A Visit to the Farm

Keith Possee talks to students about how the UW student farm got its start.
Photo credit: Lindsay Lowenthal

Today the class went to visit the UW student farm. It was fascinating to hear Keith Possee talk about how the farm got started. It all stemmed from a couple of people reading Bill McKibben's article The Cuba Diet which was published in Harper's in 2005. Urban gardening became the solution to the loss of access to food imports with the break up of the Soviet Union. Cuba went through a period of general undernourishment until they hit on the solution of turning urban green space and waste space into vegetable gardens. The city now produces 80% of its produce! Clearly, this offered a vision to the biologists at UW of how we might encourage more people to produce their own food in ways that would be sustainable and fuel efficient. I remember reading somewhere, maybe it was in Michael Pollen's book, that we could consider the leaves of plants as photovolteic cells through which we can harness the energy of the sun. When we produce food in our own backyards, we transfer that energy directly to the maintenance of our own lives and those with whom we share food. The food also arrives at our table in a fresher state, without its nutrients having been degraded in transport. Just in transport alone, we expend many more calories than we consume!

Before we walked down to the farm, I shared with the class that I had started my fall salad garden in wooden boxes in my back yard. My family and I have been growing vegetables all summer long, and we have discovered the pleasure of eating food that we have grown ourselves. It really didn't take that much effort, once we got the garden established, to produce beans, tomatoes, peppers, and salad greens. This summer I have discovered the joys of engaging in activities that reduce our carbon profile: riding my bike to school, waiting for a sunny day to do the laundry so I can hang it out to dry, and growing our own vegetables. I don't fully comprehend this unexpected sense of joy I feel in doing these things, except perhaps it is the obverse reaction to my mounting sense of alarm about what our dependence on fossil fuels is doing to the environment.