SOFT Student Farm Adventures

Chickens at Magoon

2012-01-25T23:25:00.000-10:00

The spring semester has arrived and Soft has some new workers at the farm. Soft recently adopted six laying hens to provide eggs for the sales and hunt for insects on the farm. We are hoping to integrate the chickens into the farming system and use them as a learning tool for Soft students.

SOFT honored at first UHM Semester of Sustainability Kick-off

2012-01-23T21:05:00.000-10:00

SOFT was recently honored at the first Semester of Sustainability Kick-off event at UH Manoa, a program planned to be held at the beginning of each semester to inform and showcase students and the public about various sustainability related projects which are happening on campus. SOFT was awarded the "Student Movers and Shakers" award for our recent progress in establishing on-campus production and display plots. It's nice to have people excited about what we've done already, because if that made them turn their heads, then what we will do next will blow their minds!

Check out the video below from Oiwi TV about the event, you can see our booth somewhere near the end!

UH Mānoa Semester of Sustainability Kickoff from Oiwi TV on Vimeo.

We also kinda made it into a Ka Leo article, neato!
http://www.kaleo.org/news/sustainable-uh-takes-on-plastic/article_dec0e258-456b-11e1-a98f-0019bb30f31a.html

CTAHR Impact Story

2011-12-12T08:19:00.000-10:00

SOFT was recently featured in the CTAHR Impact Stories for this semester. Follow the link below to see the article.

http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/site/StoryDetails.aspx?id=1491

Noelani First Grade Garden Fall 2011 Final Harvest

2011-11-15T20:27:00.000-10:00

Early Wednesday morning we had the First graders come out to do their final harvest for 2011. We learned all about food safety from Jim Hollyer and all about nutrition from Maria Stewart, also known as "Professor Peabody". Our harvest included sweet corn, kai choy, edamame, green onion, chives, basil and pole beans, all to be made into a tasty soup!

Jim Hollyer washing hands for food safety

Professor Peabody exclaiming about human nutrition

Check what the Noelani first grade class is up to now at this link:
http://connection.noelani.k12.hi.us/~lmorita/content/Welcome.html

Mid Semester update

2011-11-15T20:19:00.000-10:00

The Sustainability Courtyard has gotten a lot of compliments

The new and old plots of Soft are growing well. We are happy to see that our plants are growing up and providing our customers with great produce.

We have just finished installing our new irrigation up at Magoon and everything is running well.

Digging our permanent beds

Two amazing Soft students posing in front of our Hawaiian chili peppers at Magoon

Food Day Event

2011-11-04T21:37:00.001-10:00

Soft was a featured guest at this years UHM Food Day event. We enjoyed local food, talking about Soft and learning about improving food quality and education. For more information about Food Day, check out http://foodday.org/

The Kukui Cup

2011-11-04T21:29:00.000-10:00

Soft was a special guest in the Kukui Cup! The Kukui cup is a three week energy education and energy saving challenge that is taking place in the freshman towers. Soft held a small workshop where we talked about small scale gardening and the importance of sustainability. For information about the Kukui cup, check out their website at http://kukuicup.manoa.hawaii.edu/about/

Noelani First Grade Garden Fall 2011 Weeding Activity

2011-10-12T21:09:00.004-10:00

Today, our very own weed scientist, Dr. Joe DeFrank, came out to talk about weeds and the importance of weeding. We had a great time and cant wait for next month!

Photo credit to Thomas Lim

Kava Festival 2011

2011-10-10T13:22:00.000-10:00

Soft had an easy going day at the Kava festival, where kava is drunk, poi is pounded, lomi lomi is practiced and the music is slammin'! The kava festival is a celebration of Hawaii and Pacific Island 'awa where educational booths and vendors from around O'ahu joined forces. This year, Soft sold our own fresh frozen and dry powdered kava, along with our usual produce. We had many visitors, asking questions and talking story. One visitor we were pleased to have our picture taken with was our very own Dean of CTAHR, Silvia Yuen.

