Summer internship – accepting applications now

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Emily Sloss

Position: Duke Campus Farm Intern
Term: Summer, May 15 – Aug 10
Hours: 20/week
Pay: $10/hr

Responsibilities:
- Daily care for crops including watering, weeding, planting, harvesting, washing, packing and delivering crops
- CSA and farmers’ market sales
- Leading and facilitating community workdays
- Community outreach projects including giving tours, planning and facilitating educational workshops
- Working as part of a team to expand the operations and reach of the farm

Requirements:
- Duke rising sophomore, junior, senior or graduate students.
- Federal work-study preferred but not required
- Ability to provide personal transportation to the farm preferred
- Flexibility, the ability to work independently and with others.
- Self-starter and creative problem solver.
- Possession of good communication and interpersonal skills.
- This is a physically active and demanding job, the ability to lift and carry 50 lbs is a plus.

Application:
If you are interested in applying, please email emily.sloss@duke.edu with the subject line “summer internship” for more information.

CSA Summer 2013

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Emily Sloss

Summer 2013 CSA – Sign up today!
Last summer we launched our first ever CSA in the months of May and August and this year we’re offering a full summer subscription. Participants can sign up for one month (May, June, July or August) or can sign up for all 4 months at a discounted price. Each week you’ll receive a couple-sized box with approximately $20 worth of produce. Pick up is at the Duke Gardens every Tuesday from 4-6pm. See below for pricing and what you can expect to find each month in your box. The Duke Campus Farm is not certified organic, but uses all natural practices including no chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides, no GMO seed, and strives to use as few off farm inputs as possible.

May – 4 weeks – $80
salad mix, strawberries, kale, rainbow chard, snap peas, radishes, beets, salad turnips, carrots, bac choi, broccoli rabe, greens and herbs

June – 4 weeks – $80
cucumbers, snap peas, salad mix, mustard greens, beets, rainbow chard, kale, beets, potatoes, onions, garlic and herbs

July – 5 weeks – $100
cucumbers, corn, eggplant, tomatoes, green beans, onions, garlic, rainbow chard, okra, basil

August – 4 weeks – $80
tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, okra, watermelon, musk melon and herbs

Full summer subscription $300 (two weeks free!)

Our View on Community Supported Agriculture
We believe in the traditional community supported agriculture system where the consumer shares in the risk and reward of the farm by paying in advance for a “share” of our harvest. Crops that do well will be abundant in the share, crops that do less well will be less abundant. We will never buy produce from other farms or wholesale distributers to fill the boxes each week (a common tactic for some local farms). Instead, you are getting a true reflection of what we’re producing on our farm.

Each week a “what you can expect” email is sent out giving our best estimate of what members will get in their box the next day. We don’t harvest until the day of delivery in order to give you the freshest produce possible and sometimes what we find in the field on Tuesday is not what we expected to on Monday. Sometimes there are bug infestations or crop failures. Sometimes there are crop bumpers. And that’s what makes being a part of a CSA so much fun – it’s always a little bit of a surprise what you’re going to get each week.

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse – Spring 2013 Workshops

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Emily Sloss

We don’t know how the Apocalypse will begin, but with the power grid down, global trade halted and brain-loving zombies roaming the countryside, you’ll need skills to survive. That’s why we’re offering skill-building workshops to help you thrive. Register here for workshops.

Wilderness Survival and First Aid
Date: Thursday, January 31st 3:30-5:30pm
Instructor: Jan Hackett
Location: Duke West Campus
Cost: $10
Description: The workshop’s instructor, Jan Hackett, coordinated Duke’s Outdoor Adventure Program for a decade, and taught outdoor classes such as fly-fishing, climbing, kayaking and wilderness skills. Currently Jan is an instructor in wilderness first aid, CPR/AED, blood borne pathogens and emergency first response.This workshops will give you the basics of wilderness first aid from splinting broken bones to caring for a snake bite. The course will end with real life scenarios that participants will carry out.

