Blog Post 1: First Days and Goals for the Summer

Today it has been one week since I started interning at Know Your Farms. After a week of settling in – learning about my responsibilities as an intern, setting some goals for the summer, and learning to navigate my way through Christy’s kitchen – I have finally gotten around to blogging. I hope to blog everyday and upload any pictures I take for Know Your Farms in order to keep a record of the work I’ve done and make the experience more meaningful for me. I think blogging will give me a lot of time to reflect on the work I do each day, from what I did well to what I could have done better, so that I can take a step back at the end of the day to see the whole picture and make improvements.

After just a week of working for Know Your Farms, I can already tell that I am going to learn a ton this summer. So far, I have distributed Know Your Farms CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) boxes, harvested vegetables on an incubator farm in Concord, worked at the Davidson Farmer’s Market, and worked with the other interns on planning the Know Your Farms day camp. Working with the other interns has been a great experience. Even when we are preparing dinner together, it is awesome to discuss ideas and watch something come together. All of us have different backgrounds and our own goals for what we want to achieve this summer, and I think it will be very rewarding and exciting to learn how we can use our strengths to help one another with individual projects and make creative and successful group projects.

This summer, I hope to learn a lot more about how communities operate and how we can channel the talents and energies in a community towards making healthy choices. I also want to learn more about working with a group when learning something new and when teaching others. We have a lot to learn this summer from farmers, community members and each other, and we also have the opportunity to teach what we’ve learned during the day camp weeks. I want to learn more about communities and working in a group because I think these are really valuable skills I will be able to take back to Davidson College in the fall when the Food Group starts taking steps to providing healthier and more sustainable options in Commons and the Union. Also, after already running into some struggles with Davidson College over changing the options, I will really appreciate this summer’s opportunity to be part of a network of people who care about making changes in the food world.

Tomorrow, Morgan, Margie and I are going to meet with T at the Ada Jenkins Garden. I am excited to see another garden in Davidson because I want to see how it is managed and used in order to find ways to improve the Davidson College Community Garden.