Garden Alumni

Sustainable Design Transportation Resource Management

Tools & Resources Policies & Principles Environmental Council Environmental Studies Program Fellowships in Environmental Journalism Archives

Bennett Konesni '04.5: Summer Worker

Bennett was one of the original minds behind the garden's formation, saying simply that, "I believed Middlebury needed a garden and wanted to make it happen." A Music and Environmental Studies major, his favorite memories of the garden are the wicked fiddle tunes following a successful harvest festival and the connections he made with all sorts of amazing people, from students to townsfolk. He spent his post-graduation year on a Watson Fellowship, traveling around and studying the work songs of various regions, and currently has dreams of starting a farm where everyone sings in the fields. Outside of gardening, Bennett enjoys music, "galumphing," cooking and eating, and writing. His most highly recommended nature authors are Ruth Stout (for her irreverence), Bill Mollison (for his designs), and Thoreau (for general inspiration).

Jean Hamilton '04.5: 2003 Production Manager

Jean Hamilton is also one of the founding members of the garden. She was an ES/Religion major and is from Silver Spring, MD. Jean came to college knowing that she loved farming organically: "When I was 18, I had an 'aha!' moment while growing, harvesting, and eating vegetables on an organic farm. To be perfectly honest, these actions radically changed my whole world-view. It occured to me that the realizations I was experiencing were of the utmost importance to present to my peers. Thus, Slow the Plough called to me with divine vision".

Sophie Esser: 2003 Summer Worker

Erin Jensen '04: 2003 Summer Worker
A Human Ecology major, Erin became involved in the garden upon returning from her time abroad in New Zealand, where she had become "very interested in food systems and the need to support community endeavors." MCOG, which centers around both these ideas, was a great fit for this lover of raw beets: "exposure to other community workers from dairy farmers, organic farmers, beekeepers, school lunch organizers, teachers, school administration, involved parents--interaction with each taught me something that I value to this day." Erin helped to establish and run the Children's Garden program, and although she has moved on from Middlebury and is currently working and studying back home in Whitefish, MT, the garden still works with local schoolchildren in the summer. An avid skier, hiker and biker, Erin's long-term vision features graduate school in acupuncture after which she hopes to open a clinic geared toward lifestyle and diet changes and work in conjunction with nearby farmers to offer a dispensary of both Western and Chinese herbs.
Chris Howell '04.5: 2003 Summer Worker

Susannah Patty '06: 2004 Summer Worker

Kayla Preece: 2004 Production Manager
A native of Idaho Falls, Idaho, Kayla left Middlebury after a year or two to continue her education rather less formally back on the west coast, where she describes herself as "majoring in life." She is still involved with food production, though, citing sustenance as a primary draw to the activity ("if you want to survive and eat beets when the oil is not available, learn to grow beets without oil"). Her initial attraction to MCOG was more simple: it allowed her to apply her learning directly to "that special spot on the knoll." Within the garden, Kayla particularly enjoys taking care of quality control (read: taste testing), and outside of it she likes to devote time to rock climbing and scheming. She is currently courting long-term plans that feature a farm in Oregon and invites anyone who is interested in spending the 2007 summer with "cool people making farming dreams come true" to contact her.

Amber Trotter '06: 2004 Summer Worker

From the fertile land of California, Amber came to Middlebury with an impressive amount of gardening experience already under her belt, having started a club at her high school and worked a summer with a local CSA and thus making it only natural that she join up with the MCOG crew. Among her favorite memories of the garden is "waking up early Saturday morning, tired and groggy, and forcing myself to head down to the knoll and having the best time of the week." Amber is certainly an avid double-digger and vegetable grower but she also enjoys such things as writing, road trips, hiking, and live music. An Environmental Studies major (Soc-Anthro focus), she is spending her post-graduation summer traveling around Eastern Europe and then will to move back home to California. Her long-term plans include graduate school, teaching English in Latin America and, of course, gardening.

Claire Polfus '08: 2005 Production Manager
Claire's favorite garden memory is of walking up to the knoll one morning with Bennett's Scottish fiddle melodies wafting through a fog so dense as to make BiHall invisible. Such escapes from the stressful college experience are precisely what drew Claire to MCOG in the first place, along with her passion for good food and caring for the land. An herb aficionado from Lake Tomahawk, WI, she is an Environmental Studies major (Literature focus) who enjoys skiing and reading good books and has a deep appreciation for lakes, woods, and mountains. Claire on her future dreams: "I want to travel and try to figure out a way to help people gain access to good, healthy food and stop the destruction of the earth and climate from poor decisions on our part and have a house with many gardens in a beautiful place surrounded by the people I love."

