Ithaca Apple Fest!

The 27th annual Applefest! Yay. In the Commons, which is downtown. It kinda looks like Quincy Market there... I like it :)
Except, there are A LOT of independent shops and things. Not very many chains. Oh, but there's a Bank of America there! Oh, so happy to see that. There are only BoA ATMS here ~_~



And they have Starbucks too! there are only 2 here.
I'm not a fan, but it feels like home in there.

OH! And they have 1000 Villages there too! I was surprised to see that.

Too bad it rained all day.

So they sold lots of apple products and arts and crafts. Ithaca is really crafty.

Lots of American-ness going on. Yknow, the stuff you SHOULD see at fairs and stuff. There was even a ferris wheel (that went SUPER fast. I didnt get on that, duh).

I bought a corn dog! It was really small ~_~

But they had pumpkin funnel cake. I should have eaten that.

Ummm.... they must be delicious but.... *cringe*
Did you know these existed?!?!

Bought some of these from this really nice lady. She had so many pretty....things! I dunno what they are, but you can hang them up. She had sooo many pretty hangy things and boxes and frame! I wonder who will be the lucky recipients of these.

Ithaca has such a diverse population! There's always laotian food, Thai food, Chinese food, Tex-mex, and a lot of Indian food there too. There's also a strong Native American presence. It rivals Brookline's diversity, most def.

More nature walks

We can't get enough of the nature walks around the gorges!


The trees are starting to change color already.

Not sure what these are, but my friend Jake and I decided they were red breasted mergansers. Can somebody verify this?

It's the resident great blue heron! He finally got close enough for a photoshoot.

Dr. Kup, now I see why you like it here

random pic

The clocktower is pretty at night.

Moobaby love

Took a cute vid of the baby moobabies in the teaching barn.




Skip to 30 seconds to see some major cuteness (that's when the food goes away).

Today's Pre Vet Society Meeting: PARROTS!

So, I'm part of the Pre Vet Society, naturally. I think they're lame (disorganized, blah blah) but whatever, it's what we've got.

Anyway, today's meeting was about the Exotic Avian Husbandry class at Cornell. It was a little intro to the class.

So of course, we had exotic avians! These are the birds used in the class, and their breeders teach the course I guess. I don't know.

Anyway, we learned a few things about each bird... and parrot people are a little weird but I think you have to be if you're going to raise parrots for a living. Parrots need a lot of scoial interaction, so you kind of have to talk to it and treat it like a person.
Anyway, these were an entertaining bunch of people.

Here are the parrots!

I'm not in any of the pics, sorry, I didnt have time to put myself in a picture.



Fernando. He bit a girl because she moved to fast for him and pissed him off. Duh, you're going to piss of the parrot if you jerk your arm around.


This is... I don't remember. This is a blue winged macaw. I think.


This is Riba, a scarlet macaw.






And this is Jasmine! The sweetest cockatoo. She likes getting her belly rubbed, or as her owner would call it, "smushed."

I learned a few things from this meeting. One, cockatoos are really clever. Two, macaws like to play rough. And three, cockatoos have a lot of white powder in their feathers which makes them feel like they're covered in talcum powder. So cute!

Yay, that was my excitement for the week.


Next up, Friday night fun! With pictures of myself, but I don't look any different, people.
And, my Niagra Falls trip on Saturday! With my dorm.
And Ithaca Apple Fest in downtown Ithaca on Sunday! Whoooot!

Videos of the day

So here are some videos that I took today.

First, the chimes concert at 1pm. Cornell has a clock tower called McGraw Tower. Inside are chimes, which is like a piano that uses bells. There's a team of "chimesmasters," students, and they go up and play songs 3 times daily.

At 1pm, they played some good songs! Good thing I was close enough to get some good audio.

Sorry for the shakiness of the camera. I was trying to be discreet.

New York New York!



The Way You Look Tonight




In the Hall with the Mountain King




Do Re Mi





So after recording these vids for you and running some errands, I went to lounge and do some studying in Willard Straight Hall. They have a nice living room style lounge and browsing library full of reaaaally old books (well... from the 70s. They look old) And they have comfy sofas.
They also have a piano that students can play. Everyday someone GOOD plays the piano at lunchtime.

