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.