Work photos!

i finally got around to taking some photos at work on Friday too.  I'll take more next week, as I'm on a one hour lunch.

 This is the processing room.  All the cones come here first until we decide what's happening with them.  Some collections are for industrial use (oil/mining companies can request or buy them for reclamation), some collections are just for our conservation collections (I'm in charge of this now) and some get split into both.  Some are from our breeding orchards for research.  Some have enough cones that we can send them to the industrial nursery next door (> 1 hectalitre) and the smaller ones we clean ourselves.

 These are the Black Spruce (Picea mariana) cones I counted last week.  They are from one of our clone breeding orchards.  There are a few clones and many trees for each clone.  We monitor the number of cones, height, growth rate etc of the trees.  Don't get excited about the clones.  I did at first but it's not as bad as it sounds.  It's a long explanation though.

 And these are Red Pine (Pinus resinosa) that I counted last week as well.  And yes, they are VERY sticky!  Geez, I thought we dressed down at the MSB.  You have no idea...

 And these are some of the Black Spruce waiting for me to count them.

 We are keeping a few of the Black Spruce cones out of the bulk collection because we don't have much separate seed from these ones for research.

 These are Limber Pine (Pinus flexilis) that arrived in my first week.  These were picked early because we need to beat the birds and squirrels.  But some species can be harvested a little early and matured, as long as the embryo is more than 50% of the entire seed length.

 And this is the DC room where we  mature the seeds.  We also use it later in the year for the seedlings, hence the name 'dormancy conditioner'.  It's kept at 15C and the humidity is constantly trying to come down to 65%, although with all the new cones coming in, it's been near 100% lately.  We don't have a dry room because we don't need it!  Happily, once the cones are picked and matured if needed, they dry down to ambient (around 40% RH) and over the course of seed cleaning the ambient drops to about 20% RH near Christmas.  Perfect!  In fact last year they were a little slow because they were shorthanded and the last few seeds they cleaned after Xmas were possibly a little TOO dry at around 4%MC.  Eczema here I come.

 This is one of the 5 glasshouses belonging to us.  Not used right now obviously but soon.

 Just to show the 14 glasshouses belonging to the commercial nursery next door.  It used to all be government but in their infinite wisdom, they privatised some of it about 10 years ago.

And this is the view of the admin building from my building.  There are around 10 people in this building, including my bosses.  

My building.  Called the tech building by us.  6 of us work here but Karen and I are the only two that work in the labs.  The rest are pickers, glasshouse keepers and database...people. 

Anyway, I'm off to make pumpkin cookies for my NEW colleagues.  Eat your heart out!  Have a good week.