This was today's "concert." The guy playing was CUTE. Too bad I was on the other side of the bookcase so I couldn't record him for you.



Doesn't he play wonderfully??? Ooohh.... I'd have a crush on him if I could remember what he looked like. Oh well!

People are requesting pics of myself... I have not taken pics of myself because I look like a ZOMBIE!

I'll take pics tomorrow... tomorrow is Friday so I'll be a little happier.

Yay!

Organic dairy farm field trip

Another dairy farm field trip today! This time, we went to an organic dairy farm to compare/contrast between the conventional dairy farm of last week.

Too bad it was rainy today. But Ithaca is still gorgeous!



This farm was tiny, split across a road. The mama cows are on one side, the baby cows are on the other.



Here's fermenting manure. It's called sedge or something. It smells like acidic hay... but this stuff was beautiful and clean! Good quality poop products right there. I guess that's what happens when cows eat what they evolved to eat: GRASS.



So, to be certified organic these cows must have minimal antibiotics used (preferably natural medicine), no hormones, no alterations to their body (except for de-horning), and everything the cows eat must also be organic. That would be organic hay and grass and grain. These veggies must have no toxins used on them, like fertilizers and pesticides, for 3 years.



What you get are cows that graze and do what cows naturally do: eat grass, walk on grass, lie on grass. Conventional farms feed cows a lot of corn, which is not what cows have evolved to eat. But it doesn't hurt them either, but they are doing studies to see if grass fed cows are healthier and yield healthier products than corn fed cows.



Here are the babies! The moobabies here are # 17, 18, 19. They were cute :)




Note the hills! There were cows grazing on top of those hills too... I wonder if the cows ever trip and fall down......



When the calves are old enough they get a name, and the herdsman know the moobabies by name rather than number.


Yay moobabies! And these babies were not as stinky :) I guess because there were only 130 of them... compared to last week's 1000+.

Yay.

Kay, see ya.

Hot air ballooing over Ithaca?! YES!

I've always wanted to go hot air ballooning. I know they do that in Springfield and in the Berkshire but look at what I saw last night after dinner...

So I'm walking out of the dining hall and what do I see in the distance?

A hot air balloon! AWESOME!!!
Ithaca is way prettier than the Berkshires. Do they have cows in the Berkshires!? No, not really. And the hills here are more rolly too. And the grass is greener. And it's just plain prettier than MA.

Ag Day: MORE COWS!

Ohmygosh cows everywhere!

Today was Ag Day on the Agriculture Quad (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences) on campus. There's the CALS library (Mann library, with an awesome cafe called the Manndible Cafe), and the biology and plant science buildings surrounding the quad.

Today's event featured local farmers teaching students about tractors, crops, diary and sheep farming.

It was actually a really lame event in terms of the clubs and active they were participating but I don't care about clubs. I care about the animals.

Sheep from the Cornell Sheep farm/Wool production program! Fuzzy fuzzy sheepies.


A little Jersey moobaby.

Cow chip bingo! If the cow poops on your square, you win!

This cow is a fistulated cow, used in for teaching at the vet school.

It's a big mama.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

Conventional dairy farm FIELD TRIP!!!

*Sorry for the bad picture quality. I forgot my camera so I took all the pictures from my iPhone.



ANIMAL SCIENCE FIELD TRIP TODAY!!! WHOOHOO!!!

VISITING A DAIRY FARM IN ITHACA!!! YAAAYYY!!!

CONVENTIONAL DAIRY FARMS!!! That's ok with me!

COWS!!! YAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!.... or so I thought....



This field trip made me realize what a dairy farm is like. It SMELLS. BAD. Cows are cute... make lotsa milk... but they SMELL and are DIRTY.

But hey, that's okay.



These girls were kept very comfortable. They eat as much as they want and get lots of nutrients, and they produce 10 gallons of milk each day. That's a lot of milk.


We saw the calves too! Because, of course, cows must be pregnant/just given birth in order for them to have milk.



This farm had 1000+ cows.



It will take me a while to get used to the smell of cow poops.



And the hay and dust gave me allergies.



I'd be a terrible farmer.
Moooo!




1 Day old babycowbabies!

I can still smell the wonderful smell of manure... even after I washed all my clothes and showered ~_~