College Cooking Made Easy
Date: February 16th, 11am-1:30pm
Instructor: Duke Community Garden
Location: Duke Smart Home, 1402 Faber Street (just off C-1 route)
Cost: $5
Description: This is the first workshop hosted at the Duke Community Garden and will include basic cooking instruction, recipe making and eating. With a focus on seasonal produce and sustainable eating, Duke students will lead a demonstration and discussion on easy and healthy meals that cater to college lifestyles. The workshop will take place in the Smart Home next to the Community Garden, located behind the Freeman Center for Jewish Life.

Mushroom Workshop
Date: Sunday, February 24th: 11am
Instructor: Damon Cory-Watson
Location: At the farm, 4910 Friends School Rd
Cost: $10
Description: come learn how to grow Shitake and Oyster mushrooms in your backyard (or dorm room!). Participants will have hands on experience inoculating mushroom logs, that once mature will be served in the dining halls. This event is a collaboration between the Duke Campus Farm, Duke Forest, Duke Mycology Lab, and Woodfruit Farm. A portion of the logs inoculated will be raffled off to participants to take home.

The Chemistry of Food

Saturday, March 2nd, 11 am – 1:30 pm

Instructor: Justine de Valicourt

Cost: $10

Location: Duke Smart Home

We are honored to host chef-in-residence Justine de Valicourt at Duke this semester! As an expert in food chemistry, Justine will teach us how to make sourdough bread, the basics of fermentation, and how to make yogurt. She will also show us how to make vegan and gluten-free parmesan pasta and carrot cake. This is a cooking class you don’t want to miss, especially if you have food allergies or are looking for a little more food chemistry in your life.

Basic Beer Brewing
Date: April 4th, 4pm-7pm
Instructor: Emily Sloss and Lee Miller
Location: Duke Campus Farm, 4901 Friends School Road
Cost: $10
Description: Learn about the basics of homebrewing with this hands-on workshop. Discover how easy it is to brew and bottle your own beer. This skill is one you will definitely value during a zombie apocalypse.

Farm to Fork Alternative Spring Break 2013

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Emily Sloss

In 2011, we hosted our first Alternative Spring Break with great success and we’re bringing it back this year. During this year’s experiential break, we will explore local agriculture, food processing and distribution, and consumer issues related to food including access, nutrition, labeling, and more. We’ll give you some ground-level context for system-wide food issues by visiting production and distribution sites, cooking together with local food, and sharing conversations with guests and experts who work in a variety of fields.

The break is hosted by the Duke Food Project which is comprised of the Duke Campus Farm and the Duke Community Garden, both of which produce food and contribute to food education at Duke and beyond. All Duke undergrad and graduate students are eligible to apply. Our 3-day ASB experience will take place March 9th-11th. Participants will sleep in their dorms/apartments, and we will gather at the Smart Home every day for meals and programming. The cost for this experience, including all meals and snacks, site visits, and transportation, is $60. If this fee prohibits you from applying, please let us know.

Find the application and more information here. Email elm26@duke.edu or anna.willoughby@duke.edu with questions!

This Land, Before Us

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Emily Sloss

A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives.
- Wendell Berry

Over the past two years, a community has grown around this shared place. Anyone who has spent much time at the farm could draw you a complex web of the friendships, relationships, mentors, academic pursuits, hard skills, agricultural awareness, tastes, experiences and ideas that have been cultivated by their time spent here. All of us would probably tell you that we never expected the farm to creep into our lives the way it has, from the food we eat to the books we read to the majors and careers we’ve chosen to the people with whom we surround ourselves. This place has become a part of us, for better or for worse, because we all share a sense of responsibility for the living, breathing space.

From time to time we’ve given thought to who cared for this land before us, particularly when we first arrived here. During the initial planning stages, the Duke Forest offered the current Friends School Rd. location as a possible site for the future farm. We moved quickly on their offer, breaking ground just a few months later. It was apparent that the property was being used for some biology research projects but was mostly cut for hay by neighbors. Other than a few old sheds, a dilapidated barn and some mediocre soil that indicated crops once grown, there were few clues about the past. It felt odd to come to a piece of land without any substantial context. As the new caretakers of the small plot, it seemed only appropriate that an instruction booklet would accompany our arrival. I often wondered, ”where are the photographs, the history, the how-tos, the soil tests, the details, the stories and the people of this place?” I remember thinking it was if we had arrived to house-sit, but the owners had forgotten to leave a note of instruction. Most farming operations are inter-generational family businesses that rely on the capital and knowledge of previous generations in order to thrive. Like many young and beginning farmers of today, we acquired land without any infrastructure and more noticeably, without the oral tradition and wisdom of the generations before us.

