Theme: interns

Today’s News from the Farm is an interview with Naoki Sakata, one of our interns! He is part of the 2023-2024 Japanese Agricultural Training Program cohort. He came last September and will be with us until early October when he’ll head to UC Davis for a few months of classes before heading back to Japan at the end of the year. We’ll really miss him; he’s become a key member of our truckload team and the Palo Alto farmers market squad and has formed a lot of great relationships at the farm, a testament to a lot of work on his English and Spanish. In addition to his farming and cooking skills, which we discussed during our interview, he’s got lots of other skills and hobbies that we didn’t even cover including that he plays guitar and sings and knits, which he taught himself to do last winter via YouTube so that he could make himself a hat with Full Belly yarn! He’s a real renaissance man.

Here’s our very lightly edited version of our conversation.

Today’s News from the Farm is an interview with an awesome member of our team, one of our interns, Saeko! She is part of the 2023-2024 Japanese Agricultural Training Program cohort. She came last September and will be with us until the beginning of October when she’ll head to UC Davis for a few months of classes before heading back to Japan at the end of the year. 

A few weeks ago, we shared an interview with Isshin, one of our interns. Today I’d like to share an interview with Mai Inoue, another Full Belly Farm intern, and also a member of the 2022-2023 Japanese Agricultural Training Program cohort. You may have met her at a Saturday Palo Alto farmers market or Pizza Night over the past year, plus she pops up at the occasional Thursday Marin farmers market. And if you’ve gotten a bouquet of flowers this season, you’ve definitely been a recipient of her handiwork. She’s a great cook and baker (and often can be found making cookies with Oakley and Waylon), she takes sun protection seriously (she can always be seen with her super wide-brimmed hat), and is incredibly nice. And a fun fact about her is that she worked at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in the dining hall, both cooking and talking with the athletes and coaches!

I interviewed Mai after work last week and have a slightly edited version of our conversation below. [Read more…]

It’s my pleasure to introduce you to one of our interns, Isshin Itaka, who is also a member of the 2022-2023 Japanese Agricultural Training Program cohort. He arrived last August and is a staple of the Saturday Palo Alto farmers market crew, in addition to doing many other tasks around the farm. He takes great photos and videos (and is very tech-savvy), asks excellent questions (about farming, English vocab/pronunciation, and more), and is a hard worker, putting in countless hours after work for his farm back in Japan (more about that below). [Read more…]

Full Belly Farm is a special place for many reasons, and high up on that list is the people. Since almost the very beginning of the farm, interns have played a key role in the farm community. This week, I sat down with two interns, Yasuaki Saito (left, in both photos) and Kosuke Kato (right) to learn about their background and their experience at Full Belly Farm. They both arrived last September as part of the Japanese Agriculture Exchange Program, a program that Full Belly has had a relationship with for many years. The program starts with two months in Washington State taking English classes, then 13 months working at a farm (mostly on the West Coast), and then concludes with two months at UC Davis. They’ve done a little bit of everything (including filling in for a home delivery route) and are great members of the team. [Read more…]