It is hard to believe that 6 months has gone by already! In that short time I learned the SOS protocol from mapping suitable populations in the beginning all the way to the end product at the Bend Seed Extractory. It is the first season of SOS for BLM Surprise and my project was SOS from start to finish. I really enjoyed working with BLM volunteers Ed and Wendi Lutz who have a ranch over in Nevada about 25 miles from the office. They are doing germination studies of native plants and small scale garden studies. They really kept spirits high even on scouting trips which weren’t so successful and on days where the weather was not ideal.  Our trip to Bend was made exciting by the fact that we got to see our collections at every stage of the process. The workers at Bend don’t just stand there at a machine and push seed through-they have to be inventive for those tough collections that can’t go through the machines. We had a collection of Balsamorhiza which consisted of mostly flower heads and they put the entire collection in a wire mesh tumbler that reminded me of the things they use at the grocery store for raffle tickets and drawings (see picture). Turn the crank to mix them up and the achenes drop through to a collection bin.  We watched as the workers pulled seed out of the brown paper bag I helped put it into and then feed it into the hopper of a deawning machine and see the seeds come out one end and all the awns out another. We saw x-ray photographs taken at this stage that show the ratio of filled seed to empty-our Thurber’s needle grass looked excellent! We saw material that looked like lawn clippings being fed into a Clipper and watched as the machine sorted the material out by weight separating seed from straw-my mentor Kathryn and co-intern Maike really enjoyed this!  The neatest thing was seeing the package of seed with our office code on the label along with information on seed purity and quality. I enjoyed the small town of Cedarville even without the services one is used to in more populated areas and I really enjoyed seeing some of the beautiful back country of northwest Nevada and northeast California. I saw, for the first time ever, wild mustang and bighorn sheep and I got to camp at High Rock Canyon which requires a 4×4 with adequate clearance and at least 8-ply tires to get through safely. I may not have had the adventure of a lifetime but I certainly accomplished my goal of working on a project from the beginning and seeing it through to the end and I call that success.

Hello from Cedarville, CA! My Internship is focused on the Seeds of Success program and this is the first year for BLM Surprise. So far I have shipped three collections and as of this posting there will be 5 more to be shipped next Monday. So far my favorite is Idaho Fescue which was the easiest to collect and painless as well. I learned first hand about Needle & Thread! Balsamroot was okay and smelled great too but the bugs hanging out in the foliage were almost too much to bear. As of this writing we collected Indian Ricegrass and Thurber’s needlegrass bringing our collection total to 8! I also have been doing some Rangeland Monitoring and went out with the Archaeology Tech once as well. It was with the latter that I saw my first Wild Mustangs so I was thrilled about that. As beautiful as Northeastern California and Nortwestern Nevada are I will be glad to spend some time away next week in San Francisco and visiting friends in Humboldt County!

Wild Mustangs

Idaho Fescue

Hairy Balsamroot

Lomatium Collection Site

This is the start of my 4th week in Cedarville, CA working at the BLM Surprise Field Office. The weather has been cool and rainy and so far I have visited only a fraction of the resource area. I have done some scouting for the SOS program and hopefully this week we will be able to collect seed from a Lomatium population that covers about 5 square miles. The image was taken off of Barrel Springs Road on the California-Nevada border.