Sarah Calvert: 2005 Summer Worker

Stef Smith: 2005 Summer Worker
Emily Peterson '08: 2005 Summer Worker
Emily became involved in the garden through a final project for her freshman seminar and fondly remembers "haphazardly running up to the knoll . . . and finding Jean and Bennett up there, who placed a sledgehammer in my hand and got me hooked." Since then, she has become an Environmental Studies major (Non-Fiction focus--she loves Thoreau and Wendell Berry as well as Scott Chaskey's "This Common Ground" and Nicola Smith's "Harvest") and is letting her interest in gardening take her all over the world, from an organic farming internship in Thailand to studying abroad in France and Botswana. Non-cultivation interests include trail running, triathlons, travel, and anything New Orleans (her hometown). Emily hopes to "have a small plot of land to my name someday to grow tasty, wholesome vegetables for the food that appears on my plate and on others."

Jenny Schneider '07: 2006 Production Manager
Jenny Schneider is an English major from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Prior to working at the Organic Garden she had no experience gardening. She first discovered the garden during the summer of '05 on an afternoon walk. She was instantly taken by the breeze on the knoll and the sense of ease she felt there. Among her many interests are playing the guitar, reading, writing, travelling, and laughing. After writing a thesis on Mary Oliver this spring, watching the garden come alive has been a rich and deepening experience for Jenny.

Anna Viel '07: 2006 Summer Worker
Anna Viel is a Conservation Biology major from Oakland, California. She enjoys good, wholesome fun, including but not limited to hiking, cooking, beadwork, watching her surrogate family's 12 chicks peck at bugs, and of course, getting elbow-deep in soil. Less wholesome interests include a self-proclaimed connoisseurship of wine and local beer, and her secret love for the recently cancelled TV show, Arrested Development. Good food is not only a passion but a bit of an obsession of Anna's, and she has taken on the noble cause of personally sampling the best food available in Vermont. She encourages one and all to come up to the garden and get their hands dirty, in exchange for some crunchy sugar-snap peas or a psychedelic color display from the bed of chard.

aviel@middlebury.edu

Rosalind Chaplin '09: 2006 Summer Worker
Rosalind is a sophomore from Birmingham, Alabama. She has not yet declared her major but is leaning towards English and is also very interested in Chinese. Rosalind has had little formal experience gardening, but her mother and grandfather are both avid gardeners, and they have passed some of their wisdom and joy for gardening along to her. Rosalind worked at a nursery one summer and had a good time, but she spent more time with potting soil and mulch than with plants and vegetables. This summer, Rosalind is excited to be learning about the process of growing delicious organic food and has especially enjoyed the opportunity to learn so much about Vermont's agricultural community.

rchaplin@middlebury.edu

Caitlyn Olson '09: 2006 Summer Worker
Although she hails from the lushly green Puget Sound region of Washington State, Caitlyn's gardening experience prior to this summer was limited to the occasional afternoon puttering around the backyard with her mom. She definitely misses the mountains and water back home (not to mention the lack of humidity) but is happily finding that the garden internship daily exceeds even her highest expectations of it as both a learning experience and satisfying summer job. Under Jay's tutelage, her knowledge of specific how-to facts and local practices as well as information on more abstract philosophies has been growing at a rate to rival that at which the Chaco tan lines materialized on her feet. Caitlyn is currently flirting with the idea of majoring in American Studies and enjoys running, reading, hiking and cooking, in addition to meeting new people and trying new activities.

colson@middlebury.edu

Daniel Kane '09: 2007 Summer Production Manager

Dan Kane is a rising senior biology major from Sarasota, FL. Prior to last summer, Dan had been out to the garden very few times, but upon learning about the garden’s recent sustainable design project utilizing trees, he decided to apply for the internship and has since fallen in love with the act of gardening and the garden itself. He has appreciated the opportunity to visit all the various farms in Addison County and to learn from the farmers who run them and call them home. Dan enjoys scything clover, swinging the cultivating fork, and most of all, harvesting vegetables. Last summer’s work piqued his interest in food systems at both the farm and market levels, and he now hopes to make a life out of helping to improve them in both respects.

dkane@middlebury.edu

Anne Mittnacht '07.5: 2007 Summer Worker

Rowan Braybrook '09.5: 2007 Summer Worker

Julia Shipley '07.5: 2007 Summer Worker

Middlebury College Organic Garden

Garden Report Fall 2007

Garden Report Fall 2006

Winter Symposium Feb. 2005

Garden Report Fall 2005

Garden Report Fall 2004

Envisioning the Garden Spring 2003