Pictured above: The Farm, 2010

So we had to start from scratch, learning our own lessons about what native pest and weed species prospered, which crops were the most productive in our soil, which herbs grew wild here, which parts of the field had the rockiest soil and the best drainage, where the afternoon sun casts its shadows and most importantly, learning to seek out neighbors and farmers who were willing to share their incredible wealth of growing knowledge. Luckily as time has goes on, the stories, people and history of this piece of land have begun to surface and guide us along the way.

An internet search for county archives produced a research paper by a Duke student from 1984 investigating land-use patterns of neighboring farmland. In the paper, she quotes some wise words from the past:

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, J. W. Norwood, a highly respected native of Orange County, addressed his fellow farmers on the state of farming in Orange and criticized the farmers for continuing to practice backward and unscientific farming.

All three of our great natural laws of agriculture have been disregarded and violated.

1. No remains of vegetable matter have by it been supplied as food to the growing crops.

2. No rotation of crops has been practiced-or nothing which deserves the name. But a ceaseless succession of corn and small grain without change, and without rest.

3. No precaution has been used to prevent the soil from being carried away by every washing rain.

And behold the melancholy consequence of such a system of cultivation in the exhausted and wornout condition of our lands, as of this moment they lie spread out before us to our view.

This research paper is just one example of the documentation and information about this region and its practices that we have yet to uncover. It’s fascinating to see just how clearly our growing techniques align with what were considered the great natural laws of agriculture 200 years ago. Many would probably argue today that we are, in fact, the ones practicing “backward and unscientific farming”, which makes the information loss of a couple generations less of a tragedy.

Whether or not we agree with the growing practices of the generations that came before us, or that will surely come after us, one thing we all have in common is we are temporary caretakers of this land, which inevitably results in a shared sense of responsibility and community. And so, as good caretakers we will share our stories and lessons learned with the next generation of students, build community around meaningful work, take good care of this land, and continue to unravel, and learn from, the history of this land before us.

Pictured above: The Farm, 2012

Farm Fellow

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Emily Sloss

We’re happy to announce the growth of our farm family to include a one-year fellowship position for a recent graduate to support the daily operations and expansion of the Duke Campus Farm. The fellowship position is made possible by a grant from the Duke Endowment. All four Endowment schools (Duke, Furman, Johnson C. Smith and Davidson) will use their grant money to promote sustainable food systems in the Carolinas.

Each of the sister schools have a unique approach for the implementation of the grant. Duke’s grant will go towards funding the one-year fellowship as well as educational site improvements, including demonstration gardens, permanent pathways and outdoor classroom space.

Without any further ado, meet Sarah Parsons, our new Farm Fellow.

Sarah is a recent graduate from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, where she received a Masters in Environmental Management in 2012. In her studies at Duke she focused on food justice and sustainable landscaping. Sarah did her master’s project on “An Evaluation of the Food Desert Definition in Durham, NC,” where she mapped food deserts in Durham and reassessed the parameters of food deserts. Sarah also recently finished working with Sarah P. Duke Gardens to get one of their new garden installments SITES certified. While at the Nicholas School Sarah was a leader of Farmhand, a graduate student group on campus, which hosts workdays at local farms in the area in an effort to lend small farmers a helping “farmhand.” Sarah graduated from Emory University with a B.A. in Environmental Science. She is from Stockbridge, Georgia.

Come meet her, and her adorable puppy Cora (pictured above), at a farm workday!

The butterflies and the bees

Image

The summer pollinators are abundant on the farm right now.

Meet our summer interns!

