April Nugent, manager, Peggy Rockefeller Farms
By Jeremy Powers ’24
It’s a mild, sunny day as April Nugent picks her way across a field at College of the Atlantic Peggy Rockefeller Farms, eyes peeled for hidden cow patties in the knee-high grass. As she walks, she points out some of the geography—the brook that splits the farm in two, the sheep pasture, the yellow farmhouse, and the gray barn that sits back from the road. A wisp of breeze rustles the leaves of the oaks and aspens at the edge of the field; a cow lows softly as it works through a patch of grass.
Nugent, the new manager of Peggy, as it’s affectionately known, has been around farm animals most of her life. From the age of eight, her family raised chickens, turkeys, geese, and goats. Being involved in the everyday care of these animals and marketing the farm’s products sparked her interest and set her path in life, she says. She’s loved combining farming with education since her days at Hampshire College, and looks forward to doing so in COA’s interdisciplinary environment.
“I like working and living in environments with a focus on asking big questions and challenging the current way of doing things,” she says, “and farming and caring for the land and the animals makes me feel empowered to make meaningful change in the world and gives me a sense of purpose.”
Nugent is an alum of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she studied sustainable agriculture with a focus on livestock management. She explored many facets of agriculture at Hampshire, including food systems, animal physiology, dairy herd management, environmental ethics, and farm business management, and even managed to work in an oil painting class or two, she says. After graduation, she became Hampshire’s grass fed livestock operations manager with a specialization in rare breed swine genetics.
“We are super lucky to have April,” says COA administrative dean Bear Paul. “She impressed everyone throughout the interview process, and she’s been even more impressive on the job. CJ Walke did a wonderful job establishing COA’s operations at Peggy, and April has come in and built off the work CJ did. April has really made Peggy her own and has some super exciting ideas that she’s making happen.”
Nugent has known about COA for a long while and says that the college has always spoken to her.
“I had looked at COA when I was a prospective student, but I opted to stay closer to home,” she says. “I’ve stayed interested in COA ever since, so when this opportunity came up, I just knew it would be the perfect fit. ”
The 125-acre Peggy Rockefeller Farms is operated as both a production and educational facility, with a handful of workstudy students employed there during the academic year. Classes such as Agroecology, Wildlife Ecology, and COA Foodprint make use of the farm, and students can use the property for class projects and independent studies.
Nugent looks forward to expanding on all of the educational opportunities the farm holds and tying the farm and the academic program together more directly. She’s also working to improve systems and better balance the work and study portions of workstudy positions on the farm. During her first winter at the college, she teamed up with COA Partridge Chair in Food and Sustainable Agriculture Systems Kourtney Collum to teach a course on farm animal management.
