I remember receiving a handout from an incredibly enthusiastic student with writing that said “nothing beets the student farm club” at the Fall involvement fair my freshman year. I signed up for the listserv and appreciated the veggie pun. I slowly started going to meetings, interacting with other members, and started to volunteer for different events. The energy of the Student Farm Club was both welcoming and driven and I began to see how I could fit into the space.
Fast forward over three years later and I’ve found myself deeply rooted into the Student Farm at Penn State and the mission of the Sustainable Food Systems Program. Through the Student Farm, I’ve found food systems as a tool to talk about some of the world’s most challenging problems without needing to talk about the specific problems themselves. I have also seen the incredible bonding power of food, how it helps us build communities and solve problems. The more I’ve learned about food systems the more I appreciate the nature of what they can accomplish for the improvement of social, economic, and environmental sustainability.
For the past two years, I’ve had the privilege of supporting the growth and the mission of the Student Farm and Sustainable Food Systems program as the Director of Outreach for the Student Farm Club and Site-Planning Team Lead. Through the process I have built relationships with people that encourage me to be better and overcome difficult challenges while working in both frameworks of rigid political institutions and an entrepreneurial start-up.
While I have been integrating into the Student Farm Club and the community building, grant writing, and the education sector of food systems it wasn’t until August that I did the hands-on farm work. As a Fall intern, I worked alongside other interns to learn about small-scale organic agriculture practices and develop an appreciation for what it means to be a farmer.
I learned weeds are frustrating, labor intensive, and ever-persistent. Weather conditions in the past few months have ranged from sweaty summer days to the inability to feel my fingers while harvesting frosted cabbage on a bitterly cold fall morning. Rotten tomatoes squish between work boots and exude the smell of decay. Coolers break and product that took resources, labor, and months to grow go to waste. Farming is not glamorous. It is not easy nor forgiving.
More importantly farming, as I learned this Fall, is community building. It is providing food for your community. It is humbling and grounding. It is connecting with our food systems and people. Every day that I biked out to the farm on a chilly Monday morning I immediately felt more relaxed and present. While on the farm I learned something new every day, how to harvest, what diseases to look for, and how to prepare food for wholesale orders or Campus Supported Agriculture shares for that week.
Throughout the internship, I developed a deeper appreciation for the Student Farm that I had been rooted in since freshman year. I saw farming through a new lens and discovered it as a tool for growth, learning, and development. I felt the incredible gratification of feeding others and seeing the development of a product of labor. I ended the internship knowing that the words on the flyer I was handed in the first week of my freshman year were true – “nothing beets the student farm”.
