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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Field-to-plate: VT college students try farming
  • Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:35:44 -0600



Field-to-plate: VT college students try farming
July 5, 2009 9:04 p.m. PT
By LISA RATHKE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1110ap_us_college_farmers.html


POULTNEY, Vt. -- Devin Lyons typically starts his days this summer cooking
fresh eggs for breakfast from the farm's chicken coop. Then, depending on
the weather, he and a dozen other college students might cut hay in the
field using a team of oxen, turn compost or weed vegetable beds.

While other college students are in stuffy classrooms, about a dozen are
earning credit tending a Vermont farm. For 13 weeks, 12 credits and about
$12,500, the Green Mountain College students plow fields with oxen or
horses, milk cows, weed crops and grow and make their own food, part of an
intensive course in sustainable agriculture using the least amount of
fossil fuels.

"Lots of schools study sustainable agriculture but I don't think any of
them put it into practice," said spokesman Kevin Coburn.

There are no tractors on the 22 acres next to the brick campus of the small
liberal arts college on the edge of the town - just two teams of oxen, and
goats, pigs, two cows, and chickens.

Students sleep in tents on the field's edge, next to a river. They spend
about six hours a week in classes in the old farmhouse, learning theory on
organic crop and animal management; management of farm systems; development
of agricultural technologies with a focus on human and animal power; and
the social and cultural importance of regional food. The rest of the time
they're out in the field, or doing homework and working on research
projects.

"So they're actually seeing the applications firsthand," said Kenneth
Mulder, manager of the college's Cerridwen Farm, who runs the summer
program.

College farming is growing. According to the Rodale Institute in
Pennsylvania, more than 80 schools now have hands-on and classroom-based
farm programs. Many of them are organic vegetable farms, but students don't
necessarily earn as many credits as Green Mountain College students do, nor
do they get to work with teams of oxen. Sterling College, also in Vermont,
has a similar program.

"It's traditionally been one of the leaders in environmental studies and it
is because they put their studies where their mouth is in really getting
students out and doing and practicing the sort of environmentally
enlightened work that some talk about in class," said Roland King, a
spokesman for the National Association of Independent Colleges and
Universities.

For her research project, Cassie Callahan, 18, Conway, N.H., wants to water
plants with gray water collected from the farm's solar shower, attached to
the greenhouse. But she's not sure yet if the soap - even biodegradable
soap - will harm the plants if it's not diluted.

Her real love is working with draft horses. She jumps at the chance every
time and even has a new tattoo of a team of horses on her shin. In her
hometown, she had a job driving horse-drawn sleighs and wagons in her
hometown and now has learned the animals can be used for more than tourism.

She hopes to be a farmer, supporting herself and selling a little on the
side.

"You know people have jobs to make money to feed themselves and cloth
themselves but I'd much rather have my job be to feed and cloth myself,"
she said.

Green Mountain College hopes to turn out farmers and has several alumni
running farms nearby. Other students are interested in food-related fields
- whether it's organizing nonprofits, working on policy or overseas
development work.

Lyons, 19, doesn't know if he'll farm but so far he's learned a lot.

Growing up in suburban Jefferson, N.J., he said he didn't know much about
where his food came from and was never exposed to organic farms.

"Like I never really got the connection between the chicken on my plate -
and it was like a dead chicken that was killed - like I just never really
thought about it," he said.

-----

On the Net:

Green Mountain College: http://www.greenmtn.edu

Farming for Credit Directory:
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/ffc(underscore)directory




  • [Livingontheland] Field-to-plate: VT college students try farming, Tradingpost, 07/06/2009

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