My Nonprofit Reviews

I discovered Moon in the Pond Farm near the end of my Appalachian Trail section hike in the middle of August. I told them I was interested in staying a couple days, even though unbeknownst to them my real intention was to stay for at least a couple weeks. I was quickly put to work on my arrival in the evening with the task of harvesting 'Purple Potted Peapods,' and was given a generous and delicious supper prepared by the 'Farmer in Charge,' Dom, following the completion of this task.

After a peaceful sleep in my tent in a secluded area of the farm, I showed up at 'the house' at 630AM, ready to work. I helped out one of the interns with chores in the morning. This included moving the chicken tractors and ensuring the chickens had sufficient food and water, feeding the pigs, and helping to prepare for market (depending on the day). After a big breakfast at 830, I did some weeding for a few hours until lunch was served at 1. Following this I did some other work, such as cutting down overgrown rose bushes, preparing a dirt bed for planting, harvesting some crops, setting up a fence for the cows, making pear juice or butter, or some other activity that would make the farm better.

Near the end of my second week, before lunch, a family of visitors came to the farm. The family consisted of two kids, around ages 7 and 10, their mother, and their grandmother. The grandmother chatted with Dom, the owner, while I volunteered to show the others the pigs, which was a bit of a walk away from the house. They started asking me questions, and I started answering them. First they were mostly about me, and then they started asking farm questions; Are the pigs pregnant? How old are they? How much do they eat? I didn't realize how much I learned on the farm up until that point. I explained about the pig feeding process, how the boar gets fed first and separately so he doesn't eat all the food, and how we were borrowing the boar to try to get the sows pregnant, and how we would know if they were pregnant. Overall it was a great experience, and after I left the farm I was able to identify and eat some wild greens and weeds that I had learned about on the farm!