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The trip was interesting. It was the first time that I had the opportunity to meet someone who is in the American agricultural industry, let me just say, American farmer. The farm is actually much smaller than I expected it to be. The only plants I saw were sweet corns. However, it reminded me of the traditional farms in China. Usually the farms in China are even smaller. But the ways they are running the farms are very similar. They do not use as many chemicals as many industrial farms do, and they plant crops alternately to keep the fertility of the soil. (But from someone else’s post, she said that Pete said that he was doing monoculture farming instead of polyculture farming. I’m not sure whether I heard it wrong or she heard it wrong. But I’m pretty sure polyculture farming is the more sustainable way to run the farm.)

Recently, some kinds of new farms are getting more and more popular. These farms assemble all kinds of products, including vegetables, fruits, fishes and other livestock. People living in cities go these farms on weekend to have fun and “ kiss nature”, as they say it. I was delighted to find the same thing here on Pete’s Farm: People come there to buy locally grown food, which is also a way of “kissing nature”. Pete’s farm is doing the similar things for they also sell food that was not produced on their farm and other funny staffs, which were made from vegetables. I assume that his goal was also making people enjoy the pastoral life.

As for the carbon footprint of the blue bus, I really have no idea. I also think that it is not necessary to seriously calculate because everyday the blue bus is running between bi-co colleges, emitting much more harmful gas than our single trip emitted. If we want to think about the carbon footprint thing, I think it’s better for us to think about how to make the blue bus run more efficiently.