BY Petra Engstrom
This year, I am serving with the Agricultural Enhancement Team at the Humboldt County Resource Conservation District. After studying sustainable agriculture & food systems at UC Davis and interning on farms across California, France, and the UK, my primary professional goal is to start my own biodiverse community market farm in my hometown of Elfin Forest, California. I knew that my fellowship with the RCD would lend itself to plenty of farm visits, which is perfect for a burgeoning farmer like myself to get to witness a wide variety of operations.
My main responsibility at HCRCD is to collaborate with a handful of farmers on Carbon Farm Plans. These plans are whole farm conservation documents that identify areas of concern and specific practices where farmers improve sustainability and carbon sequestration. Not only do these plans provide technical assistance for regenerative agriculture, but they also can help connect farmers to grants that will award them money to implement conservation practices. My studies and interests have been focused on the hands-on-the-land side of food production, so understanding this side of the agriculture world has been eye-opening and has provided me with a much better grasp on how the government and RCDs can provide support to local farmers.
Even though I am learning tons in the office, I miss spending most of my days outside with sunshine on my face and soil stuck to my fingers. In an attempt to bring more of my work outside on the local farms, I agreed to conduct and record video interviews with local farmers who have installed pollinator-friendly hedgerows. The RCD ag team is collaborating with a local Humboldt County non-profit, the North Coast Growers' Association (NCGA), to host a pollinator workshop for farmers in the area. A goal of the workshop is to have the information shared in the presentations be interactive and live on beyond the workshop, so I volunteered to use my beginner’s knowledge of iMovie to produce video interviews highlighting local farmers and their hedgerows. This project has been a great opportunity for me to meet even more farmers, learn about their observations with growing hedgerows, as well as ask my own questions about hedgerow management for my future farm! The videos will be shared at the workshop in February and then be available on the NCGA website so that anyone interested in pollinator-friendly hedgerows can hear first-hand experiences.
Enjoy the videos I created here!
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