What chapter: Rogue Valley
RFC Host Farm: Dancing Bear, Wandering Fields
What year: Intern 2016, Apprentice 2018
Where are they now: Farm Owner/Operator, Orange Marmalade Farm, Ashland Oregon
Kelsey started her journey with sustainable living and farming majoring in Anthropology at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, MI. Studying the development of human societies and cultures she was exposed to the importance of food and how it influences human-to-human interactions as well as human-to-nature. In 2012 she travelled to New Zealand where she participated as a contributing member at Wilderland, an educational trust operating as an organic farm on the Coromandel Peninsula of Aotearoa. This is where she fell in love with the hands-on experience of growing food and feeding her local community. After college she was in search of a program that would bring her more exposure to hands-on farming with a structured educational curriculum studying agriculture, and she found what she was looking for with RFC. In 2016 she interned at Dancing Bear Farm in the Rogue Valley. She then spent a year applying what she’d learned as the field manager at Groundswell Community Farm back in Michigan. Realizing she wanted to continue to diversify her education she participated in the apprenticeship program in 2018 at Wandering Fields, again in the Rogue Valley. “The Rogue Farm Corps gave me a foundation of agricultural knowledge, while also giving me room to explore and make my own personal connections with farming and food systems. The exposure to farming fundamentals is necessary to understand if farming is a career path that is right for you, and RFC allowed me to survey those options.” After the RFC Kelsey spent a year working for the Josephine County Food Bank in Grants Pass, OR as the assistant manager on Raptor Creek Farm. As well as a couple years learning about biodynamics and viticulture at Cowhorn Vineyard & Gardens in the Little Applegate Valley. Now Kelsey is giving small-scale farming a go on her own! She is currently working hard on starting a ¼ acre farm of diversified market veggies in Ashland, Oregon. Orange Marmalade Farm, named after her great grandma and a foreshadow of future value-added products, intends on practicing no-till, JADAM and biodynamic techniques. Kelsey wants to start off slow with Orange Marmalade farm, first focusing on small wholesale accounts and a couple farmers markets in the first year, with the potential to expand into growing seed and other specialized crops.