Tomos Hawkesworth
Old Allangrange Farming Partnership – Practical horticultural internship: learning how to grow food sustainably
In 2024 I was an intern in the market garden at the stunningly beautiful Black Isle Brewery. I have taken a circuitous route to growing. I have always loved nature and wanted to participate in building a sustainable future for all, but my approach to that had been lab-based. As such, my growing experience coming into the internship consisted of a few months WWOOFing and weekly volunteering at my local organic market garden in South Wales. Therefore, this internship has been absolutely crucial as an entry point into the market garden world. Without this internship, I would not have been able to build up the skill set that I now possess and would have remained on the outside looking in.
The market garden team was small and the space we managed was around 3 acres, with a mix of vegetables, fruit, herbs, ornamentals as well as a Keder polytunnel. Our main remit was to grow produce for the Black Isle bars – think salads, leafy greens, tomatoes… – and other local food businesses. As a small team, we all had to take responsibility, whether that be managing customers orders or coming in on the weekend to ensure the crops were watered.
Across the season, we grew a total of 41 different vegetables and herbs from seed. I learnt which crops are related to each other, their growing requirements, their regular pests, how to recognise disease and how to care for them.
My favourite parts of the internship, and the parts of the experience that I am most proud of, has been to set up a weekly stall to sell our produce to the local community and to have saved seeds. Saving seed is important for building crop resilience,and with the climate crisis deepening, and weather becoming less predictable and more extreme, having crops that are well-adapted to their locality will be crucial if food systems are to remain resilient. After becoming entranced by seeds, I will be applying for the seed production training with the Gaia Foundation for the coming season.
Following the internship, Tomos is now employed as a member of the market garden team.
Heloise le Moal
Community Woodlands Association Internship
After graduating at the Scottish School of Forestry in Forest Management, I joined the Community Woodlands Association (CWA) in December 2021 as an intern. My role was to help two community woodland groups with their communication: Glengarry Community Woodlands in Invergarry and Culduthel Woods in Inverness. The main idea was to help them promote their benefits to the wider community and ensure the continuity of my work.
From video making in the woods with school children to engaging with local media, this internship has been a good opportunity to consolidate my knowledge of community woodlands and communication. Not only have I expanded my network in a sector that I am really interested in, but I also had the opportunity to gain an insight into policy making. Overall, this internship has been very positive and gave me the confidence I needed for my future projects.
Alasdair Worrell
River Revivers – Reviver Recruit
This year I was an intern for River Revivers, a small company based out of Aberfeldy, with the goal of restoring Scotland’s rivers to host maximum life. Out of this internship, I most enjoyed time spent outdoors surveying breathtaking places, the freedom to develop skills acquired at university and physically installing the restoration measures. The greatest benefit of this is being paid to get necessary and highly valuable work experience in the sector I find most joy working in – restoration. Secondly, I have met a lot of people through this role, opening many future opportunities.
This internship has greatly developed my career and allows me to look for more ambitious opportunities in the future. I have now developed skills from university into ones I can use with confidence during restoration as well as learning new essential skills. It was also an opportunity to experience the sector and confirmed it is what I want to do at this point in my life. I gained countless connections, having attended meetings and conferences, which I will be sure to draw on in future. I have been using these connections to set up similar freelance restoration work. Additionally, I recently was offered a funded PhD in Corrour, and I think my experience working with River Revivers and at Corrour was pivotal in this decision, made possible only by this internship.