Making raspberry jam was my first task as an intern at Blue Heron Farm in the rainy mountains of northwest Washington State. I collected half-pint and pint mason jars, rings, and new lids, poked frozen clumps of last season’s berries as they thawed, and measured out thick golden honey and pectin. Before long a sweetly fragrant pot of jam heaved and burped in a big enamel pot on the stove. By day’s end, a dozen or two gleaming jars filled with dark red, seedy jam sat cooling on the counter top. Who knew farming would be so much fun!

Well, all right, it wasn’t all as much fun as making jam. But overall, fulfilling a long-held ambition to work on a small organic farm was deeply satisfying. I was between jobs when I made the decision to look for an internship, and unmoved by any prospect which involved being in the city, in an air-conditioned office, tethered to a computer (my usual routine). At the same time, doing a farm internship at the age of 38 took what felt like daring. It felt like I had been clinging to shore on a raft and was finally shoving off into a current that would take me where I really wanted to go. Exactly where that was I would find out when I arrived.

I did the internship for a lot of reasons: to learn about growing food, especially fruit, on a larger scale than my garden, to test the strength of my desire to farm, to live as far from the city as I could reasonably go and to postpone looking for a “real” job. Because I had met many farmers over the past few years through my involvement with local agriculture organizations, I knew immediately where I wanted to work. Located two hours from Seattle at the base of Washington’s spectacular North Cascade Mountains, Blue Heron Farm is a diversified operation producing bamboo and native plant nursery stock, vegetables, raspberries and blueberries. I liked the fact that the farm produces and stores a lot of its own food (thus the jam), and had long admired the owner and her contribution to building the organic farming movement.

I made a common deal with the farmer – room and board, a small stipend and a learning experience in exchange for my labor. I expected to work hard and to learn new skills. I hoped that I would become a part of the farm for a while, and be given some measure of responsibility. I wanted to be able to ask all of my questions about how things were done, why this way and not some other way, what had been tried before but abandoned. I didn’t place any boundaries around what I wanted to know and didn’t want to know, and I anticipated that much of the learning would be absorbed in the midst of essential farm tasks.

In part, I just wanted to know what if felt like to be on a farm from the earliest spring planting to the last fall harvest. Even if I never picked up a hoe again, I felt this city girl’s life would be richer for having experienced the rhythms of the agricultural year.

Why it worked
As it turned out, my season at Blue Heron was the most fun I’d had since I was a kid. I was invigorated by the fresh, clean air, great working companions, and just being outside every day doing honest, physical work. Often the whole farm crew gathered in the morning to discuss what needed to be done that day or that week. As a result, I felt like I had the big picture, and wasn’t just being shunted from one job to the next. The farm had a well-established culture of curiosity, and if no one knew the answer to some question we looked it up or even called someone. Going to the farmers market in Seattle, sometimes on my own, was a great learning experience, and a chance to get to know other farmers.

I was aware that I could afford to have a great summer partly because I didn’t share any of the financial risk of running the operation. Sometimes farming looked like just a very creative way to empty your pocketbook. Despite a strong ethic of frugality, I saw check after check written for the necessary fertilizers, tools, feed, seeds, packaging, machines parts, repair bills, and so on. I sympathized when crops failed, but such failures represented risks that I didn’t have to take. And while the farmer very openly shared the financial side of the operation, such information seemed somewhat abstract.
No doubt my season as an intern was successful because the farmer and I did some things right – we had reasonable, articulated expectations about our mutual responsibilities, we had a brief check-in after a few weeks to make sure everyone was happy, we talked through problems openly, and there was a helpful alignment of personal values. It surely didn’t hurt that I was much older than most interns and had plenty of life experience, as well as an existing connection to the local farm community.

Just as small farms reflect the personalities of their owners in their diversity, interns’ experiences also vary widely.I contacted other people who had spent time on farms in the last year or two in order to get a broader view.

Year-round work
Brian Huntington chose to do his internship on a homestead farm on Lopez Island, east of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The farm sells beef, pork and lamb, and runs a very small CSA. As of February this year, Brian was still living and working on the farm. “The unit that I thought of was one year, one farm,” he said. “I wanted to participate in all the cycles – growing cucumbers, harvesting them, putting them into the pickle jar, eating them.”

As for finances, interns make various arrangements with farmers, from receiving a small stipend for their work, to paying the farm for the educational opportunity provided. Brian feels that the arrangement he made with the farmer, where no money changes hands, is ideal. “He and I have no financial connection,” explains Brian. ‘He gets my labor, I get room and board. I think it works best when there isn’t money going back and forth. It allows us to connect as humans rather than employee and worker.” Brian says the farm’s “profits” – good meals, beautiful surroundings, happy animals and good company – are shared equally between everyone who works there. Brian was fortunate to be awarded a small stipend through a new Summer Internship Program at Washington State University that helped make his stay possible.

Honesty is the key
When Becky Reimer decided it was time to pursue her interest in farming by doing an internship, she devoted a lot of energy to figuring out which farm she wanted to work on. She wrote letters, and, based on responses, arranged to visit five or six local farms. In each case she and the farmer “really talked through what the whole summer would be like.” Becky was looking for a well-rounded experience, and chose a small farm on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound partly because it had a lot of different marketing avenues -farmers’ market, CSA, restaurants and wedding flowers. The personal connection was also important, she pointed out. “I really felt like I connected with the farmer,” she said.

Becky’s expectations for the season were relaxed. “I went in pretty open-minded about it; I just wanted to learn as much as I could,” she said. She figured she could do that by being on the farm the whole season. She had a great experience, and credits a large part of the success to good communication on both sides. “We were both open in the beginning,” she says, “We talked a lot about what we wanted and what we were looking for.” Getting to know the local community was a nice bonus. If she could do it over again, she would have liked to visit other farms, to get an idea how other farms are run. Such visits could also create community among area interns. Becky has been involved with a small market garden project in the city of Seattle since she finished her internship.

Appeal of ideals
Paige Semich found her internship opportunity entirely by chance. One of her job responsibilities last summer was to pick up CSA shares for her workplace at Full Circle Farm in Eugene, Oregon. She met the farm manager, and arranged to work a few months at the end of the season.

What attracted her to this farm was its intense dedication to working out sustainable ideals. This biodynamic operation is human-powered as much as possible, and the farm managers work to keep off-farm inputs to a minimum. In pancake-flat and bicycle-friendly Eugene, the farm even delivers their CSA shares by bicycle. The trailers that the bikes pull were designed by the Center for Appropriate Transportation in Eugene, and are capable of handling up to 500 pounds of produce. “I’m trying to figure out how to simplify my life, by being a really conscious consumer,” said Paige. She was inspired by working with other people who felt the same way, and will likely return to the Full Circle next season to learn more.

Mara Dyczewski farms part-time at Island Meadow Farm near Seattle.