Hajar in the Ommuurde Tuin. Photo Ananya Doraswamy Many international students used the long summer break to visit their home country or go on a well-deserved vacation. Some, however, stayed in Wageningen and signed up for the Farm Experience Internship, where they experienced, well, what it is like to work on a farm.
Resource student editor Ananya Doraswamy visited Hajar and Hinino at De Ommuurde Tuin (the Walled Garden, an organic vegetable farm in Renkum with a long history) and Alita and Victoria at De Nieuwe Ronde, a community-supported organic vegetable farm in Wageningen.
Ommuurde Tuin
‘I would like to have a small vegetable garden when I go back home, so I thought it could be handy to learn how to grow veggies and stuff,’ says Hajar (an Environmental Sciences Bachelor’s student from Indonesia). ‘Here in the Ommuurde Tuin they are fully organic, which is not really common in Indonesia. It is an interesting way of farming that I wanted to try out for myself, so I signed up.’
For Hinino (a Resilient Farming & Food Systems Master’s student from Japan), the Farm Experience Internship was the perfect opportunity to put theory into practice. ‘I studied agricultural science in my Bachelor’s and it is also a topic in my Master’s. But I didn’t have any hands-on experience of working on a farm. I am hoping to learn a lot and inspire farmers back home to start farming organically as well.’
Hajar had to get used to the long days in the Ommuurde Tuin. ‘I have to wake up at 6 am, prepare my own lunch, and then get here by 8 o’clock to start work in the garden. There is a short break around 10:30 and then lunch at 12:30. We work until 3 pm.’ Nonetheless, she is enjoying it. ‘I like it a lot. We are harvesting flowers and berries. Apparently, they only harvest these berries once a year. And when we are planting, it feels like we give life to nature.’ Hinino’s favourite part of the job is weeding. ‘It is quite tough work, but I really like it because you just focus on one thing. It is a very mindful job. Sometimes I do feel a bit guilty because I literally decide which plants can survive and which ones will die. Still, it is really fun. And I have a lot of muscle pain the next day, so it’s a great workout.’
Nieuwe Ronde
At university, Alita (a Food Technology Bachelor’s student from Cambodia) spends a lot of time in the lab. ‘I am so used to working inside that I couldn’t visualize what this internship would even look like. I thought that it would be difficult for me because I’m not used to this kind of work. But actually, I really enjoy it. Working here in the Nieuwe Ronde is a great way to detach from my phone and the internet in general. It gives me a lot of space to think. Plus, I have really discovered prunes!’
Victoria (a Development & Rural Innovation Master’s student from Nigeria) laughs. ‘Sometimes she doesn’t even want to leave the farm to go home.’ Unlike Alita, Victoria does already have hands-on farm experience. ‘I love agriculture. My dad is a subsistence farmer and I enjoy helping him out. Tilling the ground and all that.’
Still, Victoria is also learning a lot during her internship. ‘There are a lot of crops here that I don’t know from back home. There, if we have strawberries, they are always imported, so I didn’t know how they were planted. Here I can see how crops like strawberries and lettuce are grown. And before I came here, I had never even heard of courgettes! So I’m learning a lot about crops and how they are cultivated.’ She thinks all people studying something agriculture-related should get practical experience with growing food. ‘Everybody eats, but I think it is a good thing if you know where the food you eat comes from and how it is planted. This shouldn’t be extracurricular, but rather part of the university’s curriculum.’
