From collaborating in volunteer shifts reducing alliums on the School 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 associates with the opposite farmers because the onions made all of them cry collectively. She was then a pupil farmer from her sophomore 12 months on till she graduated.
After commencement, Lauren stayed on the School Farm for an additional season as an apprentice. Of on a regular basis she spent working on the farm, one in every of her fondest recollections occurred throughout a summer time proper earlier than an enormous 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 may very well 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 observe a film so they might proceed to tie up garlic into the night time.
The connections and abilities Lauren gained whereas working on the School Farm have been helpful in each job she has taken on since her time as an apprentice. “I took the strong basis of abilities that Matt and Jenn taught me and I jumped into every alternative with out hesitation and desirous to study all there may be to study.” After her apprenticeship ended, the connections she made within the Carlisle farming neighborhood led her to go on to work at a flower farm, a number of vegetable and greenhouse operations, and finally a Christmas tree farm in Western Massachusetts. After being uncovered to many various kinds of farming, she determined to start out her personal farm.
In 2018 Lauren landed again in her residence state of Maine and began her personal operation referred to as Misplaced & Discovered Farm on land that she at the moment 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 someday 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 School Farm and remembers it fondly, so she strives construct the same setting of neighborhood and combine training into her personal farm at the moment.
