Just past the blossoming plum trees, a blue heron is stalking a pesky ground squirrel. Close by the raised beds of onions, farm cats Hecate and Gray Kitty are also wiggling for a pounce.
Spring is in the air and sprouting from the mulch as students chop down cover crops and turn them into the soil in preparation for planting down on the Stanford Community Farm. During the winter, they harvested leeks, kale, broccoli and lettuce; and come summer, they’ll be delivering squash, peas and heirloom tomatoes to members of community-supported agriculture.
“It’s a subscription program that Stanford faculty, staff and community people can join,” says junior Pepper Yelton, one of three student farm managers. “You become a member and support the farm, and we give you a crate of fresh vegetables and fruits every week.” The 40 residents of the campus co-op Chi Theta Chi, for example, pay the farm a collective membership fee of $160 at the beginning of the summer and receive fresh produce through early fall.
Yelton, who has worked summers on an organic farm in Mendocino County, heard about the Stanford farm in her freshman year and has been hanging out there ever since. In season, she makes the trek daily to the one-acre site near the horse stables to help tend 32 communally managed student plots. There’s always a posted list of jobs to be done—“weed out 1M bed so leeks can grow, mix in two wheelbarrows of compost mulch with straw”—but Yelton also goes for the ambience. “It’s such a wonderful place to get away from Stanford and be out in the sun,” she says. “I just like taking care of my little plants.”
Senior Becca Hall, who rooms with Yelton in one of the off-campus Dead Houses, grew up playing in her mom’s organic garden and has worked on farms from Seattle to upstate New York. As a student manager, she helps teach workshops on water conservation and composting—and also flies high on a swing that hangs from a nearby oak. “One of the things I love about the farm is that when you come out here, your mindset just changes and you can release all of the pressure and stress of school,” she says.
This quarter, Yelton, Hall and sophomore Abby Hall also are co-teaching a one-credit course at the farm, Community Agriculture, to 20 students. “We cover issues like soil science, local school gardens and biointensive methods of farming,” says Abby Hall (no relation to Becca). Class sponsor Suki Hoagland, associate director of the interdisciplinary program in environment and resources, will give a talk about sustainable agriculture in developing countries, and farm coordinator Drew Harwell will speak on the subject of permaculture. Harwell keeps the farm running year-round as he prepares the compost piles, waters seedlings and maintains records of plantings, and he’s now talking with Pamela Matson, dean of the School of Earth Sciences, about using the farm as a multidisciplinary laboratory.
Last year, the three managers collected material for compost from the Ricker Dining Center in Governor’s Corner, but now that the University dining halls collectively deliver their food scraps to an off-campus composter, the students make weekly stops at several smaller eateries on campus, including Olives@Building 160 and the Cantor Arts Center’s Cool Cafe. The resulting “black gold” is spread among the communal plots, and sometimes there’s a bit left over for student, faculty and staff gardeners who have their own individual flower and vegetable gardens on the site. “Some of the private-plot people are really intense,” Yelton says, pointing to an orderly array of roses. “They’re out here all the time—it’s cool.”
This spring, the farm managers are transplanting the seedlings they‘ve tended all winter in the greenhouse, and hoping that their favorites make it, including a rainbow of tomato plants—Early Girl, Brandywine, Green Zebra and Pruden’s Purple. There’s also a new herb garden under way, with rosemary, lavender, thyme and yarrow competing for sweetest aura.
It’s fitting, after all, at a place called the Farm.
