We are continuing on our series of profiles of the farm apprentices this week with a profile of Jansyn Thaw. I came on Jansyn out in the field working on harvesting celeriac on a beautiful fall afternoon. Jansyn is an Amherst native who lived here between 2nd grade and her senior year. Her first farm experiences were at Bramble Hill Farm, where she helped Farmer Hans with daily maintenance of their educational farm programs, and developed a passion for local agriculture. She worked at the Poughkeepsie Farm Project as a college student, and studied environmental policy in graduate school in New York City. Along the way, she has had a lot of connections with farms, working on the urban distribution side of the local food chain. She came to Simple Gifts Farm looking to spend a full season on a farm and also to return to her Western Massachusetts roots. She enjoyed eating our tomatoes, her favorite vegetable, which she eats just sliced, with a little salt and maybe some garlic. Her favorite job on the farm is bagging salad greens, because the greens are just so pretty, and then they are even prettier in a nice bag, with a nice label. You can listen to music while you are bagging greens, and it is satisfying to get lots of bags of greens bagged up and ready for use! We’ve appreciated Jansyn’s contributions this season, and since she has agreed to stay on for next season, we will be glad for her contributions going forward!
