It’s been a busy summer for Abby Lowe. After being interviewed on the radio in late July, she was part of a team that picked up first-place honors for dill and sweet pickles at the Albemarle County Fair.
Both experiences were part of her internship at the University of Virginia’s Morven Sustainability Lab, a 2,900-acre property featuring a kitchen garden where Lowe spent much of her summer.
“We’ve also been doing a lot of pickling and canning for storing, because we have so many tomatoes,” she said, “and making tomato sauce and canned tomatoes, so we can give that out in the winter.”
Lowe is a rising fourth-year student at UVA, double-majoring in environmental thought and practice and English. She started working in Morven’s gardens in the spring of her second year and, after studying abroad last fall, returned this summer as one of two student coordinators.
Hessian spreads dirt in the garden during one of her regular shifts. The third-year student learned about the internship from friends after first visiting Morven with the Outdoors Club. (Photos by Matt Riley, University Communications)
“We help lead the crew a bit more and work more closely with Fiona (Flynnmoore) on planning what we’re going to do every day,” she said. “It’s been a great opportunity to work outside and learn more about local, sustainable food systems.”
Flynnmoore has overseen the Morven Kitchen Garden since December 2021. With degrees in environmental studies and agriculture, she worked on sustainable farms before joining the UVA staff.
“(This position) combines my love for teaching and being a mentor with my love of sustainable food systems and local agriculture,” she said. “I get the privilege of teaching undergraduate students at UVA what it means to practice sustainable food systems.”
Students learn how to work in the fields, practice ecology, and how to harvest, package and deliver crops to consumers.
The Morven Kitchen Garden supplies the dining halls at UVA with produce during the academic year through a wholesale partnership and provides 30 to 40 students, staff, faculty and community members with weekly installments of fresh produce through a community-supported agriculture program. Some students and community members even take advantage of the farm’s volunteer opportunities in exchange for membership in the program.
Sophie May spreads seeds in the garden. The team is currently preparing for the upcoming “Gazpacho’s in the Garden” event. (Photos by Matt Riley, University Communications)
“We also love wholesaling to the dining hall because students really get to see their produce and their products embedded within their institution, which I think is really powerful,” Flynnmoore said. “The dining hall is such a great partner with us that they actually give an intern the experience of working on our farm and working in the dining halls, who gets to see the full picture of seed to harvest to plate.”
The kitchen garden is designed so students can enter at any level of gardening experience and gain exposure to various types of work, from attending workshops on beekeeping and mushroom cultivation to volunteering on their service days every other Saturday.
“Students come out in the morning and spend two hours growing with us and maybe take home a sample of some fresh produce,” Flynnmoore said. “If they liked that experience, maybe they go on to apply for an internship.”
The gardens offer paid summer internships for students who can commit to 20 to 30 hours per week. “They really run the farm,” Flynnmoore said.
During the summer, interns focus on crop care, trellising and pruning and on learning about organic diseases and pests. In the spring, they’re planting and watching crops grow that will be harvested later that year.
Those interested in volunteering in the gardens can trade hours of service for bags of produce. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
Afton Hessian is a third-year student double-majoring in environmental thought and practice and political philosophy, policy and law. She had been to Morven before through the Outdoors Club, but never saw the gardens until friends recommended the internship.
Her schedule this summer has varied, starting with 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. shifts and then getting earlier as the sun rose earlier.
“For the last month, we’ve been going in at 6 a.m., which is good because then we get two hours before it’s really hot, so we can go into the greenhouses earlier and stay in them later,” Hessian said. “In the past month, we’ve also been doing a lot of food preservation, like pickling kimchi and onions and canning tomatoes.”
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