Pictured: Assistant Director Allie Card works with sheep on Washington Island.
Gathering Ground’s sixth year of Ground School is starting strong! The 10-week internship program covers everything from soil health and greenhouse management to biodiversity and on-farm resilience.
Gathering Ground, a nonprofit founded in 2016, builds on Door County’s agricultural history and supports a thriving local food system. It aims to engage and connect learners of all ages to nature, community, and healthy food.
This year, the field day topics include:
- Vegetable gardening and composting
- Viticulture
- Pest and disease management
- Woody plant propagation and breeding
- Soil science
- Greenhouses and protected growing
- Weed and water management
- Alleycropping
“We want to expose our students to a variety of ways to grow food and encourage them to explore the areas they are curious about more deeply,” says Ground School Director Russell Rolffs.
Gathering Ground board member and Washington Island resident Craig Allen will lead a seminar on Farm Resilience on June 23. Allen recently retired from the University of Nebraska. He was the founding director of the Center for Resilience in Agricultural Working Landscapes. He was also the founding director of the USGS Nebraska Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit.
Frank Stonaker, manager of a new market garden at Gathering Ground, will share his experience with students on field days. Stonaker has expertise in biocontrol and pollination. He has done applied research and taught about organic vegetable and fruit production at Colorado State University.
Guest Professor Tom Bryan of UW-Madison will lead a session on soil health and climate change. Professor Heather Swan of UW-Madison will lead students in a discussion of her creative nonfiction book “Where the Grass Still Sings” on July 28. The book investigates the role of insects in agriculture through images, poetry, and essays. This session is open to the public.
Executive Director of Gathering Ground Alessandra Simmons Rolffs will be leading a seminar on leadership storytelling to help students learn communication strategies for sharing what they are passionate about with different audiences.
“We try to be as interdisciplinary as possible at Ground School,” says Simmons Rolffs. “We want to bridge silos of knowledge. Farmers, scientists, poets, birders all have different ways of knowing the world, and we want to learn from everyone so that we have a deep tapestry of understanding to pull from.”
In addition to seminars, field trips, and horticultural lab days, students work paid farm jobs on three different Washington Island farms, including a sheep farm, Gathering Ground’s orchard and vineyard, and market garden.
Want to learn more? Visit: https://www.gatheringgroundwi.org/