Photo credit, Dr. Skip Bittenbender

2011 CTAHR Ice Cream Bash

2011-09-19T15:20:00.000-10:00

Soft was invited out to participate in CTAHRs biannual ice cream bash! At this event, we held our weekly sale, talked to a lot of interested students and got to eat a whole lot of ice cream. It was a lot of fun. One of our very own Soft members featured a mango sorbet made out of 5 mango varieties, gown locally.

Soft was more than happy to participate in this tasty event and we are looking forward to many more to come!

Above: Mango sorbet is served to hungry CTAHR members

Middle: Soft-ies enjoying ice cream

Bottom: Customers supporting local agriculture at the Soft booth

Photo Credit: CTAHR, can be found at

http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/site/images/ASAOSlides/slideshow.swf

2011-09-19T15:01:00.000-10:00

This Fall semester, the Soft schedule looks like:

Monday:Produce sale at the crosswalk across from Hamilton Library,

in front of St. John 12-2:00

Thursday: Meeting and work day 4-7:30

Saturday: Work day 9-4:00

Also, our Noelani First grade garden will be from 8 am-9:45 am once a month on a Wednesday.

Tentative dates are: September 14, October 12, and November 9

The Rise of Fall

2011-09-10T17:42:00.000-10:00

The 2011 Fall semester is here and Soft is full force again. We are kicking off this semester with a long-needed re-calibration of our irrigation system. Thanks to the GSO that Soft was awarded last semester, we can now improve our water use efficiency!

Above: Our banana walk way in progress behind the Art building
Below: The Sustainability Courtyard edible landscape after a summer of growth

Photo credit: Kent Kobayashi

This semester we are planning on installing our bee hives, our chicken coop, out vermicomposting system, a new food processing station, a composting station and expanding a new agroforestry area.

The New Sustainability Courtyard

2011-05-17T18:44:00.000-10:00

After much hard work and time, Soft finally has a centrally located, on campus plot! Located in the Sustainability courtyard, we collaborated our efforts with the landscaping department with special thanks to Roxanne Adams. Originally a grass "stage", we shoveled and dug until we had created an edible garden.
Some of the planting material include: sunflowers, cassava, basil, rosemary, sweet potato, taro, coco yam, lemon grass, and much more!
In hopes that this installation will encourage more student involvement, we made the area very accessible with rainbow shaped paths and a nice terrace. We look forward to harvesting and selling these publicly grown veggies and herbs, so come on down to our weekly sales! Also, stay tuned for more news about our new "banana walk way" next to the art building.

Photo credit: Miles Hakoda and Kent Kobayashi

Noelani First Grade Garden Spring 2011

2011-05-17T18:34:00.000-10:00

Soft has been so happy to help with the collaboration with the Noelani first grade class garden! This semester, we focused on growing herbs that were sold at the end of the semester for the first grade class. The kids grew, harvested and bundled the herbs, both fresh and dried for their families to enjoy. The first graders also made their own cook book using recipes that they brought from home.
The lessons that we focused on this semester were about starting your garden, different types of soil, light, the power of weeds and maintenance, and the harvest.
We had a great time and cant wait to start again in the fall!

Photo Credit: Thomas Lim

Magoon in the Springtime

2011-05-17T18:14:00.000-10:00

We have been working very hard this Spring semester to really improve our plot at the Magoon research facility. One dedicated student rallied in the support and built Softs first wood fired oven!
Most of the materials used in building the oven were gathered from the area and all of the labor was done by students. We are excited to host pizza parties and more with our new little oven that could!

We have also expanded our area at Magoon, adopting a couple fruit trees and a handful of land. Our big plans include creating an agroforestry system with bananas, various citrus, starfruit, vines such as passionfruit and black pepper, coconut and an artocarpus such as marang or breadnut!

Our vegetable production has increased, diversifying our sales and our crops. Some of the vegetables that we are growing include: kale, kai choy, green onion, beets, daikon, jaicama, corn, beans, taro, eggplant, cassava, zucchini, sunflowers, and much more!

Kava Harvest

2011-05-17T17:58:00.000-10:00

Soft students were invited to harvest and process kava at a local farm. The processed kava was either fresh frozen or powdered for future Soft events and sales. We are looking forward to selling the kava plants that were propagated from the harvested plants at the kava festival later this year. We were lucky enough to work along side Dr. 'Skip' H.C. Bittenbender and Mike , both of whom were very generous with their time and donations.

