LBCC’s once bustling Student Organic Farm now sits quietly, as though asleep.
The plots that once overflowed with fruits and vegetables are leveled and
covered with close-cropped grass. The salad greens and tomatoes that used to
grow year round in the farm’s two large greenhouses have been replaced with
brown waist-high weeds. Rotting fruit hangs from un-pruned branches and litters
the ground beneath the orchard trees.
The two-acre farm sits on
the northwest corner of campus, between the jogging track and the northern
portion of the Wellness trail. The farm served students and the community for
nearly two decades until budget shortfalls led the college to indefinitely
suspend the horticulture program in early 2020. Since that time the farm has
been out of operation. The college currently has no plans to revive it.
|
|
Grass covers the farm fields today. |
“[The farm] served us in our vision of curriculum -- what we thought a
horticulture program should look like. It was our outdoor laboratory for
students to live and learn,” said Stefan Seiter, former Chair of the
Horticulture Program.
When Seiter first arrived at LBCC in 2001,
the area that is now the farm was a dumping ground for the college’s waste
construction material. It also had soil trenches that Seiter’s predecessor had
dug for soil classes.
Seiter, however, wanted an outdoor space for
his horticulture students to practice organic farming and gardening. In the
spring of 2002 the horticulture program began filling in the trenches and
incorporating leaf compost into the soil to build its first large, 35-by-65-foot
garden plot. Over the next seven years, the farm expanded slowly, growing to
include two additional large garden plots, a smaller herb garden, a rain garden to the west of the plots, and a composting center.
In 2010,
Miriam Edell joined the department as a part-time Horticulture Instructional
Specialist. Edell brought with her a background in sustainable agriculture
and, according to Seiter, a “passion to run the farm.” She took on the primary
responsibility of managing the farm and the student workers who maintained it,
ushering in a period of rapid growth. During the last ten years of operation,
the farm expanded to include two large greenhouses, three more large garden plots, an
orchard, a small vineyard, a forest garden, and sheds for tool and irrigation equipment. For a time there were even beehives and a chicken coop.
|
|
The farm in operation, sometime between 2014 and 2018. Image:
Google Earth |
The farm not only provided opportunities for horticulture students to gain hands-on experience in all the ins and outs of running a small organic farm, it also provided resources for the community. The Profitable Small Farms Program used the farm to provide subscribers to their Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes with fresh produce during the growing season. The program donated extra produce to organizations such as the local food bank and the LBCC Parenting Program.
For a time, the farm rented out garden space to both LBCC students and members of the
community. The Veterans Garden was established on the farm in 2018 to give students who
are military veterans a place to relax while gardening. In 2019, the horticulture program was in talks with the Community
Services Consortium and Jackson Street Youth Services to begin a youth farming
program, but talks ended with the announcement of the horticulture program
suspension.
According to Seiter, funding for the farm was largely
piecemeal. Lab fees for the horticulture classes paid for tools and other class supplies. The farm raised additional money though the sales of
produce and plants, and from private donations for capital projects like the
irrigation system. Many of the fruit trees were donated, as were materials for
the greenhouses, sheds, and composting center.
Today the farm
continues to fall under the responsibility of the Division of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics (SEM). Kristina Holton, the Dean of SEM, says
that neither SEM nor the college currently has plans for it.
“Without Miriam’s [Edell’s] role to spend time maintaining the
space, we don’t have the capacity to maintain the farm the way it was being
maintained previously,” she said. So the goal of the college is to “keep it
mowed so at least maintenance can keep it from being a liability.”
|
|
One of the farm's greenhouses, filled with weeds and
disintegrating. |
Michael Brady, interim director of LBCC Facilities, concurred with Holton’s assessment, saying that the difficulties caused by the ongoing pandemic have left Facilities down to a “skeleton crew.” Unable to assume the labor costs for maintaining the organic farm, facilities has leveled the land, plowed the plots, and seeded it with grass to control the growth of weeds.
Brady says that facilities will try to maintain weeds between the fruit trees
as time permits, but will not prune the trees. In the meantime, he
acknowledged that without maintenance, farm structures like the greenhouses
will eventually break down due to weather and the sun’s ultraviolet light.
Despite the farm’s current state, both Seiter and Brady hope that
one day the farm will once again be a valuable resource to students and the
community. Seiter said that the farm could still provide a mix of uses for
classes in different departments such as Biology and Art. He also suggested
continuing to use the farm for community garden space. Brady was concerned
about the college taking responsibility for outside community groups using the
farm but, “if we could get a program or a student group that wanted to run
something back there, I think that would be awesome!” he said.
Edell said that the closing of the farm is “a real loss for the
community. It was a great resource.” Still she believes that it would be
difficult for student groups to run the entire farm on their own.
“Truth be told, farming is a lot of work. It’s the rare person who
wants to dig in the dirt and sweat.”
Maintenance of the farm, she
said, is constant, and at the height of its operations the farm required the
efforts of not just Edell but also three work/study students and a part-time
greenhouse assistant. Even with all of that, Edell added, “I could have used
another full-time person just to keep the place neat.”
At-a-Glance
What: LBCC’s Student Organic Farm is
out of operation and there are no plans to re-open it.
When:
After nearly 20 years serving students and the community, the farm was
closed in the spring of 2020.
Where: The farm is located on the
northwest corner of LBCC campus, between the northern section of the
Wellness trail and the track.
Why: LBCC currently does not have
enough resources to operate the farm.
For more information: Contact Kristina Holton, Dean of Science, Engineering and Mathematics, at holtonk@linnbenton.edu.
