On campus, I am hyper-involved with the DOC, from Cabin and Trail (hiking) to Ledyard Canoe Club, I love leading trips and being outdoors as much as possible. Swipe through my posts for updates on studying abroad and traveling through college, student bands/a cappella, as well as the day-to-day updates of a 20yo who just recently started liking coffee (exciting, right?).
This summer I decided to apply for a part-time position at Dartmouth Sustainability's Organic Farm, or O-Farm. The O-Farm is a large plot of publicly accessible, beautifully maintained land that is worked for the good of the community and is an extremely valuable learning resource because of this. Through this student-run space, produce is donated to partners working on reducing local food insecurity like Willing Hands and Moms in Recovery. Many classes will come out to the farm, and in this way, it really serves as a space for hands-on growth, an embodiment of the classroom under the sun!
Outside of these more formal uses, our school-based Farm Club runs weekly Farm Workdays that enable students to come out to the farm—whether once or with more consistency—and help plant seeds, manage bee hives, and tend to the produce. The pizza oven at the farm—a crowd favorite—is used by Farm Club as well as many different conferences. This weekend, I'll actually be running the pizza oven for a Mindfulness Retreat that's open to all students.
For me, however, working at the Farm has paid off not just in pizza, but in the reflection that comes from devoting time to working with my hands. The Farm has been a really formative space for me on campus. Prior to working there, I'd done a few workdays my first year and had attended events like Harfest—a fall celebration—and Brewhaha—our spring-term kombucha fair! In these events, I got to see campus come alive in this second location. Bands would play, people would dance, and the stressors that come with the collegiate hustle would fall away. Now, as an O-Farm intern, I've been lucky enough to watch the sunset here and to come by early in the morning and watch the dew melt off the petals of the flowers. I cannot recommend this enough.
Above all these other qualities, working here and making time to touch grass (literally) on a campus that holds infinite possibilities—granting you a packed schedule—helps me ground myself in my present and helps me to feel the time pass more slowly. Each week, whether I'm watering our tomatoes in Hoophouse—our greenhouse—or tidying up our barn, I get to turn my phone off, silence my emails, and tune into my memories. The ones made during Hanover summer.
Last September, a friend and I crafted a ten-item bucket list for our final year as undergraduates. It's the end of our senior spring now. These are some of the boxes I've checked.
