Goodbye To The Sustainability Farm

When I first came to visit the Sustainability Farm, it was a cool, cloudy afternoon in the spring semester of my freshman year. I remember it felt spacious and quiet and wonderfully lived-in, the long stretches of fields, the tire swing in the front yard, the kitchen table covered in homework assignments, and the chalkboard scrawled with inside jokes and drawings. During the tour, Sam Joseph, the head farmer who lived in a tiny house on the property, was understatedly funny and extremely smart, and his passion for the place was contagious. Once we were done peppering him with questions, he sent me and my friend to the place on the property where the Little River cuts through. We wandered past the quonset and the three-sided structure where garlic is hung out to dry, past the compost pile and the goats’ winter pen, through the field, over a fence and down a path into the woods. Once we got there, we marveled at the student-made tepee and fire pit and promptly slid down the bank onto the slick, wide rocks below. 

It was there, with the water flowing under my feet and the quiet of trees all around, that I knew this was the place I wanted to be.  

After a long year of navigating classes and social circles in the restrictive COVID-19 era, I was pretty disillusioned with campus life. The parties bored me, the food was mediocre and the dorms grossed me out. When the director of the Sustainability Program visited my (online, of course) FYS class and pitched the farm — homegrown, home-cooked meals, a tight-knit community, a space to get away from the hustle of campus life — it sounded like a dream come true.   

And, in many ways, it was. I made some of my closest friends at SLU, created memories that are still among the highlights of my college experience and discovered a passion for food sovereignty, sustainable living and intentional community that will shape me for the rest of my life. I will forever be grateful to the farm for giving me a space to feel safe, to withdraw and to recenter myself during a time when I badly needed it.     

This is a love letter to the farm, but it’s a goodbye letter, too. This is the last academic year that the Sustainability Program will take place on the farm at 1894 State Highway 68.   

I was pretty stunned when I first heard the news. Having lived on the farm this past summer while working at a job on campus, I knew the state of the program was somewhat precarious, with Joseph leaving his position as head farmer at the end of the last academic year — but I didn’t know it was serious enough to shut down the program altogether. I turned to Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs Alison Del Rossi, for answers. This was the response she gave me:  

“The Sustainability Program continues to evolve as we assess how we can best serve our students’ interest in engaging in valuable experiential learning about farming, local food and food preservation, animal care and other aspects of sustainable agriculture. As we work on the strategic initiative for establishing our new Center for the Environment, within which the Sustainability Program will be located, we opted not to renew the lease with the Cornell Cooperative Extension for the farmhouse and to re-envision this program within our own campus property. Our goal is to move the program to our campus, preserving key goals of the program while making it more fiscally and environmentally sustainable and increasing access to a larger group of students.”  

As disappointed as I was, I know the Sustainability Program was never cheap to run. With renting the property from the Cornell Cooperative Extension and supplementing the farm’s veggies with the Potsdam Co-op’s pricey groceries, among the many other expenses needed to keep a farm operational, this has always been one of SLU’s most expensive experiential programs. With a maximum capacity of 10 student residents and relatively minimal interaction with the rest of campus, it also benefits a fairly small number of students compared to other programs. From an economic standpoint, it seems logical to adjust the program more towards fiscal sustainability as well as the environmental.  

That being said, Cathy Shrady, a former director of the program, pointed out to me that “SLU invested a great deal of money to renovate both the residence house and the classroom building at the site.” This includes building and buying the greenhouse, tiny house, garden, fencing and garden tools used on the site today. “I’m sure there are very good reasons for moving the program to campus,” she told me, “but I wonder if the very significant amount of money SLU invested in that site informed that decision-making at all?”  

Neither of us knows the answer to that question. Neither do we know what will happen to that infrastructure once the program moves onto campus.  

As dramatic as this transition seems, this isn’t the first time the Sustainability Program has undergone a structural revamp. The program was piloted in 2013, starting out as a semester-long program modeled off the exclusivity and immersion of the Adirondack Semester. Students took all four of their classes in the farm’s onsite classroom, had minimal interaction with the campus, and participated in farming and homesteading work. Due to minimal interest from students, the program was reformed, and the 2017-18 cohort was the first to experience a full year on the farm with a blend of onsite and on-campus classes. Given that context, this shift onto campus can be seen as just another iteration of a flowing, dynamic program that is continually evolving over time.  

So, to make it completely clear, the SLU Sustainability Program lives on. They are still accepting applications for the coming year, where the cohort will be actively involved in shaping the program’s future. According to the website, next year’s group will participate “in a living-learning community in an on-campus residence and take core courses including a one-credit academic and half-credit practicum course each term focused on sustainability-related issues, experiences and skills.”   

I asked the current Program Director, Dr. Camilla Ammirati what the focus of next year’s group would be. She told me that “the working plan right now is to focus next year’s program on the planning process itself, with the fall 2024 cohort taking core courses focused on community design and helping facilitate the process of gathering input from stakeholders across the board.  

“As truly sad as I am to think of leaving the farm,” she added, “I’m also genuinely excited for the possibilities opened up by operating on campus — from the ways that can make the program more accessible and inclusive to the benefits of being more integrated with campus support structures, among many other things.”  

I can’t say she doesn’t have a point. As special as my time at the farm was, my cohort and I certainly noticed some logistical gaps that came from the unique in-betweenness of the program. It wasn’t quite a study-abroad experience, but it didn’t benefit from a lot of campus resources, either. Carless farmies, myself included, had to get around using the shared van shuttle or get rides back from campus through security (who, fed up with us during the spring semester, tried to refuse to drive us back at some points). Because the property is owned by the Cornell Cooperative Extension but utilized by St. Lawrence, there was a constant tug-of-war over who was responsible for work orders and repairs, and often, they were left unaddressed for weeks and months on end (exhibit A: when the heating broke and it got so cold in the kitchen that the olive oil froze). And, of course, there was the issue of cleaning our own space since there was no one else to do it for us (try getting an overworked, stressed-out college student to take out the compost — it’s not easy). As much love in my heart as I have for the farm, I have to admit that the more integrated the program is into campus life, the easier a lot of these logistical issues become.   

This all being said, I know that the physical space of the farm played a huge role in making the experience what it was for me. I loved the feeling of coming home after my classes to make a snack and journal on the porch or walk along the huge expanse of the field behind the house. It felt like a different world out there, one where I could just breathe and be. As much potential as there is for the future of this program, I know the Sus Farm can’t be replicated on campus — it will have to evolve into something new. I hope whatever new form the program takes on will be just as meaningful to future students as the farm was for me.