The main focus for my Senior Ventures project is to encourage and promote sustainable farming here at Darlington. This will consist of managing the budget and keeping up with expenses and income for the DarFarm, managing specific projects in the greenhouse and garden area such as planning and prepping 21 raised beds, maintaining the greenhouse, and organizing and running plant sales throughout the year.
As a leader of this program, I plan to collaborate with the lower grades at Darlington for educational experiences for the younger kids to get involved with sustainable agriculture.
I’m very excited to be seeing success already in the DarFarm program.
Recently, I entered one of the pumpkins grown at the DarFarm in the Coosa Valley Fair agriculture competition. The pumpkin that was entered was a Long Island Cheese pumpkin, and it won! Not only did the pumpkin win the best in the flower show but it won “Best in Agriculture.” It was very exciting to find out that the pumpkin won in a few different areas. Mr. Hudson and I were very excited about the results.
I have also been growing succulents and making pots out of a concrete mixture while getting them ready for our succulent sale that will take place around Christmas time. We are also planning on having a mid-November sale near Thanksgiving to see how the sales of our products go.
Another exciting thing is that the chickens on campus have produced enough eggs to be sold by the dozens each week to faculty and staff on campus that love the eggs.
My future plans with this project consist of planning another plant sale after December, engaging the younger students with my project, and even more planting at the DarFarm.
The Senior Ventures leadership program is a year-long senior project built on a framework of leadership, innovation, and community engagement. The topic and the project design is chosen by an individual student or a pair of students, and the journey is guided by Darlington faculty as well as mentors in the community. Most projects fall into one of the following categories: Investigation, Performance, Entrepreneurship, and Outreach. Candidates are selected according to proposal quality, feasibility, and commitment.
