Pascia Offield- SUNY Adk Farm Internship
Week #1 (1/25/-1/31)
3 hours / 120 total hours required
Having worked on the SUNY Adk. Farm last fall, I feel very excited to have the opportunity to work with Tommy again this spring to get the full picture of market vegetable farming.
On Tuesday, January 27th, I met with Tommy Donolli, the Farm Manager and Susan Wynkoop, Director of Continuing Education and Workforce Innovation to discuss the terms and scheduled hours of my internship. Working together, we were able to make a tentative schedule that works around my courses, but it’s subject to change due to the seasonality of the work. I was even given the opportunity to assist Michael Cahill in his Agroecology class as a lab assistant/student helper! I feel like this will be a huge opportunity for me to begin to develop my instructional skills, and he seems very excited to have me help out.
On Wednesday, January 28th, I began my internship by meeting with Tommy and looking over the proposed 2026 crop plan for the farm. Tommy has all of the different crops categorized by their yield, number of rows needed, required spacing between each transplant, tray size, number of trays needed, variety and succession plantings. He decided that today is a good time to start slow-growers (rosemary, lavender & celery) and cold-hardy vegetables (bok choy and salad greens). The seeding dates are determined in accordance with the plants’ days to maturity, recommended transplant date, and our zone’s last frost date, usually around mid-May.
We began by moistening and amending our potting mix with lime and a balanced organic fertilizer, taking time to ensure that everything was evenly distributed and incorporated. Then, we prepared our trays for seeding. Depending on the type of plant, different sized trays were used. For the lettuce and bok choy, we used 128-cell trays (smaller cells), and for the herbs and celery we used 50-cell trays (larger cells). Tommy uses special air pruning trays, which are made of a rigid plastic that is more durable than the typical flats used. They have large holes on the bottom which aid in removal for transplanting, stronger root development, and ample airflow for the seedlings. We used a white waxed pencil to mark the abbreviated variety names on each tray, along with the seeding date. I really like this practice because there’s no waste. These trays don’t disintegrate from solar exposure, and writing directly on them eliminates the need for single-use plastic plant tags. Filling the trays seems like it would be difficult, given that they have large holes on the bottom, but with adequate moisture, the soil holds together and fills up each cell nicely. It takes a few rounds of re-filling bare spots and tamping the flats before each cell is uniform. The celery and rosemary varieties were double seeded due to their low germination rates, while the other vegetables had one seed per cell. Only the celery seeds were covered, as the rest require light to germinate.
After seeding, we watered the trays in with a watering can, making sure not to wash away any seeds or soil. Then, we placed them on top of heat mats in the brightest corner of the greenhouse and covered them with frost cloth to insulate them from the cold.
After seeding was complete, we weighed and sorted carrots and onions to be sent to Seasoned, the student-run restaurant in downtown Glens Falls. While we were outside in the shed gathering the carrots, we took a peek in the high tunnels to see how our lettuce, kale, and arugula were doing. We planted them in the fall, around October (?) in hopes to over-winter them to get a jump start on spring produce sales. Most of them survived! ...With the exception of some mole/vole-related disappearances…
Seeding is one of my favorite parts of gardening/farming due to its promises of new beginnings and its relaxing, methodical nature. It felt nice to get my hands in the dirt for the first time in 2026!
