We're excited to welcome our new winter session interns, who started their internships today with a rousing round of introductions, campus tours, chores, and more. Our orientation week will include time in the shop going over tool safety, a tour of the Mad River Valley, picking classes, starting renovations in the Chalet, and getting ready for next week's classes.
Meet our 6 new interns:
Zachary Hunter- Though periodically departing to live in and experience other regions of the world, Zachary was born in and continues to call Vermont home. With an educational background in forestry, Zach felt a growing necessity for independence and building experience. This desire has gained momentum in the past several years as he acclimated to working as a carpenter. Currently three years deep in his "education", Zach looks forward to expanding his skillset as a tradesman, and meeting with individuals who are committed to more progressive and size-appropriate building strategies.
Kendall Barbery-- Most recently from Olympia, Washington where she's imbibed the water from the artesian well (and vowed to return), Kendall has spent the past several years fishing in the pristine waters of Bristol Bay, gardening/farming in Alaska, Washington and Hawaii, and taking things apart (primarily houses) with her friends at Olympia Salvage. Originally from Virginia, she carried her art degree west and north (to the future) at the prompting of a very smart and considerate friend. Now that she's spent so much time deconstructing homes and ogling salvaged materials, she's looking to figure out how to put them together again, responsibly. Kendall loves scraps of paper people leave between the pages of books, attics, old photographs, bikes and bike rides, knots, birds, boats, potlucks, friends and, increasingly, snow.
W.L. Schebaum-- Hailing from the flood plains of Richmond Vermont, W.L. Schebaum is a philosopher/farmer/carpenter/musician currently enthralled by the endless possibilities of the human experience. Spending his early years in the fields and forests of Gravesend New Hampshire instilled a sense of unity with the natural world which was later solidified by philosophical studies at the University of Vermont. Will has worked as a historical restorationist, organic farmer, deck hand, touring musician, and most recently carpenter. He hopes to spend his time at Yestermorrow fusing the principles of creative and balanced living in order to achieve a higher state of awareness and build a few things along the way. He spends his free time riding bicycles, exploring rivers, uphill skiing, entertaining cosmological paradoxes, and of course breathing.
Tressa Gibbard-- Tressa comes to Yestermorrow most recently from Lake Tahoe, California and the wide world of watershed management. Previously, as an undergrad in environmental studies at Penn State, she was involved in alternative, community-based building projects in Montana, Mexico and North Carolina. After college, however, wanderlust got the better of her and led her to pursue field-based watershed research in the West as well as Mongolia and Russia. Fine wooden crafts in Siberia and a desire to work with her hands to build something other than databases of numbers and picutres about the natural world inspired her to come to Yestermorrow to further her building and design skills.
Tim Pierce-- Although Tim has lived most of his life in Michigan, he has traveled and lived all over the U.S. while pursuing assorted dreams. Tim has spent excessive amounts of time as a computer engineer, and just enough time as an Appalacian Trail thru-hiker, boat builder, social worker, and pig-shelter architect/builder. All of these experiences have led to a desire to make a sustainable life that combines work and pleasure in one place at one time. He and his wife Stephanie are passionate about good food and hope to eventually own a farm in efforts to spread the joy of eating well.
Stephanie Pierce-- Raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Stephanie migrated south to attend Albion College where she studied communication and philosophy. Her first job out of college found her at a large foundation doing communications support work for sustainable agriculture grantmaking. She partnered with a good friend to create the working structure for a small communications consulting firm where she did writing, analysis, and odds 'n ends after leaving the foundation. Along the way, the light dawned that she needed to balance mental work with physical work in order to remain sane. While doing a work-for-trade at a rotational grazing farm in Michigan she began to figure out with her husband Tim how to pursue their burgeoning dreams of 21st century homesteading and small scale vegetable farming. The kitchen/garden internship at Yestermorrow is one of her first major steps toward that dream.
Check out the 7/8 summer lecture by Jacob Deva Racusin on Bridging the Gap: Bringing Together the Worlds of Natural and Green Building at http://blip.tv/file/2394709. He discusses how the modern natural building movement has been growing slowly but steadily for decades across the globe, yet much misunderstanding still remains about its form, function, purpose, and potential. The growth of the green building movement has helped increase awareness of energy efficiency, building performance, and ecological sensitivity. Developments in natural building and design in our cold climate are addressing these concerns, while continuing to support core issues of social and ecological justice and affordability. Come find out how the natural and green building movements can - and must - learn from and work with each other to reach mutual goals.
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