On every first day of school you always get asked these three questions. What is your name? What is your favorite hobby? And what is one fun fact about you? My answer would always be Alice Roe, riding my bicycle, and I live on a farm. From then on, I was known as that one girl who lives on a farm, because there was in fact only one of me. I grew up in a six generation apple orchard. My great, great, great… (you get the idea) Grandpa Roe started this farm in the year 1827. Back at this time farming was common in New York; more than half the population worked in agriculture. As the years flew by, farming became less and less common. Farmland disappeared and houses and buildings popped up. Even at the young age of seventeen, I have already witnessed the environment around me change so extensively. Views from the car ride window were always full of fields and forest; now, slowly, trees are getting chopped down and fields are filling with houses. The world around my home has changed so much in the past seventeen years of my life. The tales my grandmother told me of the dirt road that went past her property always seemed so interesting, yet all I've ever known was the state highway that buzzed so closely to my home. Sometimes I wish we could go back in time, to simpler days. When there were unique homes and no neighborhoods where it looked like the houses were copy-and-pasted. Where there was so much nature to explore. Nature is something I hold so close to my heart, not only because I have grown up living so near to it, but because there's not much left of it. On the farm you can be so in touch with life through the animals and plants all around. It's a place where people come together, bond, and witness the cycles of life. It’s necessary to me, for future generations of my family to grow up having a place like the farm. With urbanization encroaching on all our farmlands, I want to keep this beautiful place alive. I want to make sure that the children grow up and learn where our food comes from, not that it just magically appears in the supermarket. This year I am attending Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. With this education, I intend to take ownership of my family farm and give it another generation of life.