Photo Courtesy of Yale Sustainable Food Project
This past summer I worked as a full-time intern at the Yale Farm. It was an amazing three months. I'm a computer science major used to speeding through college and spending too much time checking my e-mail, so the farm lifestyle was a welcome change. I woke up earlier, went to bed earlier, became constantly aware of the food I was so lucky to eat, and grew tan and muscle-y shoveling dirt in the sun instead of typing code in the lab.
Eventually the summer had to end. We ambitiously decided to build a new set of compost bins during our last week, but alongside our mini construction project was the normal weekly cycle of the farm: seeding head lettuce in soil blocks, suckering the tomato plants, and planting longer-term crops as the season dictated. That final week it was scallions, which replaced the bush beans we'd ripped out two weeks before. I was more than a little bit wistful as I pulled the four-row seeder back and forth across the bed. These scallions would be harvested after my time at the farm was over.
School began and predictably, it became hard to make time for the farm's workdays. I was still eating locally and sustainably, but something was missing. Finally one Tuesday in late October, I made time to go to the farm. Walking in was a revelation: It was fall! The trees' leaves had turned and the air was crisp, so different from the summer beauty of the farm I had known so well, but just as amazing.