Meet MAC Monday: Alyssa Barrett
Meet Alyssa Barrett!
Alyssa has been on team MAC in Middleton for 3 years. Her love for agriculture started with her first job working on a dairy farm feeding and caring for calves, followed by an internship with GAPS soil sampling and scouting fields before joining our team full-time as our Soil Sampling Technician. She was also active in 4-H for years, showing swine at the fair, which made it clear she needed a career in agriculture. She achieved her Associate degree in Agricultural Operations from Montcalm Community College and her Agricultural Industries Certificate from Michigan State University.
On the job, Alyssa spenders her time soil sampling fields, sending in the samples to the lab, then getting results to help farmers develop a fertilizer formula to help bring their soil nutrients back to level and grow the best crop. When she isn’t sampling, she helps testing during harvest: for falling numbers and vomitoxin in wheat and for GMOs or vomitoxin in organic corn. You can also find her helping load rail cars up in the loadout tower, helping out at the scale during harvest, making deliveries, or really lending a hand wherever needed.
Soil fertility is critical to field preparation and Alyssa certainly knows it’s essential she approaches her responsibilities diligently in order to accurately collect soil samples and dispatch them to the laboratory. The process ensures every farmer she works with receives a precise fertility analysis so they are able to select the best fertilizers tailored to their requirements. Ultimately, this helps facilitate the best yield outcomes and hopefully the most profitable harvest.
Beyond the impact of her job, Alyssa would tell you that her favorite “perk” at MAC is bonding with the awesome farmers. She also would say the ultimate “win” is seeing the outcome of the work – proud farmers boasting about their fantastic harvests in the fall! Alyssa loves getting to be outside and dive into the soil for sampling, all in the fields that farmers have been working for years.
Alyssa says her favorite time of year is definitely fall. Between the harvest vibes, combine sightings, explosion of leafy colors, thrill of deer hunting, plus indulging in apple cider, donuts, and pumpkin everything, it can’t be beat. Once the harvest hustle and bustle wraps up, she dives back into busy days collecting soil samples to prep for winter fertilizer.
Beyond work, Alyssa is usually either camping with her family, working on her garden in the summer, or fishing with her boyfriend…but we should probably mention her boyfriend recently became her fiancé when they got engaged in her new favorite Michigan location: Mio. They’ve been camping all over the lower and upper peninsula and she also loves visiting Tahquamenon Falls. Alyssa enjoys painting/drawing, reading, taking pictures, and going to church in her free time as well.
We’re sure glad Alyssa has made a career home on team MAC. If you want to get to know more, we bet she’d be happy to show you around sampling a field or maybe take you along on a dog walk with her English Springer Spaniel, Lainey!
