Summer Centered: Jahzara Heredia And Alison Love Help The HaverFarm Thrive

Who wouldn’t want to spend a summer working on a farm, enjoying plentiful sunshine and connecting to the land? Thanks to funding from the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship, Jahzara Heredia ’16 and Alison Love ’18 were living that dream as summer interns at the HaverFarm, the on-campus sustainable agriculture initiative that encompasses a large plot near the Facilities and Maintenance building and a garden near the Haverford College Apartments.

Heredia, who majored in anthropology, has been volunteering at the HaverFarm since her freshman year. This summer, she spent most of her time tending to crops and harvesting produce. Her favorite part of her work, though, is sharing and eating the local, sustainable food that is grown there.

“It’s great to know exactly where your food comes from,” she says.

Recently work was completed on the farm’s greenhouse, which was first proposed by the 2013 environmental studies capstone class. The structure, which includes an attached classroom, will help integrate agricultural and environmental education further into the campus community.

“I hope that this will help Haverford to become a more ecologically sustainable and resilient community,” Heredia says. “The farm also creates an opportunity for students to learn about agriculture and environmental science.”

In addition to her work on the farm, Love, who is majoring in political science and minoring in environmental studies, enjoyed organizing the volunteers, planning seeding schedules, and publicizing farm initiatives and events. She also visited nearby farms in Philadelphia to learn and help out with weeding,  harvesting, trellising, watering, seeding, and planting.

“Developing the farm and its connections on campus has long-term importance for students’ ability to connect to food, each other, and the land,” she says, “as well as incorporate farming into their studies.”

“The farm is an excellent resource for so many departments in the College to practice fieldwork,” Love says. “With the completion of the greenhouse and educational building next to the farm this summer, the connection to field learning and exploration are even easier and more available than before.”

-Jamauri Bowles ’17

"Summer Centered" is a series exploring our students’ Center-funded summer work.