Polyface Farm Summer Internship: Week Eight

Reader Contribution by Kristen Kilfoyle
1 / 2
2 / 2

Week Eight. My goodness, we’re about half way through the internship. This week was a lot of wind down/clean up from Field Day, profound permaculture lessons and setting up all kinds of birds in all kinds of spots. 

Monday, July 21st

As you can imagine, after having about 1,800 visitors to the farm on Saturday and being somewhat catatonic on Sunday, there was a lot to clean up on Monday. My morning chore for this week was to feed and water my broiler buddies, so after that was done, we all set to dismantling everything Field Day. Down came the cinder block BBQ pit, vendor tables, the 700+ bales of hay we set out as seating (Those went up actually, to the hay loft.), rental tents and other assorted items. After the barn was cleared up, we set up gates, waterers, bedding and feeders for the new piglets due in later in the week.

After lunch, I went with Gabe, another intern, to one of the Polyface managed properties to set up one of the Eggmobiles that had been shut down in the spring. Whoever shut it down prior had done a good job, as no major repairs were necessary and they even left some hay behind for us to put in the nest boxes. The only things we needed to bring back were bottoms for some of the nest boxes, where the old ones had rotted out, along with some feeders, but we didn’t need to do that until the end of the week when the new birds came.

We did stop working a bit early on Monday to be able to go to Charlottesville for a talk by Darren Doherty of Regrarians about their vision for regenerative agriculture. I had mentioned Darren and his wife Lisa Heenan in last week’s blog post, but in case you missed it, Darren and Lisa have a company, HeenanDoherty, providing consulting services for whole landscape plans for properties. They are also working on a documentary, Polyfaces, which is expected to debut this fall. In any case, their talk was packed and very inspirational. Their passion for pragmatic solutions towards issues of sustainability, capturing water runoff, keyline water systems and climates, both economic as well as locational, were extremely helpful. I highly recommend checking out their website to see what they’re all about. They are doing a lot to advance our cause and the more people who know about them and their documentary Polyfaces, the better.

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368