Left: Maya Juman, intern, greets guests and introduces them to our compost. Right: Maya Juman, Nell Pearson, Marisa DeDominicis and Oliver Guterriez at Soil Start Farm.
By Maya Juman
To be perfectly honest, when I first arrived at Earth Matter on a warm June morning, ready to interview for an internship, it was not what I had expected at all. In retrospect, I have no idea what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a sunny yard with piles of compost on one side and a chicken coop on the other. I guess I had pictured a sit-down conversation in an office or at least some sort of indoor space. Like the sort of interviews I had done for other internships and jobs in the past.
But to my surprise – and joy – I found no such interview waiting for me at Earth Matter. Instead, I was introduced to the ever-cheerful Earth Matter staff, who politely put up with my immediately apparent ineptitude at raking the remainders of the previous day’s food scraps into a pile in the coop. A goat-walk, a morning of gardening, and a few hours of sign-making later, I was sure that I had just experienced the most interactive and fun interview I probably would ever have. And it was only the beginning.
By the time I “graduated” from Earth Matter’s Youth Internship in September, I had a variety of new skills under my belt – lifting chickens gently, but swiftly to collect eggs as painlessly as possible, watering crops at the base of the stem so as to prevent the spread of disease and pests, calculating the bulk density and porosity of compost samples, sharpening shovels with a file, and even collecting garbage bags full of food scraps from around the island. I pushed my own boundaries, learning how to deal with things I had never faced before – goats escaping from their pen without a leash, tubs filled with unsorted food scraps, recyclables and garbage, and, perhaps most terrifying, crowds of active toddlers at the entrance where I sometimes worked as a greeter during public hours.
I’d be lying if I said Earth Matter was exactly what I expected it to be – but it defied my expectations in the most beautiful way possible. I got to spend a summer working on an island, on a farm in New York City (how many people can say that?). I took the ferry every day and came home with fresh eggs and vegetables that I helped to grow and harvest myself. I got to work with baby goats! What more can a rising high school senior ask for? And best of all, I met some really awesome, positive people at Earth Matter who made my summer unforgettable. I will be forever grateful for this experience.