Evergreen College Visits
By Rachel Britten, Field Coordinator, Golden Rule Mini-Farm

A Biointensive Breakfast.
PHOTO CREDIT: SHANNON JOYNER

On January 19th, six huge passenger vans, containing 51 students from the Ecological Agriculture class at The Evergreen State College in Washington State, came to visit The Jeavons Center. This impressive annual field trip includes visits to many farms in Northern California and eventually ends with the EcoFarm conference in Monterey, California. Ecology Action has long been a cornerstone visit in this extended field trip.

As breakfast wound up, things got technical as Jes Pearce, The Jeavons Center Mini-Farm Manager, presented the way in which the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method facilitates growing a complete diet on the smallest amount of land possible. John Jeavons was present and shared his wisdom with comments and pointers made throughout the morning. Next, we headed down to the library where John shared more about the history and context of our work at Ecology Action. And at last, we went down to the gardens where Evergreen students saw demonstrations on seed propagation and composting and were able to ask in-depth questions.

In the afternoon, the Evergreen class visited Golden Rule Mini-Farm, where they participated in a grain-cleaning demonstration and visited Golden Rule's other project, The Grange Farm School.

The energy of the visiting students was vibrant. As we moved through the morning presentations, it was clear the students were following the concepts and caught on quickly. The staff and I felt proud to be able to share the innovation of our practices with such a promising group. This class was intelligent, intuitive, and perceptive.

Many of the students from this class are our next generation of farmers. Young people who care deeply about the land and our natural resources are a gift. We were thankful to be able to share our work with them.

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