2010-12-26T02:49:00.001-10:00

SOFT featured in Ka Lamakua

2010-12-26T02:41:00.000-10:00

SOFT featured in a video interview with Ka Lamakua. For more information about Ka Lamakua, please visit:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=728381667
and http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=371227256115

Summer!

2010-07-01T07:00:00.000-10:00

Summer is finally here! This year, we were invited to join in the Aina Ho'ola Hands Turned to the Soil annual youth conference to give a tour and work site for the conference participants.

We had a great work day and got a lot done. Students worked alongside parents to weed the perennial peanut, harvest fruits, mulch, and learn about what it takes to run a farm. Some of the participants had never seen broccoli before and it was exciting to see their reactions when they discovered it.
Josh provided a great tour and provided answers to many great questions about our diverse fruit collection and how we work.

After lunch and a little more work, we sat down and had a talk about what people can do to get involved or how to start a project at their own school. We then dove into an exciting question and answer session about organics and sustainability and where our food really comes from. We had a lot of great questions and almost ran out of time before heading back to the conference.

On the third day of the conference, Soft was invited again, this time to give a talk about farms in schools. There were a lot of eager people excited about starting their own student farms who were really interested in our side of the story. We talked a bit about our trip to the west coast and how that gave us an idea of what we wanted the farm to look like.

After the talk about school farms, we had the opportunity to wind down and just have a little fun demonstrating the techniques in making banana paper. Each student got their own personal frame and a spoonful of pulp. We explained the basic anatomy of the banana plant and the serious amount of waste that results in harvesting a bunch of bananas. This waste, we explained, can be used for making paper, and now students can do it at home too!

Spring Semester in Waimanalo

2010-05-23T18:15:00.001-10:00

Now that the spring semester is over, we can start looking forward to the summer! Here is quick recap of SOFT's Spring Semester!

We have been working hard out at Waimanalo and it looks great! New fruit trees, vegetables and herbs have been planted as we continue to fill in the gaps.

The bananas are going bananas! it is finally time for most of them to start fruiting, so we look forward to a bountiful harvest this summer when they are ready.

Thanks to the helpful volunteers that came out on the Spring Workday Event, we were able to plant, mulch and fertilize faster then ever.

As soursops get larger and larger and the guava trees begin to bear more fruit than ever, we just cant wait to share our harvest with our loyal customers that show up to the weekly sales.

We have planted more sweet potato as well as potato potatoes, broccoli, chayote, eggplant, keffir lime, mandarin orange, more coconuts, jaicama, amaranth, basil, surinam cherry and much much more!

The spring semester also allowed us our first time harvest of several different bananas, loquat, pomegranate, cucumber, and all sorts of delicious fruits!

As usual, we encourage everyone to come out this summer and have fun at the farm!

Noelani First Grader Garden

2009-11-24T17:27:00.000-10:00

This fall SOFT did something new! We teamed up with the first grade teachers at Noelani to create a wonderful learning garden for their students. Over the last three months the first graders planted seeds, tended to their crops, and harvested the flowers and veggies to bring back and enjoy in their classroom.

This is how it all started. Here we are watering in a basil transplant, but we also sowed seeds for sunflowers, cosmos, daikon, carrots, green beans, mizuna, lettuce, green onion, and planted taro huli!

After several visits where the students tended their garden, it was harvest time. Here they are collecting flowers to make bouquets for their classrooms.

It might be next year's first graders who get to enjoy the taro harvest. But this year everyone is still working hard to keep the taro weeded. The kids have loved to watch these huge leaves grow from the huli we planted just a few short months ago!

Washing the harvest of daikon, carrots, mizuna, green beans and green onions. The first graders brought all the veggies back to school where they prepared and enjoyed a great veggie miso soup!

This is almost everyone! We had a great semester and it looks like the first graders will continue their garden through the spring. This has been a great opportunity for the kids to grow food, get out side and enjoy learning in their garden. Thank you to all of the wonderful UH student volunteers, faculty, and Noelani first grade teachers who made this possible.

