Agricultural Internship on Washington Island Shares Love For Place & Sustainability With New Cohort of Students

Gathering Ground’s sixth year of Ground School is starting strong! Allie Card joined Gathering Ground’s staff to help run the 10-week program as the assistant director. Card has a degree in Agricultural Education and is eager to share her passion about regenerative agriculture with the cohort of students who arrived on Washington Island from Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. The challenge for the internship has always been the desire to cover a broad range of huge topics from soil health and greenhouse management to biodiversity and on-farm resilience. This year, the field day topics include:

Vegetable gardening and composting
Viticulture
Pest and Disease management
Woody Plant Propagation and Breeding
Soil Science
Greenhouses and protected growing
Weed and water management
Alleycropping

“We want to expose our students to a variety of ways to grow food and encourage them to explore the areas they are curious about more deeply,” said Ground School Director Russell Rolffs.

Gathering Ground board member and Washington Island resident Craig Allen, PhD, will lead a seminar on Farm Resilience on June 23. Craig recently retired from University of Nebraska where was the Founding Director of the Center for Resilience in Agricultural Working Landscapes and the Founding Director of the USGS Nebraska Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit.

Frank Stonaker, PhD, who is managing a new market garden at Gathering Ground will share his experience with students on field days. Frank has worked as a biocontrol and pollination consultant, has done applied research and taught about organic vegetable and fruit production at Colorado State University. We are excited to have him on our team working with students on their farm jobs as well.

Guests Professor Tom Bryan of UW Madison will lead a session on soil health and climate change. Professor Heather Swan, also of UW Madison, will lead students in a discussion of her creative nonfiction book Where the Grass Still Sings on July 28. The book investigates the role of insects in agriculture through images, poetry and essays and addresses biodiversity loss that cascades out from insect population collapse due to the loss of habitat and the roll agriculture plays in this important issue. This session is open to the public.

Executive Director of Gathering Ground, Alessandra Simmons Rolffs, PhD, will be leading a seminar on leadership storytelling to help students learn communication strategies for sharing what they are passionate about with different audiences.

“We try to be as interdisciplinary as possible at Ground School,” said Simmons Rolffs. “We want to bridge silos of knowledge. Farmers, scientists, poets, birders all have different ways of knowing the world and we want to learn from everyone so that we have a deep tapestry of understanding to pull from.”

In addition to seminars, field trips, and horticultural lab days, students work paid farm jobs on three different Washington Island Farms, including a sheep farm, Gathering Ground’s orchard and vineyard, and market garden. As a nonprofit farm dedicated to education, Gathering Ground tries to keep all of its programs free or as affordable as possible. If you’d like to learn about how you can get more involved and sponsor Ground School, please reach out to Alessandra Rolffs.

About Gathering Ground

Gathering Ground, a nonprofit founded in 2016, strives to build on Door County’s rich agricultural history and support a thriving local food system that engages and connects learners of all ages to nature, community, and healthy food. We believe that connecting people to the land and where food comes creates transformative experiences and inspire action. Join us in planting for the future. www.gatheringgroundwi.org.

Contact

Alessandra Simmons Rolffs

alessandra@gatheringgroundwi.org

323-633-7177

PO Box 276

Washington Island, WI 54246