New apprentices!

We are so excited for you all to meet our new farm apprentices! Sarah, Tigre and I spent the last month poring over applications and interviewing lots of great folks from all over the country. The terrific response we had to our job posting just reaffirms for me how hungry people are out there to learn about sustainable urban farming. I’m thrilled we can offer the apprentice program and always hope that at least a few folks will go on to be farmers. At the very least we hope that by spending the summer with us the apprentices will develop a deeper understanding of what it really takes to make a small farm work. And of course have lots of fun at it too!

Karen Scherf grew up in Iowa on her grandparent’s farm where they raised beef and dairy cows and her grandma had a big garden. We are a much different kind of farm, but Karen’s enthusiasm for the work was immediately apparent. She has held quite a few different kinds of jobs since leaving home, but has been increasingly drawn back toward farming and thinks that she would like eventually to have a farm of her own.

Kristin Pool grew up in foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Her family always had a big garden and she helped on her grandparent’s vineyard in the summers. As an undergraduate at UC Berkley she volunteered at a local urban farm and worked at the farmers market. Her interest in local food systems led her to Uganda to research issues of food insecurity, then also led her here to our urban farm.

Sally Kraynik’s organic farming career began as an undergraduate at Hampshire College where she helped with the schools CSA. She has pursued her interests in nutrition and education as far as India and Costa Rica, but now she’s back for more farming experience and hopes to someday be a successful small scale grower.

These brief intros to the new apprentices can only begin to scratch the surface of who they are and over the season at pickup and at work parties we hope you’ll get to know all of them better. The extended farm community is a big of who the 47th Ave Farm is so were counting on you all to help us welcome them into the farm family!!