Amelia Bronder-Giroux comes to us from Malden, MA. She worked at several other farms prior to working with us, and was looking for more experience at a production-scale farm. We put her in charge of many projects here; she has been responsible for our greenhouse plantings, drip irrigation and fertilization, and basket-weeding this season, all jobs which require a high level of care and attention to detail, and she has shown a remarkable ability to pick up and excel at independent projects. She also is possibly the loudest apprentice we have ever had; the learning process for Amelia often involves a whole lot of exclamations, many of which are not printable here, backed up by a wide smile indicating that she actually is getting the picture, and enjoying the challenge as she does so.
Asked about her favorite vegetable, her first response was the Italian frying peppers, which she eats just fresh and raw, biting into them like an apple. After further consideration, she put forward the delicata squash, which she slices thin, skin, seeds and all, and roasts with plenty of oil and a little salt at 400 degrees for about an hour, flipping them half-way through. “It’s like candy!” she says, “it gets all roasty, and the seeds are crunchy; I don’t know why anyone wants to put brown sugar or anything on squash!” Her favorite farm job is transplanting, because she loves working with a team at a pace and a rhythm. She is leaving us sometime over the winter, when she finds a job that can take her to be with her partner Juan in Providence, RI. She’s not sure what her next step is, but she is fascinated with smaller-scale farming than what we do, and with working in a no-till system to take soil health up a notch.
