Here at St. Lawrence we pride ourselves on learning off campus as well on campus. Many students have taken advantage of the many farms that surround our school and have taken interest in how our food is produced. St. Lawrence has developed connections with five main farms around the school: littleGrasse Foodworks in Canton, Birdsfoot Farm, the Sustainability House Farm, Cornell Cooperative Extension in Canton, and Bittersweet Farm in Heuvelton.
Jamie Oriol ’17 works at the Sustainability House Farm on weekends, doing things like timber framing and harvesting. She started working there when she did the 2014 spring Sustainability Semester and has continued to come this semester.
Jamie has continued working at the farm after coming back to campus, because she wanted to see the whole cycle of the farm. She believes everyone should work on a farm, “Because it’s awesome,” and went on to say that it is very rewarding to put the hard work in and see a direct product come out.
One of the better known farms that St. Lawrence students go to is Bittersweet Farm, owned and run by Ann and Brian Bennett whose daughter, Catherine (Cat) Bennett ’16, is a student at St. Lawrence. Bennett tells her fellow students that they should work a farm because, “It gets you out of St. Lawrence, it gets you to know the community.” Noting that people from a more diverse background are coming to the farm, Bennett said that, “I think in general it’s something that students are definitely more excited about.”
Some St. Lawrence students, like Julia Callahan ’16, have gone beyond going to the farm a couple times a week. Knowing she was taking the semester off, Julia reached out to the Bennetts and now is living and working at Bittersweet Farm for the semester.
Julia has learned at the farm how to keep livestock, how important local farms are in communities, and that her spirit vegetable is a kohlrabi. Julia remarked that some of her favorite parts of the farm are, “Planting vegetables and tending to the greenhouse, chilling with the young pig named Prince Phillip, and working the farmers market.” She highlighted that the farmers market is especially rewarding as you get to meet those who would eat your produce as well as some generally amazing people.
Julia left off saying that, “If more people knew the work of farmers, I believe more people would support their efforts and the local movement. The movement can’t just be in the hands of farmers, it has to proliferate to other people in a community.”