Ask people on the Berea College Farm to describe their colleagues—even the animals—and they’ll tell you the entire crew is like a big family. Sophia ‘20 shares this opinion, and she credits the Farm and its loyal team for drawing her to Berea from her family’s bible camp on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Though Sophia credits her ultimate choice of Berea College to many inspiring conversations with her future Sustainability and Environmental Studies professor, Dr. Nancy Gift, Sophia said it was Farm Manager Bob Harned who convinced her she’d build great working relationships here when he congratulated her for graduating from homeschool “First in your class!”
“That’s just what it’s like with this crew,” Sophia said. “We’re always learning or teaching each other something, including how to make each other laugh.”
Sophia’s success is driven largely by her clear life goals. Helping on neighbors’ farms and her grandparents’ farm in Iowa helped her decide early on that her future must involve helping animals, plants, and people in equal measure.
In pursuing these goals at Berea, Sophia has left the College Farm even better than she found it, revamping its grazing practices by applying her original research in pig pasture rotation in her role as forage manager. To cap off her academic excellence, Sophia won the coveted Thomas J. Watson Fellowship with her proposal to travel the world for a year to analyze goat management practices of diverse cultures and climates. Her global trip would have begun in August 2020, but when COVID-19 halted international travel, she was forced to postpone her plans.
In the meantime, Sophia is working on a renowned cattleman’s sprawling ranch near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In this vast state where cattle outnumber humans two to one, Sophia is learning the valuable art of managing nearly 4,000 head of cattle alongside veteran ranchers.
Though Sophia is grateful for this exciting summer opportunity, she dearly misses her Berea College Farm family. Her bonds with them were especially important when they had to adjust to the pandemic during calving season. “Pulling calves” already demands all farmhands on deck, so when most student farmers had to leave campus in the middle of it, those few remaining drew even closer to face this grueling, emotional work together.
This period was the most challenging part of her time on the College Farm, but Sophia still found a bright side: she said it removed any of the doubt she carried about calling herself a farmer. “It’s always been tough to just flat out say, ‘I am a farmer,’ instead of like, ‘I’m learning about farming,’ or ‘I like working with plants and animals,’” Sophia said. “But now I have zero doubt that I really am a farmer.”
By SAM MILLIGAN