Treleven has been fortunate to host interns whose primary interests are farming and the environment. We often partner with Middlebury College.

Barn at Night

Over the years, more than a thousand students in the Environmental Studies Program have spent a night in the barn, delivering lambs and experiencing life and death more intimately.

Food Works Internships

We have also been very fortunate to be part of the Food Works Program for many years.  This internship helps students gain a hands-on perspective of the local farming, food systems, and food challenges.  The intern works at the farm two days a week, learning all aspects of the farm and forest operation, and works at the Addison county Parent/Child Center two days a week, learning about food scarcity, public programs that support nutrition, and food preparation for large groups.  Our Board member, John Elder, designed and taught the course that accompanied the Internships.

Logan Warshaw, from Massachusetts, was our 2019 intern. He brought a great love of acting, films and film-making. His recent experiences with the food systems in France greatly enhanced our summer.

Charlie Rouhandah

Part of the series of explanatory watercolors created by Charlie.

Charlie came to us from New York, with many years of experience working on farms. The watercolors he created helped to revamp our whole approach to nature camp. Now most of the sites on the farm have both a Leopold Bench and an explanation  of the animals, birds, or insects likely to be found in that area.

Megan with the Neighborhood Hay Crew

Megan Cousino was the first FoodWorks intern, during the summer of 2014. Here she is working with Don to load the fleeces for the wool pool. And with the neighborhood Hay Crew.

Emma Homans comes from Huntington, VT, and worked both on the farm and at the Parent/Child Center as a summer intern through June and July of 2015. Emma attended Middlebury College where she studied Human Ecology, a mix of environmental studies and anthropology. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, running, and cross-country skiing. Her favorite vegetable is either kale or cucumbers. After graduating from Middlebury, she went on to work as an Americorps with the Youth Conservation Corps, There she helped to create the program that gives CSA shares as a health benefit to people with limited incomes.

The Gratitude Quilt featured above was one Jane made when she recovered from a brain aneurysm that nearly killed her. She gradually regained her powers of speech by a shared poetry writing process with her son. That experience is documented in Bi-Coastal Communication.  Jane returned to Treleven in the fall of 2019 to hold a workshop on making memory quilts.

Luke Concannon is a singer songwriter who spent his residency at Treleven wandering the woods and fields and working on new lyrics. We were introduced to him by our friends at Whole Heart, with whom we conducted an Inter-generational Leadership workshop. You can read the biography of his musical, spiritual, and social activist development on his website.

Luke will be returning to Treleven in the summer of 2020 to conduct a social justice workshop for song writers. Let us know if you would like to be on the invitation list.

Jane Jackson  is a nurse midwife, social justice advocate, writer, and quilt maker.  She spent her first residency at Treleven editing a series of letters she had written to her deceased husband Blyden (a civil rights activist who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King) and the granddaughter he had never met.  These were recently published as Letters from La Pineta.

Inanc Tekguc is a filmmaker from Cyprus. As he said in his application:

I am visiting this side of the Atlantic at a time when I seek personal regeneration and growth, which I think is a necessity for many of us on a regular basis like welcoming a favorite season, for “refreshing the spirit”. For the past five years I have found this reviving feeling, at the Global Environments Summer Academy, a gathering of change-makers from around the world who are environmentally and socially active and caring. While we take a break from GESA this year, I hope to find similar inspiration in my travels in Northern America.

Inanc is a tremendously talented filmmaker, you can see from his work for GDF

While at Treleven he did a deliberate series of time lapse photographs at various locations on the farm.  We look forward to seeing this work someday, but Inanc ran up against customs and immigration services, who would not let him back into the United States after he made a short visit to Montreal to see friends. Treleven Board member Susannah McCandless has been able to reconnect with him outside of the US, but we are very distressed by the way he was treated here.

Treleven was delighted to welcome Holly Baldwin, director of Beacon Hill Friends House in Boston as a fall resident.  Holly proposed using the quiet of the farm, and the support of Treleven Board members, as a way to plan out the three month sabbatical that she had recently been offered. While here, she spent lots of time walking/hiking, reading, and enjoying the solitude. For 11 years she directed BHFH, an intentional community of 21 people. As she said “when you live where you work, and are responsible for the well being of your community, there is little time or space for quiet contemplation”.  You can read more about BHFH and Holly’s thoughtful articles here:  Beacon Hill Friends House.

As you will see from the post, her sabbatical opened up so many new avenues of thought that she has decided to take a new step in her career. We were grateful to be one of the way stations on her journey toward new experiences.

Applications for creative residencies are accepted on a rolling basis. The typical spring residency coincides with lambing season. Fall residencies often coincide with peak foliage season.

Anna Mullen was the inaugural resident at the farm. While at Treleven, she spent every day with the sheep trying to determine if she could tell them apart, understand their relationships with one another, and learn their daily cycle. Her observations were recorded in a series of essays and poems.