Meet the Interns!

We are SO excited to introduce our 2016 summer interns! These three girls will be working throughout summer to maintain the kitchen garden as well as kickoff the CSA and manage it throughout the months of June, July, and August. This is our first summer having three intern positions which we are thrilled to be able to do - especially because it represents how much we have grown over the past 5 years! In addition to having a new position, our interns will be spending all day Thursday at another local CSA farm called Bellair. Bellair has over 800 acres with 400 families involved in their CSA. Each week, the interns will have a lesson with the farm manager to learn about various topics such as CSA styles, livestock, weed management, and irrigation systems. After the morning lesson, they will spend time helping Bellair's full time staff plant, weed, and harvest their own produce! So far, it's been an amazing experience and we cannot wait to see what the future holds in store!Hi, my name is Emily H., and I am a rising third year at UVA studying environmental science with a minor in landscape architecture. I got involved at Morven Kitchen Gardem last summer and was christened the glorified unofficial intern! It was only natural that I would apply for one of the spots as a glorified official intern, and I luckily made the mark! What I find particularly cool about my position this summer is that I helped plan the up-and-coming orchard project and also chose the seeds we will be planting over the course of this season. I get to see all of my work from last summer through the school year come to fruition. I truly don’t believe I could get that opportunity anywhere else and gain such intensely personal insight into the inner workings of our farm. I can’t wait to share my work with you through the power of veggies. Here’s to a smooth and successful season!My name is Grace T., and I recently graduated from UVA with a degree in Global Public Health and will be spending the next year pursuing my Masters in Educational Psychology. This will be my fourth year on the Women’s Rowing team. I am very grateful for the opportunity to work and learn at the MKG. My grandparents are from Bath County, VA, and they grew up as homesteaders who kept bees, gardened, kept chickens and livestock, and knew how to work and live off the land.  I am interested in how local and community-based gardening and farming can improve the general health of Appalachia and the United States in general.  I hope to use the skills gained from this internship to continue my family’s traditions of sustainable living and farming and to ensure that they do not fade away with the oldest generations of my family.  I look forward to meeting you this summer!Hello! My name is Maria W., and I am a rising fourth year studying biology with a minor in religious studies. My relationship with Morven has been such an amazing learning process - and it's been less than a month! Having grown up in southwest Virginia with parents that work for Virginia Tech and a neighborhood made up of cows, I have always had an interest in the agriculture industry.  After traveling to a small agricultural community in Haiti both last year and this year, this interest localized on the process of creating a sustainable, successful, and community-oriented farm that can provide both food and family to those involved. From learning how to care for chickens to tilling plant beds to telling the difference between turnips and radishes, it's been a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I cannot wait for the rest of summer!