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Garden Article

The transition from backyard gardens to centralized agriculture has distanced us from our food. We no longer know who grows our food or how they grow it. This, in turn, distances us from our environment and community. Large-scale monocultures leave our soils vulnerable to erosion and let chemicals leach into our groundwater. Our reliance on prepared foods from grocery stores instead of whole foods from local farms weakens our local economy and our community’s health. This food system is unsustainable and harmful. Fortunately, the status quo is gradually changing as local, small-scale producers receive more recognition and support. The Grinnell College administration has started to be a part of that change as students have encouraged the dining hall to incorporate more local foods into the menu. With the growing interest in agriculture on campus, small group of students are also working to revitalize the Community Garden on Park St.

This fall, Grinnellians rolled out of bed early on Saturday morning to get their hands dirty, clearing out weeds, laying down compost and planting seeds. They transformed plots of canary grass and past-their-prime tomatoes into four season harvest garden with hardy greens and root vegetables underneath cold frames and hoop houses, small structures that act as miniature greenhouses and protect plants from the frost. We enjoyed carrots and beets, fresh from the garden, in late November. The mistakes that we made along the way—experimenting three different hoop houses before settling on a version that survived the Iowa wind—created opportunities for innovation and laughter. Because each person contributes a unique skill set to the garden projects, we teach each other and learn from each other. With his enthusiasm for building and tinkering, Sam Calisch ’10 designed and build an eighty-gallon rain catchment system that supplied the garden with fresh, clean water all semester. Elyssa Mopper ’11 led a vermiculture workshop and has helped the garden develop an effective composting system. Students living off-campus and cooks for the Vegan Coop trudge down to the garden—even in snowy weather—to return their kitchen scraps to the land instead of the landfill. Over fall break, Matt Zmudka ’11 and Nathan Pavlovic ’10 helped Chris Bair, the environmental coordinator on campus, and Brad Young, a natural builder in Fairfield, Iowa, re-plaster the walls of the strawbale tool shed.

With such a diverse group, we have been able to accomplish much more than just grow a few vegetables. We have laid the foundation for sustainable, interconnected system that captures rainwater, returns waste to natural cycles, and model natural building practices. By connecting students to the land and to the food they eat, the garden has also inspired other initiatives on campus. The Local Foods Coop, supported by Dean Porter ’10, Ami Freeberg ’10, and Erica Hougland ’10, has connected students to Pauls Grains, an organic producer in Laurel, Iowa. Nathan Pavloic ’10, Alex Reich ’11, and Caitlin Vaughan ’10 are spearheading a movement to establish EcoHouse to model with sustainable living practices and nurture a community of environmentally sensitive activists. This summer, Alex Reich ’11, Hart Ford-Hodges ’10, Eric Nost ’09, and Meredith Groves ’08 will stay in Grinnell to coordinate a local foods initiative funded through the Davis Foundation. In this way, the garden focuses and unifies diverse forms of activism that seek to nurture the land and our communities. It creates space for us to gather as a community to work, eat, laugh, and learn together.