The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Wesleyan program boosts students’ interest in agriculture
Wesleyan student-run organic farm encourages many to work in the field
MIDDLETOWN — Almost 100 Wesleyan University alumni are working in agricultural production industries, according to the recently published 2017 Long Lane Farm annual report.
Many got their start working at Long Lane Farm, Wesleyan’s studentrun organic farm devoted to allowing students a place to experiment and learn about sustainable agriculture.
These alumni shared their farming experiences post-graduation:
Daniel Mays, Class of 2006, studied math and physics at Wesleyan, where he helped out in the early days of Long Lane. Since then, he has taught at a boarding high school, bicycled through Mexico, earned a graduate degree in environmental engineering, and worked on a number of farms. In 2010, he started and now owns and operates Frith Farm in Scarborough, Maine. The farm encompasses 14 acres and offers organic vegetables, pastureraised eggs, chicken, lamb, pork, and turkeys. Frith Farm employs no-till vegetable production methods.
After graduating, Jordan Schmidt, ’08, worked on a few different vegetable farms and then spent several years organizing the field work at Hearty Roots Community Farm in the Hudson Valley. In 2013, she helped her partner take over management of her family’s dairy farm, Chaseholm Farm, in Pine Plains, New York, which she has been transitioning over to 100 percent grass-fed cows.
Rachel Lindsay, ’05, was a co-founder of Long Lane Farm and the first summer manager. She worked at several CSA farms in Massachusetts and in 2009 was awarded a Fulbright to work with farmers in Nicaragua. She is the current communications and sustainability director for Social Business Network, a nonprofit that works with fair-trade agricultural cooperatives. Her current project is helping to design a new sustainable agriculture training center in Rwanda. “Long Lane was the beating heart and soul of my Wesleyan world,” she said.
Lazy Heron Farm is run by three Wesleyan alumni: Holt Akers-Campbell, ’16, Hailey Sowden, ’15, and Ben Daley, ’18. “All of our tillage and cultivation is accomplished by two Suffolk Punch draft horses, Sunny and Kate,” Akers-Campbell said.
Akers-Campbell, who started the farm less than two years ago, raises produce, pork, chicken and eggs for local markets in Norwood and Charlotte, about 50 miles away. “Many of the skills I learned at Wesleyan and Long Lane have been useful for me, particularly on the business, marketing, and community aspects of the farm,” he said.
After graduating from Wesleyan, Sowden apprenticed on Cate Hill Orchard, a small organic apple orchard and sheep dairy in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Following the apprenticeship, Sowden started work at High Mowing Organic Seeds, which focuses on growing and selling high-quality seeds adapted to the New England climate.
Daley, who’s learning about managing a farm enterprise and working with draft animals, began working at Long Lane Farm during his first semester at Wesleyan. He’s also worked as an apprentice at diversified CSA vegetable/livestock farms in Tennessee and in Maine.
Sarah Tracy-Wanck, ’10, manages the Common Ground High School’s Environmental Leadership Program in New Haven. She works with teachers to develop and facilitate project-based work into the curriculum, incorporating real-world content from the school’s farm. She also oversees the School Garden Resource Crew, which builds and maintains gardens in public schools in New Haven.
Since graduating in 2010, Tess Parker ’10, started a farm called Common Hands Farm. The biodynamic farm spans 150 acres in Philmont, N.Y. “Our farm community supports itself through a CSA (community supported agriculture) and our main focus is on growing many annual and some perennial vegetables and herbs for 300 or more customers on a weekly basis,” Parker said.
While she was a student, Sophie Ackoff, ’11, worked with Long Lane Farm and Bon Appetit to bring locally produced food to campus and has since worked with Food & Water Watch and apprenticed at Glynwood Farm in Cold Spring, New York. She is a national field director for the National Young Farmers Coalition. In this role, Ackoff helps farmers across the country launch and grow NYFC chapters.
After graduating from Wesleyan, Charlotte Heyrman ’13, lived on a large CSA farm in Charlottesville, Va., where she drove a tractor, helped manage the budget, and worked in the field six days a week. She then worked at Good Eggs, an online farmers market based in New York City, where she helped young farmers from the Hudson Valley sell their food to residents in Brooklyn.
After leaving Wesleyan, Laura Cohen, ’14, took an apprenticeship at the 140acre Green String Farm in California. She then moved to southern Vermont and joined Earth Sky Time Community Farm, a small family-run organic farm and bakery.
From there, her interests took her to the warmth and sunshine of Solitude Farm Café in India’s southern state, Tamil Nadu, where she worked alongside a crew of Tamil farmers and a rotating cast of international volunteers to put the no-till teachings of Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka into practice alongside traditional Tamil methods.
“Harvest time was a scavenger hunt in a jungle of banana trees, tapioca, eggplants, lettuces, peppers, cherry tomatoes, and papaya trees, and rice and dal grew amid a sea of weeds,” she said.
Olivia Drake is the Wesleyan University Newsletter editor and campus photographer.