Back to the Farm

My sorority has a secret song about how college saved us from a life on the farm, and I used to think the farm-or-education choice has always been black and white.  Everyone had to make this choice; everyone from classic writers to the CEO's whose smartphones my worldwide classmates now consider holding hostage in exchange for jobs. Right?

College, I can say, involves much more farming than I ever would have thought.  And farming, more education.

My brother and SLU classmate Dana helping with the hay

Helping plant trees alongside a Once and Future Forest class I learned the art of digging in the ground.  I practiced shoveling the heavy topsoil back into the hollow first, followed by a tiny hickory sapling and some sandy soil mixed with water. “Everyone can dig a hole” I could hear my dad scoffing.  Not one in which to plant a tree, I learned—the high school armatures who cheaply landscaped our yard a few years back are excellent proof.

The last weeks of school saw busy SLU students carrying mulch and rolling field stones into pathways for our campus fruit and nut garden, first mentioned in my Dollars for Ideas post. An expert stone mason built an outdoor classroom in May and some baby apple trees were thriving as I packed my car for the summer, promising years of a lovely green space to come and another example of college involving digging, not just studying.

The SLU permaculture garden: laying down walkways with cardboard and wood chips

I’ve met St. Lawrence students who take independent study classes to learn about local food; others who work in one of two campus gardens and still more who scour our dining halls for the local, organic, or wholesome, of which luckily there’s plenty.  

Some buy CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shares, and a few of my friends and I volunteered on the Cornell Co-op campus down the road last fall for St. Lawrence’s Day of Service last fall.  We placed yards of moveable electric fence to contain grazing sheep and cows, then released the animals from the barn and watched them bound toward the fresh clover.

Photo from the Cornell Cooperative Extension website (http://www.cceslc.com/)  

And my summer project? A suburban organic veggie garden. I’ll let you know how that one goes.

College is the place that really exposed me to farming, go figure, despite growing up with chickens, blueberry bushes and a snap pea and tomato garden. And pigs, until I heard where Shakey and Bakey actually went at the end of the summer and what was in those white freezer packages.

Bella and her baby chick this spring

Local farming is a hot topic these days, and schools like St. Lawrence are poised to change Think Globally, Act Locally into Think Locally, Act Neighborly, a Bill McKibben-approved proverb taking for granted a global inter-connection and urging action at an even more local level.  Today, ironically, college is where people go to learn about the farm, as so much of that local knowledge washes away like topsoil in the monopoly of industrial agriculture.

St. Lawrence’s connection to our community’s farming roots is almost possible to ignore when I wrap myself up with swimming, work and admiring my classmates’ J.Crew statement necklaces.  But ignoring it is hard—students come to the WORD Studio with essays on Champlain Valley soil types; families ask about our new Sustainability Semester on campus tours; the bagels I devour to power though the pool are labeled with a cheery “baked locally!” sticker.  

The future of small-scale farming won’t be preserved only on Little House on the Prairie books or Willa Cather’s western tales, I’m glad to say.  The farm is preserved in my own two hands, and those of my classmates, and my generation; digging, eating and writing at college and at home toward a more local, delicious future.

Gradening with Lucy, at home on the farm.