From taking part in volunteer shifts reducing alliums on the Faculty Farm, to proudly owning a farm herself. Lauren Bruns has grown as a farmer since she graduated from Dickinson in 2013!
At Dickinson, Lauren studied Environmental Science and received concerned with the farm by volunteering on weekend shifts. On her first weekend shift she spent her time reducing onions and different alliums for the farm’s salsa. Lauren remembers rapidly making mates with the opposite farmers because the onions made all of them cry collectively. She was then a scholar farmer from her sophomore 12 months on till she graduated.
After commencement, Lauren stayed on the Faculty Farm for an additional season as an apprentice. Of on a regular basis she spent working on the farm, certainly one of her fondest reminiscences occurred throughout a summer season proper earlier than a giant storm. She was out to lunch with Matt, Jenn, and the farm crew and so they all got here up with a plan on the spot on to complete processing the garlic in order that the onions might be harvested and saved earlier than the storm. Again on the farm that night she recollects Matt utilizing the photo voltaic wheeler (a photo voltaic powered golf cart) to energy a projector to look at a film so they might proceed to tie up garlic into the evening.
The connections and expertise Lauren gained whereas working on the Faculty Farm have been helpful in each job she has taken on since her time as an apprentice. “I took the strong basis of expertise that Matt and Jenn taught me and I jumped into every alternative with out hesitation and desperate to be taught all there’s to be taught.” After her apprenticeship ended, the connections she made within the Carlisle farming group led her to go on to work at a flower farm, a number of vegetable and greenhouse operations, and ultimately a Christmas tree farm in Western Massachusetts. After being uncovered to many several types of farming, she determined to start out her personal farm.
In 2018 Lauren landed again in her dwelling state of Maine and began her personal operation referred to as Misplaced & Discovered Farm on land that she at present leases. At Lauren’s farm they develop licensed natural seedlings, lower flowers, and Maine Wild Blueberries, which they promote at two farmers markets and a neighborhood meals co-op. She plans to continue to grow her farm as a sustainable enterprise and sooner or later get her personal land.
Lauren is extraordinarily grateful for all the connections and experiences she had in Pennsylvania which have gotten her to the place she is now because the proprietor of a farm. She loves the Dickinson Faculty Farm and remembers it fondly, so she strives construct an analogous surroundings of group and combine schooling into her personal farm at this time.
