My name is Olivia Simione. I’ve worked on the Lafayette College Farm since my first semester at Lafayette. I grew up gardening, but wouldn’t consider myself a farmer until I came to Lafayette. I fell in love with farming immediately, more specifically, the sustainable, no-till practices that Farmer Josh had implemented since he started managing the farm a year earlier.
Practices I had learned about sustainable agriculture in my AP Environmental Science class, my senior year of high school, were happening right in front of me, and not only that, I had the privilege of contributing to this important work. From drip irrigation to mulching to diversified crop production, I was hooked; I couldn’t get enough.
I applied for the Farm Apprenticeship, a position at LaFarm that follows the Pre-Apprentice framework created by PASA, and got the job! I worked in the spring part-time, summer full-time, and fall part-time. At the annual PASA conference, I graduated from the program, earning my DVP certification in February of 2024. Despite having finished the apprenticeship, I certainly was not finished with LaFarm and continued to work every semester. In the fall of 2024, the farm was still a constant in my life.
During all this time, industrial agriculture, whose harms I was quite familiar with, was practiced by a conventional corn and soy farmer just beyond the fence of LaFarm. I had always daydreamed about transitioning some of that land to the sustainable practices observed at LaFarm, wanting to rescue it from the throes of tillage, chemical fertilizers and monocropping. But, I always thought that would be impossible and too lofty of a goal for a college student.
A conversation with one of my professors about this dream of mine helped me realize it was possible and was the push I needed to initiate my independent study for Spring 2025.
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