared some questions for the interview below to get a detailed description from the farmer, let's see if we gonna grow our own tree soon. ;) More...
Names of research team (Who?)
Stefanie Kunz, Tamara Keller, Simone Etter
Our questions (What?)
- What is digitization? What does it involve?
- How important is digitization?
- Where and in which areas is digitization already available? Where is it still needed?
- What are advantages of digitization? Does it have any disadvantages?
More...
Interested in doing a project on a real future topic?
Technique is proceeding very fast, a lot of new ideas were implementet until todays time and they are on doing every day. Therefore digitisation is a very common and also important topic for all of us. It's also a topic supporting a well-balanced environment in different aspects. We'd like to do cross-comparisons through different countries, analyze what people think about it and where which kind of efforts have been made.
We think, this topic can also be linked with food and Climate because digitalistation is also a big topic in agriculture.
Do you also like real future projects? Let's work together! :)
Best regards from cold Wetzikon, Switzerland
Tamara Keller, Stefanie Kunz, Simone Etter
Hello everyone!
We have an interesting project idea: the life cycle of a local product. In our view it is very important that we support local farmers and buy regional fruits and vegetables.
We would like to show the different steps from how an apple tree got planted to how and when the apples will be picked from the tree. We want to find out how big or small the ecological footprint of this production and its impact on the climate is. In conclusion: What is needed that such a popular product ends up in the grocery store?
We look forward to find some other people who are interested in joining us and do the same project in their country so that we can compare our results. If you are interested, please comment this post and we will contact you as soon as possible.
Tamara Keller and Simone Etter, TZ 19
Nashi-Pear (Pyrus pyrifolia var. culta) also called Apple-Pear or Asian-Pear originate from the Rosaceae family (Rosengewächs) and was raised in China. Its name is japanese as "nashi" means pear (fun fact: We call it "pear-pear" 😄). In Japan there are 1'000 to 1'200 different sorts. They are mainly cultivated in East-Asia but in todays time also in Europe, South America and other parts of the world. This is because this species is able to abide temperatures up to minus 20 degrees celsius, therefore this plant also survives the cold swiss winters outside. The more sun and the less wind the better and profitable the harvest. The bountiful crop can be gathered in August/September. The nashi-pear consist more water than pears originated in Europe but the nutritional values are about the same. The trees don't have a gender, they are all hybrids and nontoxic. More...
We got the task, to take pictures of every meal we ate during one week and upload it on the food app called "KaBo Toolbox". Now, I want to share with you my experiences of this little project.
In my opinion the app was easy to use and in general it didn't took that long to fill in all the necessarily data. However, it was quite tedious sometimes to notice every time to take a picture before I can eat especially because I don't have 24/7 my cellphone with me. Unfortunately, I am sure that I also forgot to take pictures of some snacks etc. every now and then.
I look forward to analyse and compare the collected data from all students.
We had the task to calculate the energy of a meal our choice, from kcal to kJ and kWh. Sunday is "brunch-day"! So i've chosen some delicious American-Style Pancakes: More...
Plastic use has increased by twenty percent since the 1950s and so has the amount of its waste generated. Estimates show that less than 5% of the plastic manufactured each year is recycled, although, production of plastic is still increasing. Instead of burning the material and therefore creating additional air pollution there was a new way found to turn plastic waste into green energy. More...