How to Spend a Day at Smokey House as an Apprentice

Author Kaumyar Esmael

Published August 2025

Throughout my time as a Future Forester Apprentice, I found myself undertaking a wide range of tasks both at work and in my free time. Ranging from recording data for agroforestry research plots with Yale researchers to picking stones out of a field, no two days were the same. With such a wide variety of potential tasks, I’m going to walk you through how to have the ideal day at SHC as an apprentice. 

This is not a conventional guide, and it applies to the apprentice experience only; it is not based on a single day I’ve spent here, but on many. With that being said, you should set an alarm for 6:15 am and wake up by 6:40 am. With your hour and 20 minutes before work, make some coffee, eat some breakfast, read something, do whatever you need to do to prepare for the day, but make sure you take in the view of Mt. Dorset before you go. It is bad luck not to stop and appreciate the view for a couple of seconds. I prefer a breakfast of coffee and buttered bread—pretty simple, pretty good. 

Bike to work to make sure your joints are well-oiled and ready to start working, and because you are probably running a little late. Now, since this is the ideal day, there is a staff lunch, and I get to work on my independent project. My project involves looking into a tree nursery, which led me to build some air-pruned beds for growing trees. I encourage you to choose a project that will get you in the woodshop. So I spend my morning blasting music while building something of my design with all refurbished materials. Building things, especially when the cost is free and those items can be renewed with a little ingenuity, is super fulfilling.

Lunchtime comes around, and we are blessed to have a delicious meal prepared for us by the lovely staff members (shoutout to Danielle, both Laurens, Rose, Scott, and Walker). I do my part and make some blueberry lemonade with the help of some of the other apprentices. When the blueberries are ready and it’s hot out, this is essential to a staff lunch. After enjoying the delicious meal and talking with everybody, you should spend an additional 10 minutes trying to throw fallen apples into the crook in the apple tree closest to the conference barn. This is the favorite picnic table activity of SHC director Walker Cammack and should be taken very seriously. 

After lunch, return to the workshop or help one of the other interns with their projects. 

If you decide to return to the woodshop, continue working on the beds and the bed cages. Use this time to work, but also to keep an eye out for odds and ends for another independent project. I’ve become a minor league spoon maker since becoming an apprentice, and working around the woodshop has given me a lot of good pieces to start with. 

If you decide to help one of the other apprentices, choose the one least similar to your own so you can learn something new. I wanted to learn more about composting, so I decided to work with fellow intern Thea. She created a composting system at Smokey House and needed some help moving some wood chips.

The end of the workday comes around, and you should immediately go to the swimming hole. Don’t let the cold water drive you away. This was an essential part of my after-work routine, especially if it was over 80 degrees that day. This is a truly special spot, regardless of whether you want to swim or not. 

After that, eat a snack, have a second coffee, or do anything you feel like doing. Plain and simple. Just don’t spend your entire day inside. I enjoy working on my spoons, lifting weights, and reading books, often doing a little of all three in the same afternoon. Tend to the garden, prune the tomatoes, and harvest the squash: all can be accomplished in the day if you have enough energy. 

As apprentices this year, we came up with a system for cooking dinner for each other. House dinners are 6 days a week; two people cook dinner, two people clean dinner, and everyone does both of those twice a week. Having dinner ready for you and cooking for your friends was a pretty sweet deal, and we ate pretty well this summer. 

On this ideal day, you make the best dish you know for dinner so you can eat well and get out of cleaning the dishes. One of my favorite dinners was biscuits with maple butter and fried chicken that I made with fellow apprentice Peter. 

After dinner, you and the gang should either play cards or watch a show. Our go-to show was David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, and we played a bunch of different card games. I suggest playing cards over watching TV—just more action and more fun. But anyway, do what fits the vibe and have a good night. Follow my advice and I can guarantee you’ll have a good day.

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