Growing up working on a farm, Sydney King knew she wanted to go into the trades.

King started working on her friend’s farm in Dixmont when she was 11 — planting, weeding and, when she was old enough, selling vegetables in a farm stand.

And after a job shadow in her sophomore year at Nokomis High School, she discovered welding.

“I’m an artistic person, so the idea of putting metal together and to do cool shapes with the metal is cool to me, but also to imagine it as something that can be put together,” she said.

Welding, as King explained, is the process of putting metal together on structures, like for bridges, or frames on an automotive vehicle.

She discovered welding through one of her friends, and during her senior year at Nokomis, she secured a year-long apprenticeship at Cianbro in Pittsfield that she attends every other day.

King finished most of her required high school glasses going into her senior year and now switches off between her job at Cianbro and the remainder of her high school classes. The apprenticeship counts as her science course.

She was the first student to get into the company’s program as a high school student.

“I’m getting my certification in a shop, learning for free without going to college,” she said, adding that she is learning on the job.

Before King settled on welding, she thought about growing grapes to make into wine, or carpentry.

Nokomis High School senior Sydney King, seen May 22 in the school’s shop class in Newport, is an intern with Cianbro where she is learning welding. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

She knew she never wanted to go to college and instead, she will complete a 40-hour-a-week internship with Cianbro.

Her love of farming still exists, she said, as she has around 20 plants in her room at home in Dixmont. She also is part of the knitting club at Nokomis.

When asked how she feels about being a woman in a male-dominated profession, King knows she can do whatever she sets her mind to.

“I have faith in myself. I can do it,” she said.