137025_16_32:features 20-27 1/23/12 7:58 AM Page 18
Teaching Healthy Habits
be cooked and eaten at Hotchkiss this year, as will meat from three grass-fed steers the School purchased from Allen Cockerline; this spring, there may even be rice from an experimental rice paddy. “My hope for the Farm is that everyone at Hotchkiss will be able to say that they had a part in providing the food that they eat in the dining hall,” said farm intern Maren Wilson ’14, in a passionate email at summer’s end. “We are a big school so it is a huge goal. But the internship program in the summer and FFEAT in the fall and spring help so much in integrating talk about the farm in classrooms and at lunch tables, and helping advertise how sustainability and organic farming are really important in the world today.”
A Destination and a Classroom eyond its increasingly visible role providing organically grown food for the School Dining Hall, the Hotchkiss Farm is also where art classes can practice plein air painting, poetry classes can find inspiration, environmental science classes can explore terrain that includes rare grassland bird habitats, and American
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history classes can reflect on the fact that this was once part of a land grant from King George III. For the past two years, the School’s human development teaching assistants have organized a nutrition seminar, and there are other courses in the works that will look at everything from genetically modified food to food-borne illnesses. When completed, farm trails will add an estimated three to five miles to the six or more that already traverse the Hotchkiss Woods, resulting in an even more welcoming nature experience/destination for students, faculty, staff, and neighboring town residents. One particular stretch of field between the big red barn and a screened gazebo that Jack Blum built for his wife has already lent itself to tented gatherings of all sorts, from an end-of-year staff and faculty retirement celebration in June to a 99.9 percent farm-grown Trustees’ dinner in September. At a faculty wedding in August, “The cows came right up and watched,” said Head of the Visual and Performing Arts Department and Instructor in Art Charlie Noyes ’78, with a laugh. “The Farm has become a part of the fabric of the School.” In the spring of 2008, it was a different story. As