LINK Internship
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Leading Internships for New Knowledge sends juniors on three-week internships in the field of their choice. During LINK, students have no regular classes as they spend 30-40 hours a week with mentors in the workplace, learning how to apply their skills outside the classroom. For more information, visit ahsinternships.weebly.com.
Business: Chama Valley Meat Co.
We are a small, family-run operation committed to the welfare of the land, our animals, and our community. We are very excited to bring healthier foods into the marketplace. Our patch of ground is a very small piece of the planet, but we are committed to keeping it as pure as possible while supplying the highest quality products to our friends and neighbors.
The ranches are owned by Robert & Lisa Ferrell and have been in the family for generations. Lisa’s great-great-grandfather, T.D. Burns, arrived in northern New Mexico in the late 1860s.
Over the years T.D. Burns bought land and established a large land and livestock business. At that time the dominant livestock was sheep. In addition, the lower, irrigated properties were farmed, for wheat, alfalfa and hay.
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Throughout the years, the operation was divided among heirs. Lisa and her family own two pieces of property from that early era:
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El Barranco Ranch is irrigated land south of Chama, on both sides of the Chama River. The cattle and Tibetan Bison winter on this land. In the summer cattle graze it and we harvest hay. El Barranco is the name of a small village that existed years ago on the ranch, right on the banks of the Chama River.
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Wolf Creek Ranch is a few thousand acres north of Chama, on the Colorado-New Mexico border. The cattle and Tibetan Bison spend the summer there, in the cool mountains, grazing high mountain grass, drinking mountain stream water and sharing the land with a large herd of elk.
My Project
Our Main Project during this internship was building a power shed for the ranch. The purpose of this structure is to house the generators and solar panels for powering the ranch. It was really awsome building the power shed and watching the progress we made!! Ruminants are mammals that are able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, principally through microbial actions
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Alonge with the construction each LINK intern had a side project. Mine was learning about Ruminants! Ruminants are mammals that are able to get nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, principally through microbial actions. The process, which takes place in the front part of the digestive system and is called foregut fermentation, typically requires cud to be regurgitated and chewed again.
The process of rechewing the cud to further break down plant matter and stimulate digestion is called rumination.
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I studied this process rigorously and learned about the microbiology in the rumen. This relates too how the diet of the livestock affects their meat. It was a pretty interesting topic to study and I really enjoyed my time on it.
Reflection
Overall, this LINK was a really good example of creating something pretty cool out of a bad situation. Being able to work at a ranch and still have really cool interactions with animals was an amazing experience that I feel was a pretty good alternative to my original LINK. Now I know Chama was no Maui Ocean Center but it was the best LINK I could have in this pandemic.