By Joe Kertzman, managing editor, Badger Common’Tater
Though he didn’t grow up on a farm, Jed Colquhoun says he always enjoyed plants and the productive feeling of growing his own food.
A professor, Extension specialist and IPM program director in the UW-Madison Department of Horticulture, Colquhoun says, “I was a biology major in college and originally thought I would go into the medical field, but the draw of a good day working outdoors pulled me away from the fluorescent lights of the labs.”
“My early experiences had much in common with working in agriculture,” he adds. “My father worked as a fisheries biologist, and I spent many days working outdoors with him and appreciated that hard work yielded harvest from the water, in that case, instead of the land.”
“My early job experiences were in construction and property maintenance,” Colquhoun remarks, “where working with your hands led to visible, tangible outcomes.”
Dr. Colquhoun began working in fruit and vegetable production in the summer after his first year in college and hasn’t looked back.
