The People’s Farm and University Housing hosted an open house at Eagle Heights Community Gardens to showcase their urban farm.
University Housing farm manager Malachi Persche told The Daily Cardinal University Housing grows 100 pounds of produce every week during the fall season for campus dining halls out of the Eagle Heights gardens.
Persche said the farm composts local food waste, including excess coffee grounds from Barriques Coffee and Starbucks. Persche hopes to expand composting but has faced barriers with Department of Natural Resources regulations due to a nearby municipal well.
“I would love to be able to recover from the dining halls a lot of the food scraps or divert part of that existing composting stream into something that's more concentrated here,” Persche said.
One of the keys to maintaining a healthy farm is help from volunteers, Persche said. The farm works with members of the GreenHouse Learning Community to till mulch and pull crops.
Persche said there was joyful chaos with working with college students.
“We could always use an extra set of hands out here,” Persche said.
Right next to the University Housing plot sits The People’s Farm. While Persche said The People’s Farm and University Housing aren’t working together yet, they decided to host the farm tour together so “people know that the farm is out here.”
Josie Maahs, The People’s Farm’s urban agriculture director, agreed finding enough volunteers was difficult.
“We have a lot of land and a fair amount of money, but there's just not a whole ton of interest in getting dirt under your nails,” Maahs said.
The People’s Farm holds weekly volunteer hours Sunday mornings 10 a.m. to noon at the Eagle Heights gardens and distributes free produce from the farm on East Campus Mall at noon the same day.
Maahs hopes that by showcasing the farm during the open house event, more people will join them in focusing on “something that’s bigger than yourself.”
“We’re so disconnected from our food, and so doing this, you realize how much work and love goes into making just one tomato. It's planting the seedling, it's transplanting, it's watering when the days are hot and you don't want to be out here. It's weeding every single day because the weeds are non stop. And then you get to enjoy that tomato,” Maahs said. “I think there's something to be said for working hard for your food, it tastes better.”
