by Emma Pattle

This spring I was so fortunate to be able to have an internship with NGP Farm. My major requires us to do one internship on a farm, so it was great to have one so close to campus. I am currently a senior at Guilford College and set to graduate in about a year. My major, Sustainable Food Systems, is helping prepare me for a career in agriculture and make me aware of all of the responsibility that comes with that. One of the focuses that Guilford likes to take with learning about food systems is community. Professors often talk about how food brings people together, but can also push people apart if there is something missing. One of my favorite classes in the major is called 'Food and Faith,' and it teaches the relationship that food has with religion. It was in this class that I first visited the NGP Farm, in August of 2019. I was inspired not only by the community that surrounded the farm, but also by the clear spiritual connection that guided the decisions and workings. I kept this in mind when I was looking for an internship, and it paid off. 

Going into the internship, I was really just looking to gain experience on farms. Something I like to remember when learning about farming is that reading books can only get me so far, and that the best kind of learning is by doing. I have a bit of experience working with livestock, so I am thankful to have been able to gain more experience working with crops and even out what I have done. I've worked on the Guilford Farm for another one of my classes, and the similarities between that and the NGP Farm really surprised me. Both farms have a large community that helped form and maintain them, and both have a large focus on sustainability. However, I believe that since the NGP Farm has more staff, they are able to do more things and so I was able to get more diverse experience from them. Something that is big at the NGP Farm but not at Guilford is flowers! I was really excited to be able to take part in growing and harvesting the flowers, not only because of how beautiful they are, but also because of how much profit I've heard that they can generate on farms. The farm also helped me to gain appreciation for different kinds of crops and how they differ from one another. Knowing how different kinds of crops like to be grown will help me to make more informed decisions about which kinds I will grow in the future. The people I worked with at the farm welcomed me right away and were so patient in teaching me. Every day that I was there was filled with positivity, which made all my internship so rewarding. By the end of my internship I was given a project, which was my chance to contribute something to the farm. With the help of MacEntyre, the park director, we built a large bin which will be used for vermicomposting. Vermicomposting is similar to composting, however it produces pure worm castings in the end and it is more nutritious for the soil. I was so thankful to be able to create and begin that system, and although I won't be able to watch its beginning stages, I hope to return back in the fall to check on its progress. 

My time at the farm benefitted me by giving me knowledge and experience, but also by giving me another way to connect to the Holy Spirit. I have become more conscious of the cycles that exist in farming, with the energy that the food we grow gives us, and how we give it back to the land. Seeing and doing this repeatedly makes the roles we all play for each other clear, and makes me more appreciative of the smaller things that people do for us. Even though not all farms will have such a strong community around them as NGP Farm does, they will still have a community of people that they have brought together. The staff at NGP Farm has been so kind to myself and anyone that has a connection to them, and I will definitely take this with me when I start my own community with my farm.