137025_16_32:features 20-27 1/23/12 7:58 AM Page 20
Teaching Healthy Habits
Above: Members of the prep class harvest potatoes at the annual Prep for the Planet Day in September.
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Tory Hill Farm, also known as Home Farm. Before her death in New York City in 1901, Maria visited Charles frequently, and her funeral service was held there and was “largely attended,” according to records, “the faculty and students of the Hotchkiss School being present in a body.” When Charles Bissell died, his will included the wish that his “farm of land with the buildings thereon, containing one hundred and seventy-five acres, more or less, on Tory Hill, in said Town of Salisbury” to the Maria H. Hotchkiss School Association “to create in said school an Agricultural Course or Department where, under scientific direction, the various branches of farming or dairying, fruit culture or other kindred agricultural subjects can be both practically and scientifically taught.” The Blums, too, were avidly committed to conserving the land – and Jack Blum, as a former commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, hoped that Hotchkiss students would “work and study on the farm and become educated, engaged, and passionate stewards of the environment.” It’s finally happening. For the past two years Hotchkiss has sponsored summer farm internships, and Kurt Hinck ’08, now a sophomore at Gettysburg College, and lower-mid Maren Wilson ’14, are veterans of both summers. For Wilson, who arrived not knowing what to expect, it’s been an opportunity to master skills like weeding, seeding, harvesting, and tending fruit trees;
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even welding portable chicken coops and raising the birds – a breed known as Kosher Kings – in “the most healthy and organic way possible.” Hinck, who was comanager this year, had worked on a farm in Millbrook every summer since his lower-mid year and volunteered for the Farm’s first spring planting as a senior in 2008. He’s still amazed by the progress that’s been made. “Just that little five-acre plot, we buried them in squash last year. We had too much. The potential is awesome.” This summer the program was expanded from three to five days a week, and Wilson said she “smiled all the way home” because of the enormous tasks accomplished by the group, which also included Tavo True-Alcala ’11, Sandie Knuth ’10, and Nancy Palmer ’11. Supervising them was Serena Whitridge, a Millbrook School (“I’m a traitor, sorry!”) and University of Vermont graduate who worked at Growing Power, a nonprofit urban farming organization in Milwaukee before coming to Hotchkiss. “It’s exciting seeing the potential of what it is now and then dreaming of the future, of how much more food can be produced,” she said, noting that one of their more ambitious projects is building hoop houses – portable, passive solar greenhouses that extend the growing season by allowing winter planting. They also help boost soil fertility: the Farm’s Stockbridge clay loam, while a “great grassland soil,” can be tricky in wet years with crops, “corn, soybeans, that kind of stuff,” according to Allen Cockerline, who works closely with students. The kind of tender-hearted farmer who takes care to ensure his cattle lead idyllic lives with ends that are as swift and humane as possible (the three steers he sold Hotchkiss were sent to a slaughter-house that runs on principles established by animal advocate Temple Grandin), not long ago he took a group of faculty and staff on a tractor tour up a narrow grassy road and down to a small, experimental rice paddy, where a Japanese variety already successful in Vermont was planted last spring. “Who would have thought we’d be growing rice?” he asked, with a grin. “But it’s credible. It’s viable. And we’re doing it.”
Modeling Self-Reliance arther up on Farm property there’s a beaver swamp where Charlie Noyes hopes to put in observation decks. There are trails that need to be built, marked with signage, and maintained. New crops are being planned (this year, the Farm grew black beans for the first time) along with new and larger storage areas to hold the pro-
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