Hey, where did fall go?

2009-11-22T16:12:00.000-10:00

Well it's been a long dry spell with no blogging, but there's certainly been a lot of activity around the farm. Here are just a few of our accomplishments:

We've managed to grow enough vegetables to sell nearly every week this semester.

We've expanded our Mauka garden to make room for even more tomatoes and greens. If all goes well, we expect to have tomatoes available most of the spring semester, along with loads of arugula (it's been a favorite these past few weeks) as well as lettuce, sweet basil, and carrots.

On the Waimanalo farm, our bananas have gone bananas! Every Saturday when we show up we're shocked at how much more they've grown. With over 20 different varieties there's always something amazing to look forward to, as we await new fruit stalks and tasty yellow fruits. In between the bananas, we've been growing three different kinds of sweet potatoes since the spring. We harvested and sold a bunch of the earlier maturing kinds (like Molokai Red), and also made good use of the tender greens in stir-fries and curries. In the places where we harvested potatoes, we're trying out a few different things, including daikon, birdhouse gourds, and kabocha.

Of course, all of this takes work, and there's been no shortage of that. We're happy to see new faces nearly every week, and it's amazing to see people willing to muscle up and get dirty. We've spread literally tons of compost and mulch, and hand-pulled countless thousands of weeds. We make time for fun stuff, too, like relaxing at Waimanalo Beach Park.

First Workday of Semester

2009-09-02T15:05:00.000-10:00

Today we had the first workday up at the Mauka plots, and the turn out was excellent!

Above:Watering our newly planted seeds.
Below: Josh hooking up some irrigation.

We did the usual weeding and cleaning up but we also planted some beans.
After we were done we snacked on some awesome 'uala (sweet potato) bread [thanks to Brooke!], bananas and some roasted 'ulu [compliments of Gabe and Duke].

Just us cruising after working on the garden.

Group pictures are always good!

Don't forget we are at the Mauka plot on Wednesdays from 4-6PM. Come out and join us! For more info visit our website or email us: soft@hawaii.edu

UC Davis student organic farm: Davis, CA

2009-05-26T11:42:00.000-10:00

Our last stop was the student organic farm at the University of California Davis. This is the largest farm we visited with many different programs, though we only saw the 5 acre Market Garden and the Children's Educational Garden. We met up with Raul Adamchak (coauthor of the book Tomorrow's Table) and Damian Parr (a UC Davis PhD candidate who's dissertation is about student farms). We got a chance to talk to students and harvest produce for the CSA the farm runs. The overall system of the UC Davis farm is based on paid faculty who act as project managers while students are guided in practical hands-on skills.

Jeana and Brooke helping to prepare produce baskets for the CSA members.

Jeana picking cherries in the Children's garden.

Raul speaking to Gabe and student members of the farm about why the corn is so small.

A group photo with Damian.

Damian has spent a lot of time looking at the organization of many different student farms all over the country. His dissertation has to do with the rise of student farms and what they can do for the students involved in them. We had a nice talk with him about our farm and other farms on the same path. Since we are rather new and not sure exactly how we want to run our farm, or even what organizational options are available, his knowledge was very helpful and greatly appreciated. One of the main points we focused on was that it is important for the students themselves to be the ones to make big decisions regarding the farm, and if faculty are present (paid or otherwise), to not let too much power be given to them. The farms that follow this type model have achieved great things and the students involved felt they had a very worthwhile experience being part of the farm.

Lane Community College: Eugene, OR

2009-05-23T19:16:00.000-10:00

While visiting Horton Road Organics and Food for Lane County, we were strongly urged to stop by the Lane Community College Student Farm. On our way out of town, we decided to follow their advice after encountering a bout of afternoon traffic. We were rewarded with an unexpected presence of friendly students as well as a fresh bounty of veggies. We were quick to observe the close-knit community that surrounded the garden and how the support of the students and staff made a world of difference. One of the most impressive features of the Lane Community College Student Garden is that they are a major provider of ingredients used by the on campus student restaurant even though they are currently cultivating on a small plot of land. Even more impressively, although the farm is fairly new they were still able to set up a federal work-study program, work out an extra credit connection with other classes, hire an Americorps employee to work for the farm, collect the Bill Clinton Initiative Call to Action grant, as well as enact an extra dollar a semester student activity fee for farm project funding.

