local Foodshed
Field-to-Fork Learning At Antioch College, kale is the unofficial school mascot By nicole rasul • Photography by Jodi miller
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n a bright half-acre plot at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, students move amongst rows of plant life harvesting vegetables for dinner. Green beans, tomatoes, and onions are pulled from the ground and picked from the vine, washed and weighed. The eight students working on the farm are all enrolled at Antioch and their work on the farm is a critical component of their undergraduate curriculum.
Antioch College is a small year-round liberal arts college with a curriculum focused on experiential learning. In 2008, the College was forced to shutter its doors due to financial difficulties but reopened in 2011 after a massive fundraising campaign and a bold re-visioning plan by the College’s governing board. With 246 students from 39 states currently enrolled, having recently been named a candidate for accreditation and with a plan to more than double enrollment by 2022, Antioch College is on the rise. In building a new Antioch, leaders and students boldly planned a future focused on sustainability. In addition to a robust local foods focus on campus, the college aims to operate on 100% alternative energy by 2018 with the launch of impressive geothermal well and solar array projects. As part of the re-visioning exercise, the Antioch College Farm was brought to life in 2011 from the remains of an overgrown community garden plot on the south side of campus. In just three years, significant progress on the farm has been made. What began as a quarter-acre vegetable garden has doubled in size and now also includes a half-acre permaculture food forest, a hoop house, chicken, duck and lamb pastures, an apiary, and a recently planted 100-tree orchard. A five-year master plan for the property includes continued expansion, including growing the annual garden, food forest and orchard footprints, adding two hoop houses, as well as the addition of a barn and extensive space for rotational grazing pastures. Though not certified organic, the farm practices sustainable growing methods, including organic, ecological, and permaculture agricultural practices. Opposite: Top, middle: Farm manager Kat Christen (right) helps farm-to-table co-op participant Conor Jameson (left). Top, right: Isaac Delalmatre is the food service coordinator at Antioch. Bottom: Cherokee Hill cuts up squash in Birch Commons for lunch.
Key to the farm’s founding is its use as a learning lab for students. Under the guidance of Farm Manager Kat Christen, students are the farm’s only employees. Since 2011, 26 students have been employed on the farm as parttime workers or as part of the school’s cooperative education program. “The purpose of the farm is to provide a learning laboratory for students and to help the campus be more sustainable. The farm has been growing organically with the increasing student body, which has been an effective way to do it since we’ve been able to tie it closely to the mission of the college,” notes Kat. The farm is a cooperative education location with students working full-time on the farm and spending two afternoons a week in the dining halls where they follow the harvest to its final location. In addition to providing hands-on experience to students on campus, the farm also serves as a learning lab for several of the college’s courses. Antioch College faculty in environmental sciences, botany and the college’s global seminar on food bring their students to the farm to learn about the soil, propagate plants, and study varying ecological practices. “The farm was a big reason I came to Antioch,” says Charlotte Pulitzer, a second-year student. “I saw Joel Salatin speak recently and, addressing my generation, he said, ‘the fact that you want to be sustainable, have your food growing on your campus outside of your door’ and the fact that we are doing that here really spoke to me.” In addition to having spent a cooperative learning quarter on the Antioch College Farm, Charlotte has spent time on farms in Western Massachusetts and Guatemala through Antioch’s cooperative education model. Everything produced on the farm makes its way to the Antioch College kitchens. In 2013, during its second full year of operation, the farm provided 6,000 pounds of produce to the college’s two dining halls, located 1,500 feet from the farm. This produce accounted for 23% of the local food served in the dining halls that year. As the soil quality on the farm improves, which is a key goal for Kat, the yield provided to the kitchens is expected to improve as well. The kitchen and the farm see each other as vital partners dependent on one another for co-existence. Isaac DeLamatre, Antioch College’s food service coordinator and executive chef explains, “It’s understood that these things must go together, when you have that fundamental
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FALL 2014
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