{"id":2884,"date":"2026-06-24T15:30:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T15:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/?p=2884"},"modified":"2026-06-24T15:31:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T15:31:06","slug":"june-18-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/june-18-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"June 18, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi! I am Sofia Hayes, a third year student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln studying Environmental and Sustainability Studies (with a focus in International Agriculture and Natural Resources). I grew up in Kearney, Nebraska, and spent a lot of my life living in Argentina near my family\u2019s farms, where my passion for agriculture began.<\/p>\n\n\n

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My internship started at the beginning of May, and I think that I have learned more in this short period of time than I have in a long while. I have been learning about what it takes to work every day on a regenerative and organic farm, with livestock as well as crops, and I can say for sure that I understand why farmers go to bed so early! This farm is a very special place and it has been really interesting to see the amount of hard work and good people it takes to carry out the mission of the Vetter Family Farm and the Grain Place Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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I decided to pursue an internship at the Grain Place after watching the documentary, Dreaming of a Vetter World, which I learned about when Foundation Board Member Chuck Porter visited one of my classes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. What stood out to me about the Vetter Family Farm was how intentional each act seemed to be. And my first couple of weeks on the farm have shown me just how purposefully everything is carried out here, from the work of people on the Foundation board, to the execution of the nine-year crop rotation throughout the twenty-two different fields divided among about two hundred and fifty acres of land. The nine- year crop rotation was something that initially really intrigued me and after having seen all the different lots and the different crops in the rotation, I find it even more fascinating and I am excited to learn more about the specifics of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been living at the farm and truly immersing myself in all that happens on a day-to-day basis here. Having the opportunity to fully dive into working with the resident farmer, Adam Brown, has shown me just what it takes to be in charge of a farm with this kind of a mission. My family has farms, but they are farmed conventionally with the use of agrichemicals and on a very large scale. This is a large contrast to the Grain Place, where the scale on which everything is done is very small, but very calculated. One of my biggest goals for my experience at the Grain Place is to learn about what it takes to farm organic and regeneratively, in an effort to one day take the knowledge that I gain back to my family\u2019s farms and begin to shift from the reliance on agrichemicals, benefitting the soil and the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my favorite things that I have done during my time on the farm has been feeding the cattle. The cattle on this farm are very different from anything that I have experienced, they love to come up to you and investigate what it is that you are doing and probably also to see if you have any snacks to give them! Getting to know the cattle, including their personalities and their names has been something I have really found to be entertaining. Working on the farm has truly been an adjustment, however, the challenges I have faced while being very minor have been crucial to my learning process and my improvement as a worker on<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the farm. Some challenges that I have faced include my weariness around the animals, anxiety about carrying out tasks that I have been told to do and working with the large machinery. Through taking time to learn about everything from watching how things are done, I have gained confidence in doing many of these tasks but also keeping my distance when things seem to be out of my comfort zone. Overall, I have learned that it is very important to listen and have an open mind about things, and most importantly, always be ready to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hi! I am Sofia Hayes, a third year student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln studying Environmental and Sustainability Studies (with a focus in International Agriculture and Natural Resources). I grew up in Kearney, Nebraska, and spent a lot of my life living in Argentina near my family\u2019s farms, where my passion for agriculture began.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2886,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[69,58],"class_list":["post-2884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-intern","tag-intern-blog","tag-topp"," nt-post-class"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2890,"href":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884\/revisions\/2890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grainplacefoundation.org\/espanol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}