Presentation at the Library

We presented our research project at the downtown library. We put up fliers around town and it was in the local newspaper. We took our Climate Connections challenge table and set it up there in their big meeting room, along with our research project presentation. About fifty people were there and we talked about FLL and demonstrated our robot on the challenge table. We did our skit that we've rehearsed for our research project and encouraged the people in the audience to ask questions.

Lots of kids were there who were interested in the robots, so hopefully we will get some more interested in FLL for next year.



As part of our research project, we're encouraging people to start growing their own food at home. So we gave out buckets and filled them with dirt and gave out seeds so that people could start their own vegetable gardens. Our local recycling agency (BRING Recycling) gave us buckets plus we asked around and got some from our neighbors. Lane Forest Products and Rexius donated the gardening soil, and Territorial Seed company donated seeds.

Off to the Winery

As part of our research project, we toured King Estates Winery, which is about 20 miles out of town here. It was very very cold and foggy, we could hardly see the vineyards. Randy Stokes gave us a great tour and showed us everything from the grapevines to where they sort the stems and skins away from the grapes, big steel vats and then oak barrels where the wines are aged. We also saw where the bottle the wines and puts corks and labels on them and put them in boxes to be shipped to customers. We didn't taste any wines though!

After the tour, Randy Stokes talked to us about climate change and how it will affect vineyards here. King Estates won't have as many problems as some other wineries because they are closer to the coast which keeps their vineyard at a cooler overall temperature.

This year's FLL theme is Climate Connections, and our team chose the effect of climate on our local wineries as our research project topic. We found that wineries are in trouble because our climate is getting warmer and eventually the types of grapes that are grown here in the Willamette Valley (mostly Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris) have a very narrow temperature range that they can grow in. We're looking at two solutions, one a design to limit the amount of heat that the wine grapes get, and another to help slow down human-caused global warming.

This week we invited Charlotte Anthony from a local organization called Victory Gardens for All to come and talk to us about climate change and how helping people grow food at home can stop food from being shipped from a long ways away and help eliminate greenhouse gasses caused from food transportation.

We decided that we are going to give away bucket gardens as part of our research project to help people start growing food at home.