08/22/2026
Rooted in Experience: Stories from Dilmun Hill
When I started my summer at Dilmun Hill Student Farm through the Lund Fellowship, I thought I knew what I was signing up for. I expected to spend my days learning about farming, working outside, and getting more hands-on experience with agriculture. I did all of that, but the experience became much bigger than I expected. Over the course of the summer, Dilmun Hill became a place where I learned not only about growing food, but also about leadership, teamwork, communication, and community.
As a Student Farm Manager, I was involved in many different parts of the farm. There were the days spent in the field working, but there were the parts of the job that happened beyond the field. I helped with our CSA, worked at pop-up markets, welcomed visitors and volunteers, participated in educational events, and worked on outreach and social media. One of my favorite projects was creating The Weekly Dirt, our weekly farm newsletter. Every week, I got to look back at everything happening on the farm and find a way to share those experiences with our community. It gave me a different perspective on the work we were doing because I was not only participating in it, but also thinking about how to tell its story.
What made this experience especially meaningful was working alongside my fellow farm managers. Farming is very much a team effort. There were days when there seemed to be an endless list of things to do, and we had to rely on each other to keep everything moving. We worked through long days, unexpected problems, busy CSA weeks, markets, events, and everything in between. Some of my favorite memories are not necessarily the big events, but the small moments in between the work: sitting together after a long day, sharing food, laughing when we were exhausted, or realizing that something we had planted weeks earlier was finally ready to harvest. Those moments reminded me that the farm is just as much about the people as it is about the crops. 🍉🍒🍓
Cheers,
Shabana Mahdis
Global Development class of 2029
2026 Dilmun Hill Student Manager & Lund Fellow
