Daniella Gostev: Interning at Transfarmation Reflection

As a coastal urban dweller who has spent most of their life in New York’s metropolitan area, I admittedly hold more assumptions than genuine understanding of the lived experiences of the average dairy, poultry, or other livestock farmer situated across the vast and intricate lands of Turtle Island… Well, erm, farmers like to wear jeans, they sometimes ride tractors, and they like to listen to country music… right? 

Before I joined Transfarmation as a summer intern, I assumed much of the work involved convincing farmers to transition to a different type of farming. I didn’t know that the median income for a contract farmer in the United States is around $4,000. Farmers themselves, of course, are by no means oblivious to their impact on the land they steward, the animals they tend to, and other facets of their profession. I learned that an overwhelming interest from many farmers in transitioning to more sustainable agriculture, in a financial, health-wise, and ethical sense, already existed. I gathered that a lot of Transfarmation’s work focused on connecting these farmers to one another, offering various tools, and providing farmers and the world with transition success stories. 

I also once thought that I must care more about cows than a dairy farmer does if I abstained from eating them or drinking their milk. How could this be true when third-generation farmers like the Hamilton family, a Transfarmation client, have fostered relationships with cows for nearly seven decades, considering the cows’ needs and preferences by keeping only a herd size that honors the cows’ best interest and their own capacity to care for them? Maybe our care for cows is just expressed in different and not so different ways.

Before my internship at Transfarmation, I associated “workplace professionalism” with reserved, agreeable formalities expressed only while wearing uncomfortable, buttoned-up dress shirts, and I thought this must be the expectation at a large and respected parent organization like Mercy For Animals.

At Transfarmation, I learned that professionalism could look like genuine interest in the well-being of your coworkers. Meet and greets I had with team members were down-to-earth and unrushed. Everyone I got to work with was curious to know what brought me to Transfarmation, what I’m studying at school, what my interests outside work are, and what I’m interested in doing next. I felt no expectation to fit any sort of mold or follow any sort of bureaucratic or unspoken rules. 

Transfarmation’s small and close-knit team intentionally fosters virtual and in-person community through team-meeting icebreakers, sharing sunsets or sweet animal photos on Slack, and taking advantage of all the fun emoji reactions.

I felt welcomed by the team with wide-open arms, and I’m touched that I’m invited to visit a demonstration hub, join Transfarmation at Farm Aid, and stay in touch no matter what I do next. It’s evident that the Transfarmation team cares deeply about the work they do, in their professional lives and outside them. I deeply felt my team channel their compassion for farmers, animals, and our planet beautifully into their relationships with one another.