Most of the funding for the farm was dispersed through small mini-projects such as building fences or a foyer, expanding their agroforrestry system, or just purchasing new soil. Through the strong support of the groundskeeping crew as well as the faculty, this student run farm was able to convince the school to allow them more growing space as well as hopes for a new green house.

Similar to the OSU campus, LCC Farm hosts weekly work parties, sharing food and knowledge. Strong faculty support played an important factor in the quick growth, maintenance, and overall success of the garden.

We were so happy to meet with Toby Kubler, an active student member. He shared much of his wisdom with us and left us with much to think about.

Apply for grants that pay for specific projects but do not cover the whole cost of the farm project
Central on campus location creates the most sense of community and availability for student and faculty participation
Utilize work-study and Americorps opportunities to bring in a manager and other workers. Also find teachers who are willing to give students extra credit for participating in the garden. Many of these students will then become active members.
Staying small at the beginning brings success!
Use the materials that are available to you on campus or for free and use those as much as you can.
Network - get everyone at the university on board with what you are doing.

Horton Road Organics: Blachly, OR

2009-05-23T18:21:00.000-10:00

After visiting two of the three Food For Lane County farms, we stopped by Bill Booth's Horton Road Oraganics. Bill and his wife Debra own and operate a six acre organic farm where most of the workforce is made up of interns and apprentices. For a long time the farm organized a very popular CSA, though now due to other time consuming commitments, the farm has dropped its CSA program and now focuses all of its produce sales at three local weekly farmers markets. The bottom line is for the farm to make enough money to support its owners, however, the owners like to focus heavily on the training of it's interns and apprentices to become farmers in the future.

Crew manager Lisa, an apprentice on the farm, talked to us about how to manage a crew of peer-workers who may not have any farming experience, much like what we have to organize on our farm.

Although Horton Road Organics farm is not a student farm at all, Bill had lots of good advice for us in regards to running a successful farm. He was also an apprentice at a student farm when he was in school so had some in depth personal knowledge on what it takes to successfully run a student farm such as our own.

Since many of Bill's workers are inexperienced, clever inovations dot the farm to make the work easier and to keep things running smoothly. For example, the photo above shows a sign which tells the workers what job needs to be done with what tool in a specific bed. Some of these inovations that have been developed to deal with interns could be directly applied to work with students on our farm.

Education at Horton Road Organics was a key element - Throughout the season there are weekly classes and at the end of the season each apprentice presented their dream farm. This sounded like a great idea for a course on small farms. Topics such as irrigation, farm equipment, crop rotation, crop selection, marketing, and small farm business planning could be taught and then at the end of the term each student could present their dream farm fto the class for discussion and critique.

Key points from Bill

create a place where students can get out of the classroom where they can get their hands in the dirt and do something that feels real!
create consistency- a farm manager or coordinator is essential to create consistency from week to week and semester to semester. If students don't get the job done, the farm manager can make sure tasks are completed.
People respond well to plants and gardens, especially if they can see care and attention being given to it. This is a good argument for staying small, at least at the beginning, and for a central campus location.

Food For Lane County - Youth Farm and Grassroots Garden

2009-05-23T06:29:00.000-10:00

Food For Lane County - Youth Farm and Grassroots Garden

Springfield and Eugene, OR

We learned a lot by visiting both of these locations. They are are both farms/gardens that produce tons of food for the Lane County food bank, work with diverse groups of people, are integral to creating a healthy and connected community, and they are both managed beautifully and successfully!

The Food For Lane County Youth Farm lays in the middle of a low income neighborhood and is on school land that had been left open from the surrounding development. Ted, the farm manager has been with the project for 5 years and has grown the production area to 6 acres and there is still plenty of room for expansion. He was clearly a skilled farmer and leader to get so much done each year while managing and organizing the teenage interns and other various groups that come out to volunteer.

He mentioned that one advantage that they had at the youth farm, was that everyone knew the organization "Food For Lane County" and their mission to end hunger in Lane County. Because they are so well know, it is easy to get volunteer groups, and other businesses donate potting material, manure and equipment, he even had a local farmer stopping by to help with tilling some land!

