Nurturing Sustainable Agriculture

I’m Kaitlyn Salazar, a rising senior studying Psychology and Environmental Studies. This summer I’ve had the privilege of interning at Wild Farmlands Foundation just outside of Santa Barbara, California. 

After spending the fall of my sophomore year on Whitman’s Semester in the West program, I developed a strong interest in small-scale farming and regenerative agriculture. In the future, I’m interested in getting involved on a policy level to make it easier and more economically viable for farmers and ranchers to implement sustainable farming practices. Through my work with Wild Farmlands, I’m learning about the challenges facing small farmers and what strategies work to implement solutions on a regional scale. 

I spend most days working with Elijah Seaman, the operations manager of Wild Farmlands, on his family’s berry farm. Everyday comes with new exciting challenges – I’ve learned that farming is at least 50% creative problem solving. One of my first days on the farm, we opened up a valve box to find that a colony of honey bees had made a massive hive on the inside lid. We called Jake, the farm’s resident beekeeper, and he opened up the hive, captured the queen, and moved her into an empty bee box used for beekeeping. He told us that within a few hours, the bees would abandon their hive in the valve box and follow their queen to the new hive. Once all the bees had moved over, he would take the bee box over to his other hives. Jake showed us how to identify the queen by her long, pointed abdomen and told us that her pheromones will let the other bees know her location. Elijah and I had thought we might have to smoke out the bees, so we were relieved they could be so easily relocated. 

Although everyday on the farm is different, one thing I can always count on is Worm Feeding Friday. Wild Farmlands piloted their SOIL Worm Farm in 2021 with the goal of replacing synthetic fertilizer with Wild Dirt, a combination of organic compost, sifted vermicast (worm poop), and pre-composted fungal food. On Fridays, Elijah and I collect worm food – coffee grounds from a nearby cafe and pulp from an organic juicer – and bring it back to the farm to mix into the worm bin. The worms spend the next week turning their food into the vermicast we use to make Wild Dirt. Fun fact: the worms actually process the caffeine in the coffee grounds and eat faster because of it! The berry farm has seen an explosion in productivity since they transitioned to Wild Dirt, and now other farms in the area are starting to introduce Wild Dirt to their soil. 

I also spend a portion of every week looking for oak tree saplings around the property to relocate and cultivate. Oak trees are native to Southern California and are useful for preventing erosion and increasing the amount of water absorbed into the soil. They are 

resistant to fire and drought, making them well adapted to survive in the desert. By relocating them, I’m preventing them from being eaten by cattle and other grazing animals. Although it will take decades for these saplings to reach maturity, investing in the future will help the farm and the land be resistant to increased flooding and droughts as the climate becomes more extreme and unpredictable.