 My name is Terri Nehmeyer and I live and work for Bertrand Farm. We're thrilled I've gotten this air grant because it's allowed us to bring on extra interns in the last couple of years and for one it's just exciting to work with young people who are interested and passionate about agriculture and for two it's great to know that we're putting together this great academic collection of topics for small sustainable farmers that could go on to help other farmers bring on interns as well providing kind of the academic side that allows interns to go on and get credit possibly from their well their their school if they're still in school but also just to have that available online for anyone so it can be used as a tutorial for people who are interested and want to learn more or it can be used as an educational tool for for small farmers who are overwhelmed with work during the very time they need to present you know some training and kind of the educational side to internships so ultimately what we're hoping to do is to train more farmers for the future because we believe that small sustainable farming is the answer to the future and we want to bring on as many of those farmers as we can and to give them a little boost what's taken us years to learn we want to give them a heads up so that they're they're getting a profit right off the bat and maybe cutting out some of the frustration that it takes to get there otherwise hi my name is Colleen I'm an intern here at Bertrand Farm and the SAIR grant and the work on the module specifically has allowed me to research and learn more than the scope of the 12 weeks well I've been here about 10 weeks so far so in that time I've been able to see you know very concentrated summertime work and harvest and working with the animals but the research that I've done as a part of the modules has allowed me to get you know the full year like I did a module on crop rotation so I got to see how it is that over many years we rotate our crops and you know then I could talk to Terry about that in more specific detail and find out where things were last year and how it is then that we have really niche nitrogen-rich soil and it makes more sense like it's really helped to piece everything together also the just the research and the education aspect of it I think has also allowed us to collaborate more or given us more reason to collaborate with our sister farms and talk to them and talk to the other interns in the same project working on the same modules and just get a you know a bigger idea of what what these different systems can look like and how different farmers approach it so it's been incredibly helpful and I would highly recommend it and I'm thankful for it so thank you all well I hope to get into farming and I am staying on the farm to continue my internship into an apprenticeship and so it's going to be really helpful because some of the information that I've learned I'll be able to start implementing and helping Terry out more with instead of just being the person who always is saying what do I do now what do I do now hopefully we'll move into the situation where I'm more independent and able to kickstart programs and projects so just finding more resources you know having it being like a part of the job and Terry's always saying that like part of your job is doing the research and learning more information and I think the serigrant has really allowed that to be the case otherwise you know it's just not you know we're so busy we always have something to do but when you prioritize it because there's a specific reason and a specific like group behind it then it gets done more so I'm really thankful for that I think it's going to make me a more independent and helpful person here on the farm and then in the future you know maybe someday starting my own farm being really you know starting on the right foot seeing lots of you know information but also examples of those so yeah