Honoring our Fall TEK Interns and the progress made in the Native Plant Nursery

Joaquin Ocana (Kaqchikel Peoples), Native Plant Nursery Coordinator

The last few weeks at the farm have been some of the busiest and most exciting of the year. With all the support and hard work from our team of interns and volunteers, we have succeeded in expanding our native plant nursery and are caring for and growing almost 2000 plants! Now that our interns have completed their Fall TEK Internship and shared their final presentations, we can still enjoy their recordings produced by Sam, our film producer. You can view the recordings with their accomplishments below.

Sam Eubanks 

Madeline Butler

Ariana Villafuerte

We missed our opportunity to record Intern Tonya Heslett, but we still treasure our time with her this summer and fall.  She added so much to our team with her maturity and indigenous perspectives. 

Two of our interns stayed on to help us with our work in December. Thanks, Sam and Madeline! With their help we are now starting to germinate some of the native pollinators being added to ten additional recessed growing beds our Summer Interns constructed last summer. Thanks to the amazing support of our friend Mara Friddle, Farm Manager at the Institute for Applied Ecology, we finalized the list of plants that we will grow so we can fulfill our native habitat restoration goals in both urban and rural areas of the Mid-Willamette Valley. 

Our team and interns learned to clean, weigh and store the seeds in our seed bank, and discussed their germination periods and processes that are necessary for each species we plan to grow. It was exciting to learn more about our seed choices and their natural life cycles. We factored in the flowering times and conditions for germination, and so many variables that make each unique. I am learning how complicated those conditions are and how much we still have yet to learn and observe.  

Photo of Sam Eubanks speaking

We also began brainstorming and preparing for our next Internship being held over six months in the Winter and Spring of 2026.  We anticipate having four winter interns this time and have already recruited three of the four gifted individuals who will select a career track among urban forestry, native plant nursery development and organic farming. This is the first time we have scheduled a winter internship but the timing is right for us to fulfill the urban forestry and native plant nursery development goals. 

Finally, it was exciting to prepare our elderberry products for our first Holiday Market in Salem! We have been working on our elderberry syrup and the recipe for months and were able to make a few batches of syrup plus our very first elderflower skin salve as well.  Learning to make the medicine was a good challenge for us to work as a team and overcome small obstacles in the process. Overall, the month of December has been a huge success and we are excited to continue working and learning in the new year!