The Reflection Of Working On Prairie Roots Farms

For my service learning this semester I worked on Prairie Roots Farms alongside Abby and occasionally one of her two sons. It was an eye opening experience to say the least, working on an organic farm. It was surprising how much I learned about the world by never even leaving the county and I learned even in seemingly developed areas, there are corners of it that operate by farming more than just corn. When I thought of organic farming, I thought of normal industrial farming on a scale that was much smaller and without the use of pesticides. Although I was right about the smaller scales, there was a lot more work to it than I had initially expected. Since I worked there later in the fall, most of what we did was preparing for the next season, but we still had to remove tomato vines, remove and

This service learning experience taught me a lot about other people and cultures, most of which I learned from Abby. She was nothing like anyone I had ever met before in her personality and in her beliefs. It was refreshing to hear about all of these new ideas from her and learn about the way she thought and how she said she had feelings about people, a gut-feeling of sorts that told her who was good and who was not. She was also incredibly open with her thoughts, not afraid to ask what would be considered as inappropriate questions or express herself in an abnormal way. It was nice to see and hear something so different than what is considered the norm and it made me want to learn more about her and about other people in the world who do not share the same beliefs and ideas as the majority of Americans. She told me about how in her religion, which is more of a spirituality than anything, that they pray to a leader or a “guru” who is a living, breathing, human being. She also told me how it was similar to the Asian religions of Buddhism and Hinduism, saying