Here is the SOFT crew with Ted from Food For Lane County Youth farm!

We learned much from Ted in our visit to his farm. He recommended to us that we look into americorps positions and even getting fraternities/sororities or businesses to come out as groups to volunteer their time. He also some practical farming advice to get both sir-up and circle hoes because they are easy for anyone to use, meaning newbies to the farm will kill the weeds but not the crops!!! We asked Ted about vandalization, since his farm is right in a high traffic area. He said that there is some, but he doesn't plant tempting crops near the edges of his field, such as squash and fruit trees. And as the presence of his farm becomes more known in the community more and more people are showing up to help out, and vandalism has decreased.

GrassRoots Garden - Eugene, OR

Ted from the youth farm sent us on our way but told us we needed to see the Grassroots Garden which is also part of Food For Lane County. We showed up at noon and asked if we could take a look around. Mary, the garden coordinator, instantly invited us to lunch so we moseyed around the 2 acre garden as the smells of our lunch cooking in the garden kitchen floated through the fields.
Sitting down to lunch with Mary and her crew of volunteers was a great way to learn about their operation. She left us with several key points that were truly applicable to SOFT and how we can develop to be a successful farm and community.

Make the farm successful - even if it is small, volunteers want to know that their work is contributing to something that is going to flourish. The farm will grow as more and more people get involved, but it is better to have something small and successful than to take on a project that is too large and bound for failure. It also honors the volunteers efforts by no letting their work go to waste.
Essential to have a coordinator- Mary is at the garden at least 5 days a week. Volunteers know they can show up any time and that there will be work for them to do. Also, she keeps the garden running smoothly as different people and different ideas come and go. This is a tough position to fill. The coordinator need the ability to organize diverse groups of people, and has to be thinking ahead.
Feed people! - They have a wonderful outdoor kitchen at the Grassroots Garden and all volunteers sit down for a nice lunch cooked mostly with garden produce. This creates a wonderful sense of community and connectedness, but it is also a way to show people how to cook with all the wonderful produce they are growing. Both of these components are essential to meeting the mission of their garden and also the mission of SOFT.

Outdoor kitchen - this is where the magic happens!
Ready for a group of willing volunteers.
Having many tools is key to being ready for big groups.
Showing up at this garden was a magical experience. Tucked away behind a church on a busy street, this was a little pice of wonderland. The garden was meticulously cared for. Lettuce, cabbage, kale, beets, carrots, and all the vegetables thrived in the deep rich (and almost weed free) soil.
Creative use of a bathtub for a cleaning station!

2009-05-23T05:58:00.000-10:00

Food For Lane County - Youth Farm and Grassroots Garden

We learned to much by visiting both of these locations. They are are both farms/gardens that produce tons of food for the Lane County food bank, work with diverse groups of people, are integral to creating a healthy and connected community, and they are both managed beautifully and successfully!

The youth farms lays in the middle of a low income neighborhood and is on school land that had been left open from the surrounding development. Ted, the farm manager has been with the project for 5 years and has grown the production area to 6 acres and there is still plenty of room for expansion. He was clearly a skilled farmer and leader to get so much done each year while managing and organizing the teenage interns and other various groups that come out to volunteer.

Here is the SOFT crew with Ted of Food For Lane County Youth Farm in Springfield, OR.

Food For Lane County, Youth Farm: Springfield. OR

2009-05-23T05:21:00.000-10:00

Food For Lane County, Youth Farm: Springfield. OR

2009-05-22T21:36:00.000-10:00

Oregon State University: Corvallis, OR

2009-05-22T21:02:00.000-10:00

We were able to catch breakfast on Thursday May 21st with Julie, one of the core members of The Organic Growers Club at Oregon State University. She was kind enough to share the intimate details of the Organic Growers Club style of operations. We were able to exchange many great ideas to help improve our student farms. Some good ideas we picked up were: the meeting of a once monthly farm council, hiring interns for the summer to keep the farm going, bi-weekly work-party potlucks and sectioning off the farm to focus.

