We are excited to introduce this year’s Spring cohort of interns on the farm.  This year, we are trying out an intern cohort model.   In the cohort system, we are meeting weekly with the team of interns to discuss farm-related readings and develop a sense of community within the group.  Selection for our intern spots was competitive – we initially set the number of interns we could take at 10, but the field of applicants was so rich we ended up taking a couple more!   Each intern has a special project or focus area that they are working on, and all interns volunteer as leaders at regular farm volunteer shifts. The interns this spring have brought great energy to the farm, and we are enthusiastic about how the program is working so far! Read on to learn more about our interns this spring!  

Introducing the Spring 2026 UW Farm Internship Cohort

Ace Rasmussen, General Farm Intern, Flower Focus

Ace is a 4th-year student majoring in Psychology and also Environmental Science and Resource Management. She started at the farm as a community volunteer before deciding to apply to be an intern. Ace is now one of the General Farm interns focusing on flowers and is looking forward to learning as much as she can about urban farming. She is passionate about mutual aid and is excited to positively impact her community through her contributions on the farm. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, hanging out with her cat “Mama”, and mushroom foraging in the fall.

Allison Elliott, Food Security Intern 

Allison is a second-year student studying both Environmental Studies and Food Systems, Nutrition and Health. After previously volunteering as a Community Engaged Leadership and Education (CELE) student at the University District Food Bank in Spring 2025 and at the UW Farm in Fall 2025, she joined the Spring 2026 intern cohort, focusing on food security. She is also a member of Project Indoor Farm, a hydroponics club that grows food without soil! In her free time, Allison enjoys penpaling, cooking new recipes, drawing, thrifting, and spending time with her cat.

This quarter, Allison is working to recover more food from the farm by having group gleaning sessions (saving produce from being wasted) and keeping track of all the food and where it goes. She’s excited to bring her experience from working at a food bank and farm and apply her previous skills and knowledge to increase food security here at UW!

Anna Molotsky, Vermicompost Intern

Anna is a third‑year Environmental Science major with a minor in Environmental Public Health.  After doing soil sampling at the farm and taking a farm seminar in Winter 2026, Anna joined the intern cohort this quarter. She will be focusing on worms! As an ESRM major who loves wildlife, worms were right up her alley. Outside the farm, Anna loves being outdoors; hiking and being on the water are her favorites. Anna is also a part of a 3D printing club on campus, focusing on 3D printing assistive technology. 

This quarter, Anna is working to replenish the vermicompost system, creating a healthy, thriving environment for the worms and ultimately a nutrient-rich soil amendment. She also hopes to capture more food waste to take to the worms. She’s excited to bring her scientific background, especially her coursework in ecology, soil systems, and environmental health, to this new challenge.

Audrey Shirley, Nutrition Education Intern

Audrey is a second-year student majoring in Public Health-Global Health with a minor in Food Systems, Nutrition and Health. Audrey started on the farm through her Harvest to Health nutrition course in the fall of 2025. While not on the farm, you can find her writing for HerCampus UW, weight training, cooking, drawing, and going out to eat with friends. Audrey is from a farm in Lexington, Kentucky and hopes to learn more about the farming strategies used at the UW Farm through her internship position. She is also working with the UW Food Pantry to create nutritious recipes using produce from the UW Farm to make available to students.

Estella Medford, Bee Intern

Estella is a second-year student at the University of Washington pursuing a major in Environmental Studies with a minor in Nutrition Sciences. They started at the UW Farm as a CELE volunteer in Spring 2025, and have been an active volunteer at the farm ever since. She has past experience as a home beekeeper, and is now one of the Bee Interns at the UW farm with Katahdin! ( See his profile below.)  She hopes to work towards bringing honeybees back to the UW Farm as well as promote awareness and stewardship towards native pollinators around the UW campus. They are so excited to be a part of the UW Farm Intern cohort and can’t wait to further her involvement in pollinator conservation in urban agricultural settings!

Outside of the farm, Estella loves hiking, paddle boarding, arts & crafts, rock hounding (talk to her about agate hunting!), and any activity/conversation related to pollinators. She’s also currently loving learning more about sustainable and plant-based culinary practices and always loves to hear about new recipes and ingredient uses!

Josee Stetich, Garden Maintenance intern

Josee is a first-year Master’s in Landscape Architecture student. She is new to the farm as one of two Garden Maintenance Interns. Much of landscape design involves sitting at a desk looking at a screen, so she wanted to get her hands dirty stewarding a plot on the farm and witnessing how a design evolves once it’s implemented. She will be focusing on redesigning and maintaining the World Culinary Garden, originally designed by another MLA student. Food and cooking is one of her passions, and she is excited to infuse this into her practice.

