Hunt Club Farm Intern

Since my last Intern Blog Post, I have learned many new things on the Farm! I have learned about the different people that make a company and many things about running an event when planned last minute.

During the past four weeks, I have successfully ran a Summer Camp at Hunt Club Farm. If you haven’t heard about us yet, we are the only petting farm that is located about 5 miles from the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. It is defiantly a unique experience if it is your first time and the children love it. The farm has only 4-6 year round employees and a ton of seasonal staff since the farm closes during certain months.

During the past four weeks, I have learned about the many different personalities that I have seen before in the staff at Summer Camp now that I have a head role over them. For example, Wanda (Ashley) is an older lady who has been with camp for the past 18 years. She is now a senior camp counselor, which requires previous employment of the camp and someone who is over the age of 18. Her daughter and she ran summer camp last year, but it turned out not so good at the end when many of the staff quit due to the mother-daughter duo and the way they talked to people. Wanda is constantly late to many of the classes and snack times on the schedule and it frustrates everyone on the farm because the schedule has been changed six times already. I believe Wanda is purposefully being late to everything to sabotage Rendy and me for taking over Summer Farm Camp and turning it into something new and updated.

Another personality we have in Summer Camp is Jordan. Jordan was recently promoted to Senior Counselor with a pay raise from $8.00 to $10.00. Jordan did ask for a raise, but with the raise came more responsibly and a new title. Jordan hasn’t been fulfilling the needed task for being a Senior Counselor and we have meet with her several times. Jordan has been with camp for many years and we thought it was a good decision. She is slowly becoming better each week but seems to be in it just for the money. She is always yelling at the kids and not having fun with them.

The last set of personalities in Camp are the volunteers. This is a new side of the volunteers that I have seen. The volunteers range in age from 13-15 years old. A huge majority of them are previous campers, which helps us train them because they already know everything about the animals and where stuff is located on the farm. The volunteers are both male and female. They seem to always cluster up and get friendly with each other. Every time it is free time, the volunteers should be in the pens with the children to ensure nothing happens to them or the animals. They instead stand between the pens and use their phones, snapchat, gossip, and flirt with each other. Rendy and I have had to talk to a few of them, but on Friday, Rendy had a huge meeting with them to reiterate her expectations listed in the manual we made for them.

All of these individual or group meetings are a learning lesson for me in the real world and when I get a job one day. I am able to take my knowledge of how this company is ran and use it in other jobs. Although this is a small family ran business, it still deals with PR and People. The different personalities in the bunch is also a unique asset to see and address.

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