My internship: Wild Willow Farm and Education Center
My internship site is with Wild Willow Farm. Wild Willow farm is an educational farm that offers classes and volunteer days to bring the community together and teach them the importance of cultivating your own food. I am really excited to be working here for four weeks alongside professionals, and be able to learn new skills as well as better eating habits.
Photo Essay
My Internship site was at Wild Willow Farm, and these are the main people that guided me and taught me new things. The middle person is my mentor Cathryn Henning, right next to her is Onnalee and Jarren on the other side. Each one is in charge of different areas of the farm, for example everything to do with the orchard and flowers is Onnalee's job as well as harvesting. Compost and volunteer days is Jarrens job as well as pest control. And finally the field work which includes making beds, planting , and all the heavy lifting is Cathryn's job, but everybody helps each other.
When I first arrive at the farm my first chore at 8:30 Am every single day would be to feed the goats. Theres specific measurements when feeding the goats and at first I had to ask around to see if I was doing it right, but after a week the chore became really easy. Not only would I feed the goats, but I would also feed the chickens, check for eggs and refill the goats water tubs.
After feeding the goats, every other day Bibi my co-Intern and I would have to set up gopher traps around the farm. We would focus on more on the fields with vegetables ready to be harvested to ensure that the gophers would not eat them. In total we killed around 15 gophers in 4 weeks. This is a very strategic job you have to be smarter then the gopher and now their next moves.
The same days that we would do gopher hunting, we would also do compost tea. Compost tea is like liquid gold for the plants it is very nutritionally rich and it is made by steeping aged compost in water. This job was very physical we had to push at least 50 gallons of water from one side of the farm to the other and then carry them to put the water in a high filter.
Another chore that I did in the mornings was water the plants. You would think watering the plants is very simple, but it takes a lot of observing to make sure the soil is observing the water and no mini landslides are happening. It is easier to water when the crops are already grown, but when they are just seeds you need to be extra careful that they do not move and you do not disturb the soil.
On Wednesdays and every other Friday we did harvest day. Harvest day is when we go out and gather the crops that are ready to be cut then we pack them in boxes, and send them to the people who are subscribed to the CSA box program. CSA stands for community supported agriculture. On harvest day I was in charge of carrots and beets root vegetables are typically really easy to harvest for the carrots you only need a digging fork and your hands, and for beets your only tool are your hands.
After the morning chores at 11:30, 2-5 people would go and prepare lunch for everybody. We would use food from the farm and limit seasonings, but the food would always come out delicious. I learned to include these habits in my own house and started teaching my family new recipes shared with me by the farmers. I also discovered that I strongly dislike arugula, but if it was not for these lunches I would have never known what arugula is.
After our delicious all vegan lunch, we would go back to work. But first we would have a meeting underneath the tarp and basically our mentors would give us an overview of what the afternoon will look like the afternoons usually consisted of making beds, planting or beautifying the farm.
Here is Cathryn showing us a quicker way to kill all the weeds instead of picking them by hand. They dont usually use this fire method because its really expensive so they rather stick to old fashion weeding by hand. We did a lot of weeding at the farm and it is a very tedious job, at least for me. I know at the farm some people found it really therapeutic, but I found it extremely annoying. I noticed further into the week my mindset was really bad when it came to weeding so I had to find a new way to view weeding and I started to think of the plants that will be planted and how happy they will be.
This is a bed we planted, I do not remember exactly what we planted, but these in six weeks will be ready to harvest. I think it is really cool that I got to be a part of the process of planting them and Ill be able to come back and see them all grown up. One thing I did learn is the spacing between each plant is important it is at least 6 inches apart, and they need to be really close to their water source.
If we did not have any work during the afternoon Bibi and I would go in the office to work on our projects and would occasionally get distracted by Esme the farm cat. This cat had a very important role at the farm. She was a hunter and would always leave surprises waiting for us in the office.
I would end my days at Wild Willow Farm feeding the goats one more time as well as the chickens and checking for eggs. This was always the highlight of my day to see the animals get super excited that we were coming I felt responsible for them.