Lessons in Humility

As of today, I am now halfway through my Yestermorrow internship. I can hardly believe it has been four weeks since my arrival on campus; I feel like I have only been here for such a short time. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how I'm going to be able to do all that I want to do with such little time left.

Last week, we said farewell to 5 out of the 6 interns. Even though I had only met these people three weeks prior, I still couldn't help but feel some sort of sadness at their departure. They were a tough, yet loveable, group of people who knew how to leave a strong impression. I learned quite a bit from them, and their dedication to their work was inspiring. But not more than 48-hours later, two vehicles pulled up with two new interns, Owen and Steve. And not more than 24 hours after that did OJ show up from Louisiana.The other two interns, Bonnie-Kate and Charlotte, are set to arrive in the next day or two. All of these interns come from such diverse backgrounds, I cannot help but get excited over getting to know and learn from them during my remaining weeks!

Things around Yestermorrow have been pretty scrambled during the intern turnover. I found myself doing all sorts of odd jobs while the new interns were getting oriented. For one thing, the entire campus needed to be tidied up, and I found myself doing a lot of sweeping. Facilities manager, Dave, made sure I became well acquainted with my breathing mask while cleaning up the entire woodshop. Part of which included me using a chop saw for about three hours to make up kindling wood out of whatever excess lumber we could find.

But I feel like I spent a lot more of this week tiding up the Yestermorrow treehouse. This happens to also be one of my favorite places at Yestermorrow, so I wasn't completely upset; even if the work I was doing involved me cleaning out organic material and grime from various areas. I was covered from head to toe with mud afterwards, but it proved to be worthwhile.

This photo does not give proper justice as to how much better it looks inside and out.

As tiring and diligent as some of the work might be, I'm learning a lot from my workings. It has taught me a considerable amount of humility and pride in my work. In truth, a lot of my maintenance work will go unnoticed by most of the visitors to Yestermorrow. But the work I've done will help keep the facilities and its structures from future problems. Preventative maintenance is a necessity, even if it does feel a little superfluous at times.

Now, I haven't been spending all my time this week doing dirty work. I made some time for some Vermont adventures. For instance, I met  this really cool organic farmer last weekend.

He says he's even heard of Berea!

He showed me around the farm, and I got to do everything from harvesting asparagus to milking cows to collecting chicken eggs. He was even gracious enough to let me have dinner with him and his family. In all seriousness, it was great to see Finn and his family again. We shared stories, talked about where we were headed in life, and even made a road trip out to this really amazing glacial lake.

Vermont isn't lacking in sites, that's for sure.

I expect there shall be more outings in my next few weeks with him and Celeste alike.

On another note, yesterday was the 4th of July, so all the staff took off work, and the interns made time to join in on the town festivities. Wednesday night and Thursday morning, we spent a lot of time assisting a local architect in building a float for the Warren 4th of July Parade. Now, as I learned, this is not your usual 4th of July celebration. Every year, this 1700 person town grows 5x - 10x in population for this festival. People come from far and wide to see the floats, eat the organic ice cream, and dance in the streets.

I was fortunate enough to not only help build the float, but be a part of the choreographed dance that walked alongside that followed the float. The theme of each year's float is based on the current trends in the town and happenings. This year the group built a giant storm cloud complete with moving sun, windblown raindrops, and a pop-up rainbow.

And here's our lovely float! Unfortunately, I was unable to get a picture of the choreographed dance with umbrellas.

The reason we chose a storm cloud was because it has rained for about 38 consecutive days in Vermont. I believe that's a new record for this area. It's starting to make residents rather uneasy, because the Mad River is starting to rise above its banks in several locations. Rivers look more like rapids than calm streams. I'm just fortunate that I haven't had to reinforce my tent for flooding...yet.

Besides the upcoming rain forecast, things here are looking bright. This evening, I am assisting with class preparations for Redesigning Wastewater this weekend, and on Monday I start my very first class in Constructed Wetlands! The following week I will have another class, and during the remaining I will be working on a special project for Yestermorrow. On Wednesday, Dave and I sat down and generated some possible project ideas. We decided that I should focus my efforts on designing and building a small garden to surround the septic holes. This area is kind of an eyesore, which is unfortunate because it happens to provide a nice view of the pond right in front of the facilities. I'll be spending the next few days developing a site plan and consulting with Dave as to what we can do with this particular area, but still provide access to the septic area because it needs to be drained every few months. Hopefully, we'll come up with a plan in the next two weeks so that come the following week, I can start on construction of this area.

That's all for now. Wish me luck on my first class!