Harvest leaders are Yale sophomores, juniors, and seniors. They come from a wide range of backgrounds, but all share a love for having fun and learning about farming in the great outdoors.

Elsie Kenyon is an American Studies major in Trumbull ‘11. She is a native of the Boston area who also loves spending time in Tennessee and Vermont, where she first discovered how food, farming, and great people intersect during a semester at the Mountain School. Harvest has been the source of her favorite (and most delicious) adventures in the great Nutmeg State. At Yale, when she’s not riding her bike around New Haven, she teaches conflict resolution in city middle schools with Peace by Peace, works to raise the profile of sustainable agriculture and food-justice issues with Food from the Earth, and is involved with the on-campus publication The New Journal. She enjoys riding on trains, collecting coloring books, and roasting marshmallows stuffed with chocolate. Elsie is spending this summer interning at DC Central Kitchen and is getting (really) excited about meeting Harvesters in August.

Marcus Strong hails from Atlanta, Georgia, a place where the tea is always sweet, the people always say “please” and “thank you”, and it’s always colder indoors than out. A soon-to-be junior in Trumbull college and Political Science major, he appreciates Italian literature, pasta al dente, newspaper boy caps, and vests, of the sweater and suit variety. Not to be outdone by his urban sensibilities, Marcus also has a strong passion for growing and cooking his own food, and enjoys working in his dad’s garden at home under the hot Georgia sun. This summer he will be working for CitySeed, a nonprofit that manages all the farmer’s markets in New Haven, and seeing what fruitful wonders can be borne from his small, yet beautiful, kitchen. He can’t wait to eat two of his favorite foods, Yale Farm pizza and Jesse’s gorp, with all the new Harvesters in the fall!

Kenya Gillespie hails from the small town of Salina, Kansas. He is a rising senior in the newly-renovated (woot!) Calhoun and a music major. Kenya’s favorite food is sushi, and he also enjoys drinking assorted juices. He is a devoted fan of Lost in Translation, Arrested Development, and John Coltrane.
Kenya wishes he could have been a contestant on Legends of the Hidden Temple as a young child. Favorite HARVEST memory: too many, he says, but making and eating Local Farm ice cream is definitely up there with contra dancing.

Will Alden grew up in Santa Monica, CA, just down the street from a farmer’s market in the parking lot of a police station. He’s a senior English major at Yale, where he edits the “scene” section of the YDN and also writes plays. His favorite Harvest activities are Big Booty and making hummus.

Roxanne Carini is a junior in Trumbull college majoring in Applied Mathematics. She also rows for Yale Women’s Rowing team. Roxanne went on a Harvest trip as a freshmen and fell in love with the program! She had never farmed before, but that didn’t matter… the combination of camping, freshmen bonding, hands-on, in-the-dirt work, and getting to learn so much from the farmers, made Harvest an amazing experience for her. She was a part of the Harvest support crew last year and is looking forward to leading a trip this August!

William Koh is a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College. He grew up in New Haven and plans on majoring in either History or Architecture. His interests primarily include music, movies, cooking, photography, cycling, and traveling. Harvest was the best way Will could have imagined beginning his freshman year. He immediately felt accepted into a community of interesting and fun people. Their love for food and the environment was perfectly in sync with his own passions. Will grew more excited for college than ever before. The best part was that Harvest experience didn’t end with pre orientation. He stayed good friends with both his leaders and many of the other members of his trip.

Richard Miron , a rising Branford sophomore, comes from the hills of Marietta, Georgia. He has always enjoyed feeding and eating plants and feeding (not eating) animals. His first Harvest trip (last year) inspired him to view and taste food in a whole new way, and he can’t wait to pass that along as a leader. He doesn’t quite know what he’s majoring in yet, but he thinks it’ll be related to literature, film, or psychology. He writes, sings, and plays original music (and has a rock band at Yale), and he sings in the all-male a cappella group The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus. This summer, he’ll be recording some new music in Atlanta and studying Japanese cinema in Tokyo. Richard is looking forward to farming, learning, playing, and eating with his very own group of new Harvesters this August. He also enjoys writing bios in the third-person.