Chicken tractors! Built by engineering students from OSU.

Meeting with James Cassidy, the Organic Growers super rad leader!

Oregon State University: Corvallis, OR

2009-05-22T20:32:00.000-10:00

We were able to catch breakfast on Thursday May 21st with Jessie, one of the core members of The Organic Growers Club at Oregon State University. She was kind enough to share the intimate details of the Organic Growers Club style of operations. We were able to exchange many great ideas to help improve our student farms. Some good ideas we picked up were:

Evergreen State College: Olympia, WA

2009-05-22T19:28:00.000-10:00

On Wednesday the 20th, as a last minute addition to the trip, we decided to stop by Evergreen State College, a small liberal arts college nestled away in the crevices of Olympia, Washington. Although their curriculum differed greatly from our own, there was still much for us to learn from their unique practices.

A few of the key features we saw that we would like to integrate into our own program include: a work study program, paid staff for summer maintenance and a CSA program. Volunteers from the community regularly come on to the farm to teach workshops and lend their knowledge and guidance to help support to student farm. Workshops covered many important components of farm upkeep such as: fruit tree pruning, animal husbandry, composting or carpentry. One key lesson we learned from this farm that we can immediately put into action is that it may be better to go after funding for individual projects on the farm rather than ask for money without a specific use.

Using funds raised through on-campus produce sales and food sales to the campus cafeteria, the farm is able generate enough money to staff a full time farm managers and paid student interns.
Some of the unique and interesting student initiated projects at the farm included: biofuel processing station to run the farm tractors, a composting toilet, a large composting facility, beehives, ducks and a flock of 90 egg laying hens.

2009-05-22T06:38:00.000-10:00

An nice view over the Outback farm, with a small greenhouse in the background.

Signs are a must for

the student farm! Here

is the composting zone!

Herb garden wheel at the

entrance of the Outback!

Gabe is chatting with the guys about the forest garden and the bags of mycelium are in the back which are used for mushroom cultivation.

This is just a small structure at the farm used for posting notes and updates about what is going on -Good idea!

2009-05-22T06:26:00.000-10:00

FOREST GARDEN at the OUTBACK

WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

The forest garden has been a part of the outback since it began, but as students come and go interest in it has been the same. There were four students working on it this year. They had developed a joint independent study course to re-establish this area of the farm. They were doing a lot of sheet mulching with cardboard and plastic to get down the weeds. they has also planted several new trees, pruned old ones, started mushroom cultivation and planted some small areas of vegetables in sunnier areas. It looked like they were off to a great start but still had much to do. This also showed the problem of a wholly student run program where there is no one person linking the farm from out-going and in-coming students.

2009-05-21T07:09:00.000-10:00

Outback Student Farm - Our first visit was to The Outback student farm at Western Washington University in Bellingham Washington. Here we met with Matia, Western Student and Outback coordinator.

Some of the highlights of this farm that we would like to see incorporated in our own include; the ability to hire work study students, making donations to food banks, having a prime location on campus, and regular seed swaps. They have community members come into the farm to teach workshops. Recently they had a workshop on mushroom cultivation for their students.

The location of the farm in between two dormitories leads to a great deal of foot traffic, which is good for farm recognition but also results in the loss of some tools and produce. Due to lack of summer students the farm has seen some gaps in care. Some faculty integrate the farm into their courses and some offer extra credit to their students to volunteer. We met several students who were exposed to farming for the first time through these extra credit opportunities. Some were clearly unenthusiastic about their having to be there, but others were surprised at how much they enjoyed learning about the farm and thought they would continue to grow vegetables, beans, and possibly fruit in the future. There however is no actual class based around the farm, but some years students join together to do a group independent study that incorporates the farm. A formal class would help to resolve some of the lack of continuity in student involvement in the farm.

2009-05-21T06:29:00.000-10:00

Four SOFT student farmers joined together in Seattle on May 18th to begin a 10 day trip to visit student farms along the West Coast. We have just completed our first year of farming and by visiting these long standing student farms we hope to acquire knowledge on how these farms were started and how they continue to thrive at their home universities. We will translate this knowledge into methods to bring the SOFT student farm to its upmost potential.