I am entering the last couple of weeks of my internship and there is a lot happening to prepare for the spring.  Instead of trickling away, it seems as though I will be ramping out!  I have really felt like an important asset to the team more and more, which makes it harder to leave behind.  Although I don’t feel like I am truly leaving it behind, as I have no doubts that I will apply what I have learned to my own life projects.  My plan is to start an organic farm, and some of my aspirations include propagating natives, breeding rare heirloom varieties and adapting them to our ever changing local environment, restoring degraded habitat and native diversity, and creating plant and wildlife habitat.  I believe that seeds are our future, and that they alone harness the power to perpetuate life.  I also believe that growing and saving seed is one of our most important basic human rights and we have to fight for it.  By continuing to patent genetically modified seeds, falsely advertise them as the answer to world hunger, corrupt governments, and promote the use of toxic chemicals on our environment, large agribusiness continue to threaten seed diversity and biodiversity as well as cultural diversity and health around the world.  While we have lost more than 90% of seed varieties, we still have an incredible diversity to work with as long as we take on the responsibility of being seed stewards.  Millions of years of evolution and seed stewardship are the reason for the varieties we have today.  Seeds are not inventions, they are a gift of life.

I am very thankful for all the opportunities that this internship have brought!  Thanks to all!

I worked with a youth crew to grub Himalayan black berry and Scotch broom, then plant willow and Douglas Spirraea stakes along this degraded creek bank.

I also worked with the youth crew removing false brome.  We scalped the clumps of grass with the roots from the ground, bagged it, and seeded out a couple native grasses and forbs.