Pruittiporn Kerdchoochuen , also known more commonly as Pat, is a Davenport Junior hailing from a small dairy farming town in Northeastern Thailand. Her (at times disturbing) fascination in war movies, irony, gore, politics and the smell of old books had led her to pursue a double major in History and International Studies. When not in class or in the fencing studio (Pat is a member of the women´s epee squad on the Yale Varsity fencing team), Pat spends her time experimenting in the Davenport student kitchen, tabling outside of commons for Amnesty International, blowing her hard-earned pay exploring New Haven´s restaurant scene, wandering aimlessly around campus or twisting herself into elaborate and painful positions in order to take that one perfect picture of the underside of some wayward leaf. As an alumni of the Mountain School semester program (fall ´05), Pat has developed a keen appreciation for menial labour, sustainable agriculture, fresh local food and llamas. She is spending the summer in Göttingen, Germany working for a human rights NGO and trying to improve her broken German.

Yasha Magarik lived the first eighteen years of his life in Brooklyn, where he made a religion out of three NY Jews: Paul Simon, Woody Allen, and Allen Ginsberg. He can read, rumor has it that he can write (which would make him literate), and some people even speak of a discus-based sport that he plays. He likes people. And dogs. Food he finds premium. But most of all, he enjoys long walks on the farm.

MingToy Taylor is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight and your Harvest leader! She is from New York City so farms are pretty far from what she’s used to. But after going on Harvest as a freshman Ming fell in love. The picture she included is from her trip to Local Farm, a dairy. She has a new appreciation for cows, milk, cheese, and ice cream, which she loved already and now really loves. The people at the neighboring house let them swim in their pool and eat pears from their yard. And what is better than pears and cheese?
Other than liking the classic sweet/salty combination, Ming also enjoys theater. A fair amount of her freshman year has been spent on the stage or behind the scenes. She also does community service, usually tutoring or work with kids. As far as course work goes, she’s taken a random smattering of classes with the intentional exclusion of any math or science ones. As for a major, Ming is nearly clueless. Her best guess is something pertaining to education. She likes to focus on short-term goals. Right now her goal is welcoming you all to Yale and making your Harvest trip as fantastic as hers was. She looks forward to meeting you all.

Alice Walton is a rising senior History and International Studies major in Pierson College. Originally from Berkeley, California, what some might call the capital of sustainable food, she came across the country to find herself back where she came from on Harvest, loving the chance to cook and eat deliciously fresh food. In addition to picking vegetables and making campfires, Alice works for the Yale Globalist, Yale Children’s Theater and is an avid player of intramural sports from football to frisbee, hockey to volleyball. Also, she likes to throw snowballs, so watch out come winter.

Erica Rothman is a sophomore in Branford College. She is from Tenafly, New Jersey. Erica has no idea what
she will be majoring in. Until she figures that out, Erica enjoys spending her time working for the Yale Lit, playing IM squash, and drinking Nantucket Nectars juice. Her favorite Harvest memory is hiding from the swamp monster on Waldingfield Farm.

Sarah Larsson , originally from Excelsior, Minnesota, is in Branford class of 2012. When asked “What is your major?” she usually switches between answering “Everything” and “Anthropology.” Considering for how much of her life she has loved playing in the dirt, it is no surprise that Sarah derives some of her greatest joy from experiencing the beauty of the Harvest farms and community. When away from the veggies, Sarah still wears bandanas and tall socks, but also enjoys playing the French Horn, tutoring elementary schoolers, Swing and Blues dancing, and exploring world music and dance. This August she will dive into Harvest after a summer learning about and working in global education with the Yale global development group “Haba na Haba” and a women’s group in Kenya.

Joe Satran is a junior English major from Montclair, NJ. He loves cooking with bacon, reading Emerson, and the British TV show Skins. His favorite vegetable is the Fava Bean, with the Brussels Sprout a close second. His greatest fear is being able to see beneath his feet, like in Apple stores with those glass floors. This summer he is a Yale Farm Intern along with Harvest leader Laura Blake, who was on his farm when she was a freshman. He can’t wait to meet his Harvesters this year!

Laura Blakeis a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College. She enjoys environmental activism, snuggling, and really good chocolate milk. Laura’s favorite word in the English language is Lozenge, followed closely by Bog People. She was a Harvester on Riverbank Farm last year, where Joe Satran was her leader. This summer, she is an intern on the Yale Farm with Joe.

