May 13, 2017

We began our day at the normal time of 7:15 am. Our lovely chef, Diane, was out of town due to a graduation, so we had to improvise our first meal alone. HN brought along a blender for smoothies, as well as a “smoothie cookbook” which contains hundreds of recipes for different types of breakfast, protein drinks. For today’s breakfast, we decided to try a smoothie made from kale, bananas, cayenne pepper, and a few other smaller ingredients. I must admit, that even though I am not a huge fan of kale, or banana, or cayenne pepper, the drink was not horrible and it provided me with enough protein to last until lunch later in the day. We also had a small side of biscuits and gravy with our smoothie, just in case somebody wasn’t a huge fan of the combination of ingredients. While a few of my classmates helped prepare the drinks, I was assigned the task of researching Mary Swander. Mary was titled “Iowa’s Poet Laureate” in 2009m and it was our privilege to be able to watch one of her monologues in person today.

Before we set off for our adventure to the Pella Opera House, four out of the eight students were able to ride on tractors to witness how planting is done in the fields. I was able to participate in this activity today and was lucky enough to be able to ride along with Denny Neubauer. When we first arrived at the Neubauer farm, Josh and I were able to watch Denny and Scott load the planter with soybeans, which was a decently long process since each individual planter had to be loaded separately. Denny then took me out on the field cultivator, or “digger”, where we were able to finish turning over the soil so that the planter could then do its job. I really enjoyed being able to help with this business so that I could fully appreciate the impact that a nice planter or field cultivator could bring to a farm. Once we finished doing this farm work, the four of us had to change quickly into nicer clothes and eat a wonderful lunch consisting of a taco salad.

After lunch, we headed on our way to Pella to make it in time to see “Map of My Kingdom” beginning at 2:00 pm. The monologue was very well done and really expressed the difficulties that can arise due to land transition in families. The drama lasted about 45 minutes, followed by a short speech by Mary Swander herself. Once the production was over, we had a short coffee and dessert break in a downtown Pella park and then headed back to Morris’s house for dinner. Later that night, the crew went to a farm near New Providence to attend a local barn dance with live music and food. This was a very fun adventure for all of us because we were able to see the cultural differences between a small Iowa town and our hometowns (for me Greenville, South Carolina). We also learned how to swing dance, two-step, and foxtrot, which were all very fun and helped us burn some calories acquired from eating all the amazing food we have eaten the past few days. We left the dance at around 10:30 and headed back to our individual houses to get some sleep for the next day.