SUMMER INTERNS: TJ Schimmer

My name is Thomas Schimmer and I am interning at the Grand Island and Central City Agronomy locations this summer. Coming into this internship I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was excited to get the opportunity to learn a lot while interning here at Aurora Cooperative. My focus will be with the agronomy team this summer but I’m looking forward to also spending some time on the grain side of things in Chapman.

For the first week of my internship we did orientation at the main office. We learned about the entire cooperative and heard from all the different divisions, to the people who work in the main office, to the culture and what it means to work for Aurora Cooperative. During orientation we also got a good feel for what we would be doing at our locations. The interns got to meet each other and do some team building activities all week. It was a fun group to get to know better and be with for the week.

So far this summer I have been doing crop scouting with Jon Simonson, who was in the internship program last summer and recently was hired on as an agronomist in Grand Island. We have been going to different fields identifying different types of pests, doing stand counts and taking tissue samples. He has helped me learn a lot already, and I look forward to working with him the rest of the summer.

As we all know, this summer has been extremely wet, and we continue to get more moisture. On days where I can’t get out to the fields because it’s too muddy, I am in the shop helping our applicators and mechanics maintain the sprayers and dry spreaders. These guys in the shop are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to these machines. It takes proper maintenance to keep your machine working efficiently and help avoid a breakdown.

My favorite part of the summer so far has been going to the Owners Acres field in Hastings. It was a great experience. I learned a lot from Al Perry our Director of Branded Seed Sales, along with others that were there to train us. I really enjoyed getting to look at all the different hybrids planted there and how each one is reacting to this crazy weather we are having. It was also impressive the amount of work the precision crop management team had to put into those fields. It was a lot of work for them to plant all these different hybrids in just this one field.

I look forward to learning more this summer and getting to experience the entire culture the Aurora Cooperative has to offer.