Full disclosure: I’ve never blogged before. But I’m told I excel at telling “scientific stories.”

By the time I agreed to start documenting the NOVIC trial, it was early September and most varieties were mid-harvest. As explained to me, the main objective of this blog is to preserve the methodology and experience of Evergreen’s Organic Farm serving as a NOVIC daughter farm. My hope is that another student may find inspiration, support and motivation from this work. The request to serve as daughter farm was rather sudden, and neither faculty nor myself were fully prepared. To be honest, I’m still not sure I’m fully prepared to share the trial through this blog, but alas here goes nothing.

Since the trial is part way done, I thought it might be best to dedicate individual posts to the traits we’re collecting data on. In each post, I hope to explain the scoring techniques, report results, and discuss analysis of statistical results. You may also find posts after my bi-weekly harvests with reflections and thoughts. And to be honest, there may be “off-topic” posts…because sometimes I simply can’t help myself. 😉