Week Four Reflection!

Week 4: How can you connect your academic learning to the work you are doing? How can you bring your work back with you?

I have spent a lot of my time working on the farm this summer thinking about my freshman seminar from last fall: Is Politics a Performance (FRS 143). Although this class at first glance might not seem super relevant to my work at Sharing the Harvest Community Farm, they connect in their focus on the local. Professor Landsman in our freshman seminar had us attend many local council meetings, which for me changed my understanding of how politics manifest in a local setting along with how change can be made locally. For my research paper I interviewed citizens from both Princeton and Trenton to better understand how they saw their relationship to their communities and their power in change making. Their responses emphasized a need to work directly with people and organizations in order to find solutions and feel enabled to make change. 

Working on the farm this summer has allowed me to see another aspect of what it means to work locally. My boss, through knowing the different recipient organizations of our food, has a strong understanding of their needs through working with them personally. Through being a part of the food process from sewing the seeds to delivering the produce at the food pantries, I have had the ability to see the hard work and the real value of producing locally.  

I hope retuning to campus I will have the opportunity to take classes relating to food and agriculture policy along with continuing to understand what it means to be involved where you live. I hope this could means working with Princeton organizations that are involved in Mercer county to learn more about the area in which I will be living for the next few years.