Evergreen State College Students Tour Mini-Farms
by Karen Gridley and Rachel Britten

Evergreen State College students in Common Ground Mini-Farm garden, asking questions of Mini-Farm Managers

Sixty-two students and their professor, Martha Rosemeyer, from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, visited the Common Ground Mini-Farm at The Jeavons Center at Ecolgy Action in Willits in January and were given a tour by John Jeavons.

Evergreen allows its students to design their own major by choosing one of four programs with set curricula. The students who visited EA were all part of the Ecological Agriculture program, with studies ranging from Food Politics and Food Systems to Soil Science and Crop Botany.

After the morning tour of the Common Ground Mini-Farm, the group continued on to the Golden Rule Mini-Farm, where Co-Field Coordinator Rachel Britten, a former student at Evergreen, prepared lunch for the group, led them through the Golden Rule site and gave them a grain-processing demonstration.

For Rachel, who took the field trip as an Agro-Ecology student in January 2010, that tour was a pivotal moment in her agricultural career. At that point she saw the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method was pursuing quantifiable sustainability. When she came two years later to Willits as an Evergreen teacher's aide, she came with her resumé in hand.

As an interesting note, Professor Rosemeyer is co-author with Steven Gliessman of the book, Conversion to Sustainable Agriculture: Principles, Processes, and Practices.

top | Newsletter Home | Article Index | Archive