Outside of the farm and landscape architecture studios, you’ll find her riding bikes, doing pottery, skiing, making decadent salads, lying on a sunny rock in the desert, and exploring the beauty of the PNW.

Katahdin Fasani, Bee Intern

Having been born on a commune, raised vegetarian, and running a goat dairy for 8 years, it was inevitable that Katahdin would find himself on a farm at college. Now that he is a couple quarters into his college experience, Katahdin is happy to be one of two (yay Estella!) Bee Interns with a strong passion to bring Apis mellifera (Western honey bee) back to campus. Katahdin is studying Dramatic Storytelling and loves to play beach volleyball. He hopes to write and act in original musicals soon.I

Matthew Judd, Education Intern, Newsletter Coordinator 

Matthew is a third-year student studying Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. Starting at the farm as a regular community volunteer in Autumn 2023, Matthew joined the 2025 intern cohort, focusing on the Vermicompost and Beekeeping programs. Working at the farm and thinking with feminist texts in class sparked Matthew’s passion for ecofeminism. Ecofeminism is a feminist framework that models how the construction and maintenance of capitalist patriarchal systems rely on extractive logics that target the feminized body, natural cycles, non-human, and minoritarian communities. By centering eco-feminism as a central lesson of community-based agriculture, Matthew hopes to demonstrate the rich potential of the UW Farm as a site of humanities knowledge.  

This year, Matthew is working as one of two Education Interns, or Newsletter Coordinator, focusing on the UW Farms monthly publication: Around The Farm. In this position, Matthew hopes to draw on previous experience in newspaper/newsletter publishing to coordinate a monthly publication that is enriching, informational, and collaborative.

Poppy Green, General Farm Intern, Flower Focus

Poppy is a second-year student studying Environmental Studies and Law, Societies, and Justice. She started at the UW Farm as a CELE volunteer in Autumn 2024, and is now joining the 2026 internship cohort as a General Farm Intern. Her internship focus is on flowers and specifically flower harvest and bouquet making, learning about Slow Flowers, and researching the best cut flowers that also support pollinators. She’s also really interested in issues of food insecurity and the opportunity for community food sovereignty that urban spaces such as the UW Farm create. In her free time, Poppy loves to be outside hiking, backpacking, swimming, and soaking up the sun. She also loves to read and cook delicious vegetarian meals.

Remi Vrilakas, General Farm Intern, Permaculture Focus

Remi is a third-year Environmental Science and Resource Management and Political Science major. She initially became involved at the UW Farm during the first months of her freshman year in fall 2023 and has enjoyed her work as a community volunteer ever since. Now, as an intern, Remi will be focusing on the UW Farm’s permaculture plot and herb spiral. She is especially interested in the way agriculture can take inspiration from nature. With her passion for ecosystem interactions and restoration ecology, Remi is excited to improve this permaculture and culinary area of the farm to a flourishing environment. In her free time, you can find Remi starting a new knitting project, going for a long run, or trying new restaurants in Seattle.

Serena Mlodinoff, Education Intern, Tour Program Coordinator

Serena is a fourth-year student studying Political Science and Environmental Studies. She started on the UW Farm as a CELE volunteer during Fall Term ‘25, continuing her time in the space through a transition to Farm Education Intern in Spring Term ‘26. She pursued her position as Tour Program Coordinator in an effort to meld her past experiences as a UW Tour Guide and Environmental Studies student. Outside of the farm, Serens enjoys artistic hobbies such as jewelry making and knitting, as well as logic games and puzzles (she just hit a year of doing the NYT Crossword every day without hints)!

This quarter, Serena will be focusing on rewriting the tour materials and scripts for the farm, as well as recruiting and training new guides! She is also planning on emphasizing community involvement through tabling on campus and spreading awareness about the UW Farm’s mission.

Tara Zolfaghari, Informatics Intern

Tara is a third-year student studying Informatics with a minor in Environmental Studies. She started as a CELE volunteer at the farm in Autumn 2025 through the Urban Farm course, ENVIR 240. She wanted to join the intern cohort because she loved the ability to support food production for her community, and she became passionate about the connection between food justice and uplifting marginalized communities.

Tara is the Informatics intern on the farm this quarter, where she will bridge the gap between data analysis and agriculture by analyzing the impacts of regenerative farming on soil nutrient density. She hopes to make technical information about the farm soil health more accessible to all students and community members by highlighting the positive impacts of the farm’s work! In her free time, Tara likes to sing, paddle board, go to concerts, cook fun meals (especially with produce from the farm!), and spend time at the beach.

Not pictured:

Gabe Meyer-Yen, Garden Maintenance Intern, Bachelor’s in Landscape Architecture