Libbie Cohn ‘12 doesn’t really hail from anywhere but her parents and guardians live in Tokyo, Beijing, Paris and NYC–an explanation for why her carbon footprint makes her sad. At Yale, she travels on bike and works for the New Haven micro-credit organization Elmseed Enterprise Fund. This summer, she’s having an incredible time interning in Shanghai with the Joint-US China Cooperation on Clean Energy (JUCCCE, pronounced JUICE!), a non-profit devoted to accelerating the greening of China. Her interests include China, clean energy and sustainability, journalism/media, American studies, music, food, graphic design, photography and meeting hungry Harvesters come August.

Lizzy Star is an English Major/Writing Concentrator in Berkeley 2010 who hails from the fine town of Montclair, NJ. She discovered the Yale Farm as a prefrosh and has been drawn to its sungold tomatoes, pizza oven, and barn dances ever since. Last semester, she studied abroad in Scotland, where her opinion of kilts completely changed. Currently she is interning at a children’s book publishing company in New York, where she is overwhelmed by nostalgia and is hoping that somehow when she grows up she can be as awesome as Maurice Sendak. She also really likes when Harvesters bring their musical instruments on her Harvest trips. Just sayin.

Bobby Gibbs is a rising senior in Jonathan Edwards College majoring in Latin and ancient Greek. As a former editor in chief of Rumpus Magazine, the nation’s oldest college tabloid, he is a great source for juicy gossip and campus intrigue. He’s splitting his summer between working at The Week, a news magazine, and volunteering for Just Food’s campaign against unjust food. His Harvest experiences have taught him the rewards of being a Funcle (read fun uncle) and he can’t wait to return to Connecticut’s fine farmland.

Kyle Killeen is a proud member of the Ezra Stiles class of 2012. She is from a small town on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. After worrying for months about what she would do without good Southern cooking at college, she was ecstatic when she tasted her first Yale Farm pizza and learned that good food does exist in New Haven. Aside from eating all types of foods, Kyle’s hobbies include learning foreign languages, playing IM racquet sports for Stiles, and watching Law and Order: SVU. She wants to be a chemist when she grows up.

Anusha Raja is a sophomore in Say What! Saybrook! College. Having experienced the Harvest way of life as a freshman at High Hill Orchard, she is eager to share with others the joys of tending to the earth and tasting fresh produce picked right off the tree. Originally from the lovely town of Ramsey, NJ, she is an avid gardener, having planted a plethora of flowers in her front yard and a variety of vegetables in her backyard. When not cultivating the lands, Anusha is interested in majoring in Biology. She also spends her time working on the Yale Scientific Magazine, Raga Society (Classical Indian Music Society), Yale Campus Chapter of Girl Scouts, and AIESEC. This summer, she is exploring the bustling city of New Haven while doing neurobiology research.

Max Webster is a rising sophmore in Pierson College. He went to school in New Orleans for several years before ultimately ending up in Nashville,TN. He is a member of Yale’s debate team and enjoys learning about and discussing anything and everything. In his free time, he enjoys playing with his Weeniedog, following his University of Memphis Tigers, reading The Economist, and watching movies. He is working at Al Gore’s office this summer, but can’t wait to get back to New Haven to meet you all!

Margaux Calhoun is a rising sophomore in Calhoun College from New York City. She loves to cook and eat. She also loves to travel around the world and try all different types of food. Margaux is also an avid food photographer. She is currently trying to decide between majoring in Art or in Mechanical Engineering. They aren’t as different as they sound, ask her about it.

Rachel Paynecomes from Williamstown, Massachusetts. She plans to call her Harvesters her “little babies,” “farm babies,” or “baby farmers,” but expects that freshmen will answer to any and all terms of endearment she might create during the program. She can speak about environmental activism at Yale, Shakespeare, and Chekhov, and can recite chapter and verse from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. It is pointless, however, to ask her about the location of the registrar’s office, the number of Yale’s distributional requirements, and changing one’s system preferences on Macbook.

Lee West hails from Brewster, NY and will be a senior English major this fall. In addition to leading Harvest, he’s also involved in the Yale Sustainable Food Project as a volunteer and a pizza-maker at the Yale Farm. His favorite farm produce are the sun-gold tomatoes — if you’re in New Haven in the warmer months, he suggests you come by and try to snag some.