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Emily Sloss

Summertime at the farm is exciting for all kinds of reasons, but mostly because there’s a whole lot of new growth. There’s the obvious seasonal transition to warm weather crops, but there’s also more time in the summer to experiment with new varieties, different growing techniques and expansion into previously uncultivated land. Summertime also brings a new crop of interns to help with all these exciting new projects. This year, Katie and Emily join the DCF team for what will hopefully be a rich learning experience of the ins and outs of sustainable farming.

The Duke Campus Farm is dual missioned to be both a production and educational farm. Our summer internship program meets both of those goals by providing in depth learning opportunities for students while also increasing our production possibilities. Read more about Katie and Emily below, and be sure to follow their summer experiences on our blog.

Emily McGinty, Summer Intern
Emily is a rising senior from Pittsburgh, PA. Emily has been involved in growing food at Duke since she arrived in Fall 2009, and is delighted to be around for summertime in Durham. She enjoys working and hanging out at the farm, chatting with people about food issues, and chatting in general. Emily attends classes when she isn’t doing any of the aforementioned activities, and will (hopefully) graduate next May with a fancy piece of paper that says she studied Public Policy. Follow Emily’s summer blogging here.

Katie Jones, Summer Intern
Katie Jones is a rising junior in Duke’s Trinity School for Arts and Sciences, double majoring in International Comparative Studies and Women’s Studies. While she has no real idea where these degrees will lead her, one of her classes, Food, Farming, & Feminism did lead to her first visit to the Duke Campus Farm in fall of 2011. After that visit, she began volunteering regularly at DCF and attending the farm’s many workshops. Besides interning at the farm, she loves reading, crafting, camping, and going on long phishing trips with her boyfriend Chris. Follow Katie’s summer blogging here.

Spring Festival Menu

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Emily Sloss

The chefs at Bon Appetit will be preparing the following for a delicious feast at our Spring Festival this Sunday, April 22nd from 3-6pm. *Indicates using DCF produce.

Mixed Green* Salad with Balsamic strawberry* vinaigrette

Farmhand Foods BBQ Pork sandwiches with local Neomonde rolls

Southern style coleslaw

Grilled Sweet Potato salad with honey mustard dressing

Zucchini and black bean red curry sautéed with chard*, mustard greens* & bok choy*

Roasted beet salad with local goat cheese

Summer market and CSA

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Emily Sloss

Are you a Duke staff or faculty member, graduate or Ph.D student, or Durham community member that’s been wondering how to get your hands on some Duke Campus Farm produce? We’re excited to announce that this summer the availability of our produce will expand beyond the undergraduate dining halls and into the Duke Farmer’s Market from April through August. For the first time we will also offer a “mini-CSA” for the months of May and August.

Mini-CSA: May and August
Due to our commitment to source our produce first to the campus dining halls, we will only be offering our CSA for two months this summer. You can sign up for just one month or sign up for both months. Each week for the month of May and/or August you will receive a box of sustainably raised vegetables, fruits and herbs worth $20. All of our produce is pesticide and synthetic fertilizer free, grown by Duke students! You will receive a weekly email detailing what is in your box but please be aware that you will not be able to select what goes into your box. Listed below are some of the crops you can expect to find in your share each week:

May (5 weeks) – Lettuce, arugula, spinach, kale, swiss chard, asian greens, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, mustards, snap peas, radishes, carrots, herbs

August (4 weeks) – Heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, watermelons, cantaloupe, eggplant, sweet and hot peppers, green beans, okra, basil and other herbs

Cost:
$100 for May
$80 for August
$180 for both May and August

Our weekly pickup location will be in the Duke Gardens parking lot every Tuesday afternoon, 4-6pm. Since this is our first year, we are limiting our participation to 15 shares, so be sure to sign up soon! Applications open March 26th, payment is due by April 23rd in the form of cash or check. To sign up, please fill out this form here.

If you have any questions, please email dukecampusfarm@gmail.com

Duke Farmer’s Market
Even if you don’t sign up for a summer CSA with us, you can still find us at the Duke Farmer’s Market this summer every Friday from 11am to 2pm. We will also have additional table sales at our Tuesday afternoon CSA pickups (4-6pm) in the Duke Gardens. At the Friday markets we will be accepting cash, check and Duke Flex Points. For more information on the market please visit the Life For Life’s website.