one of our internship requirements is to attend a conference, it doesn't have to be nutrition focused, but has to somehow be relevant to our profession. which is good, b/c nutrition conferences are expensive and being tiny new hampshire, not a whole lot of nutrition conferences going down here.
two of the other girls in my program and i ended up going to the New England Organic Farmers Association- NH Winter Conference (NOFANH). with full disclosure, i will tell you, i know next to nothing about farming, and even less about organic farming, so i was really hoping there would be something interesting to attend. i was expecting lots of full bearded men in overalls and a couple dashes of younger people with dreads. i didn't see any overalls, but there were quite a few older men with big bushy beards and a couple dreadlock hippies, but a surprising number of college-aged kids and pretty regular looking people (although this is new hampshire we're talking about...haha). i was also not the only asian (there was one other)! and while there were lots of workshops on farming techniques and such, i found a surprising number of topics that i enjoyed.
the first workshop i went to was about the relationship between the microbiomes of soil and human health. it was a microbiologist and a PCP (primary care physician) who talked, and the pcp was an awesome speaker. they had some statistics about organic food i'm a bit suspect about, but they had some interesting stuff about obesity and bacteria. also, did you know, human microbiome is about 5 pounds of our body weight! and a study found that in Japan the population had gut flora specific to utilizing nutrients from seaweed, how cool is our body!
for the second workshop i wanted to go to pork butchering but it was postponed so my friend and i went to beginning beekeeping. some interesting things from that workshop
- apitherapy: using bee venom as therapy?!?!
- cooked honey is higher in antioxidants
- the more promiscuous the queen bee is, the more successful the hive
- the queen can lay to to 2,000 eggs/day!
- the queen leaves the hive like once in her lifetime to mate w/ as many male bees as possible and then stores that sperm in her body for the rest of her life (the whole promiscuity thing)
- totally unrelated to beekeeping, but i really can't stand guys with long fingernails! gives me the heebie jeebies!
we got fed lunch and then after wandering the market with different vendors (not impressed) went to listen to the first keynote speaker, ben hewitt, a vt farmer/writer. he was funny, just wish his slideshow matched what he was saying. we were sitting on bleachers in the gym and during the tail-end of his speech though, this little girl was laying on her back and reverse sliding herself across the floor, it looked like something out of the exorcism or something. freaky and hilarious.
the last workshop we went to was about wild mushrooms. kind of makes me want to try foraging this summer! haha, but def need to find a guide.
one thing checked off my internship to-do list! it's superbowl tmrw. woohoo
the first workshop i went to was about the relationship between the microbiomes of soil and human health. it was a microbiologist and a PCP (primary care physician) who talked, and the pcp was an awesome speaker. they had some statistics about organic food i'm a bit suspect about, but they had some interesting stuff about obesity and bacteria. also, did you know, human microbiome is about 5 pounds of our body weight! and a study found that in Japan the population had gut flora specific to utilizing nutrients from seaweed, how cool is our body!
for the second workshop i wanted to go to pork butchering but it was postponed so my friend and i went to beginning beekeeping. some interesting things from that workshop
- apitherapy: using bee venom as therapy?!?!
- cooked honey is higher in antioxidants
- the more promiscuous the queen bee is, the more successful the hive
- the queen can lay to to 2,000 eggs/day!
- the queen leaves the hive like once in her lifetime to mate w/ as many male bees as possible and then stores that sperm in her body for the rest of her life (the whole promiscuity thing)
- totally unrelated to beekeeping, but i really can't stand guys with long fingernails! gives me the heebie jeebies!
we got fed lunch and then after wandering the market with different vendors (not impressed) went to listen to the first keynote speaker, ben hewitt, a vt farmer/writer. he was funny, just wish his slideshow matched what he was saying. we were sitting on bleachers in the gym and during the tail-end of his speech though, this little girl was laying on her back and reverse sliding herself across the floor, it looked like something out of the exorcism or something. freaky and hilarious.
the last workshop we went to was about wild mushrooms. kind of makes me want to try foraging this summer! haha, but def need to find a guide.
one thing checked off my internship to-do list! it's superbowl tmrw. woohoo
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