How to be a farmer, step one: suck it up

August 9, 2009 · Posted in G.I.Y. · Comments Off 
Jack Matthews, right, and Eva Teague harvest cucumbers for the Wednesday Farmers Market in Boulder. Cure Organic Farms of Boulder offers internships to students interested in learning about farming. For a video, go to www.dailycamera.com.

Photo by Cliff Grassmick. Jack Matthews, right, and Eva Teague harvest cucumbers for the Wednesday Farmers' Market in Boulder. Cure Organic Farms of Boulder offers internships to students interested in learning about farming. For a video, go to www.dailycamera.com.

Thanks to Michelle Obama (and, you know, generations of urban gardeners that predate her), the idea of a kitchen garden is commonplace once more.

But for some people, that’s not enough — not close enough to the earth and the food we all eat.

For these people, there are farm internships:

“Michael Pollan isn’t there at 5:30 a.m. making your coffee and helping you bunch carrots,” he says.

The Cures have had interns who couldn’t take the grueling work.

“July is the decider month,” he says. “Anne and I say, ‘If they make it through July, they’re going to be a farmer.”

The internships range in time and compensation (often the compensation is room and board and extra veggies), and you can find out a ton more in Camera food editor Cindy Sutter’s story, “So you want to work on a farm….