Steven Finley Alumni Spotlight
Steven Finley graduated from Dickinson in 2015 with a BS in Biology. Steven started working at the farm part time (10hrs/week) during the second semester of my junior year and continued working part time through my entire senior year. I then had the opportunity to take a full-time apprenticeship on the farm after my graduation for the 2015 growing season and finally departed after some winter work in early 2016. He had a lot of close friends that worked on the farm and many of my biology classes met on the farm for labs and/or research. His friends all spoke highly of their time at the farm, and his own experiences there for classes were very interesting. This all led to him applying for a student farmer position there in 2014.
After Steven graduated in May 2015 he worked full-time as an apprentice at the farm for the 2015 season. Since then, he has remained involved in the food/ag sector. Steven has worked at several different diversified vegetable farms in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, both in commercial and non-profit settings. For a couple years he stepped aside from growing food and instead joined a non-profit hunger relief organization in the Boston area, where he worked alongside local growers to harvest, pack, and distribute local gleaned produce to the community. Currently he has returned to growing vegetables full-time in Weston, Massachusetts as a part of Land’s Sake, a non-profit organized around environmental education, food donation, and land management. Working at the Dickinson Farm was wonderful because it gave him so many opportunities to learn, attempt, and practice new skills in a safe and supportive atmosphere that could be hard to replicate in the farming world. Steven is grateful to Matt, Jenn, Kevin and others for their patience and guidance, which have helped him pursue further farming and land management careers. There is also an incredible network of Dickinson growers out there.
The next step is always to keep learning and seeking advice and inspiration from the amazing community of people who choose to grow and share and prepare food. When Steven is not farming, he really enjoys riding his bike along some of the more rural roads just west of Boston. He also has taken up cribbage and he really is looking forward to the day that he can remember all the rules. One of his favorite Dickinson College Farm memories is he always reminisced fondly about living in the yurts on the farm and building a fire in the furnace ahead of chilly autumn evenings. There’s something so special about living, sleeping, and walking on the land that you tend to.