Jobs & Internships

I never thought that one day I would be saying I completed an internship on a dairy! With cows!! At one point during the month, I remember sitting with my laptop in the conference room above the milking parlor giggling to myself thinking, man, I am right above the cows and I am watching them getting milked!  (Far stretch for a girl who grew up in the suburbs!) But, I am so glad I made the decision to intern with Emily at Aurora Organic Dairy (AOD).

The main purpose of my month long internship with AOD was to assist Emily, the Organic Certification Specialist, and to learn more about dairy vocabulary and dairy operation so that I would be better prepared to fill out an Organic System Plan, a requirement when a dairy wants to become Certified Organic. To help learn dairy vocabulary and operation I spent time at each AOD facility: Moody Crop, High Plains Dairy, Ray-Glo Dairy and Calf, Platteville Dairy, and a tour of the Platteville Processing Plant.

Another purpose of this internship was to help me to further my future goals of being an independent organic inspector not only to certify farms, but processing facilities and dairy operations. To be able to inspect a dairy, I need to be able to ask the right questions about the dairy’s organic integrity, operation, and processing. I wanted to be able to see how a dairy works from the “worker” side of the operation which would in turn allow me to ask the most appropriate questions during an inspection.

All in all my internship with Emily and AOD was great. I accomplished what I wanted to. I learned more about organic dairy operation, the strict certification process a dairy has to go through, how to fill out the State of Colorado application and overall what Aurora does that makes them such a successful organic milk operation. I want to thank AOD for this opportunity and experience. I hope I get a chance in the future to increase my organic dairy operation knowledge and to possibly work with Aurora in some facet.

Mesa Winds Farm is a 36 acre organic farm in Hotchkiss, Colorado that focuses on apple, peach, and wine grape production. The owners, Maxine Eisele and Wink Davis, began working their land several years ago as first generation horticultural farmers. As a student who wishes to begin farming as a first generation farmer, I greatly appreciated the camaraderie that Max and Wink offered me this past summer. As an intern, I learned just how difficult, unpredictable, risky, rewarding, fantastic, and satisfying farming can be for a first generation farmer.

I spent the majority of my summer pruning and training the young wine grapes, which had been damaged in a severe late frost. During this task, I learned how important it is to train young vines properly to prevent damage from crown gall, which is a severely devastating disease. I also spent a lot of the summer learning how to thin the apples and peaches, maintain a vegetable and herb garden, and some basics of bee-keeping and honey production. I also returned to the farm in September to help harvest

Mesa Winds Farm OrchardBecause Mesa Winds farm allows groups and families to stay at the farm for a couple of days, this internship in Hotchkiss exposed me to agrotourism and a wide variety of folks who are passionate about the farming culture. During the summer, I visited several other local wineries and vineyards to experience different techniques of viticulture and enology. We were also able to experience other aspects of local agriculture, such as chicken butchering/processing and hops production. Also we participated in an intern exchange where we were able to work at Zyphros, which is an organic cut flower, vegetable, and animal producer.