Sweet Potato Nurturing!

Hello! It’s Esteban again, back to share more with you about what Campus Farm has been up to this past Spring semester! As I mentioned before, the Religion and Ecology class was required to complete 10 hours of farm work per student. After Alex and I set up a sign-up sheet for times that we would be at the farm, we let them sign up and the work began!

Bonnie was an irreplaceable resource for us this semester. On Monday mornings, she would come to the farm, and show me and some students basic gardening tasks. She also have a semester-long project that involved a sweet potato! She had several sweet potato seedlings from the previous year. She gave one to each student. We were instructed to use toothpicks to suspend the potato at the top of the jar filled with water. Then, it would grow roots and sprouts. After a while, these sprouts could be divided and suspended in water themselves, so they could grow their own roots. Then they could be planted to grow into many more sweet potatoes in the fall!

It was a fun and cool project that got each student involved. The students felt like they were personally part of the process of planting and growing food, which linked well to a book called Good Food that they were reading in class. Throughout the semester, they would mention to me about how excited they were about their sweet potato’s roots growing, or that they were sad that their potato wasn’t doing well. Here’s one student’s experience with sweet potato rearing:

“The most connection I felt between myself and food, though, was through the rearing of a sweet potato sapling. I was charged with the task of caring for it throughout the entirety of the semester until it grew stems that could themselves be planted in order to spawn even more potatoes. I have put much care into watering and nurturing my sweet potato, and have grown quite attached. I experienced much excitement at watching it grow, not for the purpose of wanting to eat the results, but simply because I was happy it was thriving. I am glad that I had this opportunity to connect with a plant.”

Bonnie continued to teach us the steps in this potato project, which I tried to pass on to the students when Bonnie wasn’t around in the afternoon sessions. As a master gardener, she’s been incredibly helpful about what needs to be done around the farm. We cannot thank her enough for her generous work for the Campus Farm this semester. I’ll post a video below of her teaching one step of the sweet-potato-growing process. Bye for now!

Community Campus Farm Update

Hello! It’s been a few years since this blog has been active, but we are trying to start up again. I’m Esteban Caballero, and I’ve been involved with the Campus Community Farm for about a year now. Soon, I’ll be graduating from St. Mary’s College. I’ll be around the campus in a staff capacity, so hopefully I can continue to be involved with the Campus Farm!

There is some very sad news to report first. Dr. Kate Chandler passed away in April of 2017 after a two-year battle with cancer. As a way to honor her legacy, the Farm was renamed to the Kate Chandler Campus Farm. Her passing affected the campus as a whole, but especially the Farm itself. She was a wonderful guide for the work of the Farm for many years. She got students motivated to work with her, taught them the skills they needed, and empowered them to take ownership of the Campus Farm. Under her leadership, which she did out of the goodness of her heart, the Farm was running well. After her death, the Farm community on-campus has struggled to find another leader and focal point, which led to a meeting at the end of the Fall 2017 semester.

The short-term plan for the semester was for the Religion and Ecology class, taught by Dr. Von Kellenbach, to have a farmwork requirement as part of their grade. There were two Teaching Assistant, Alex B. and myself, that would organize farmwork for the class and be there at the farm to show them what needed. We were aided greatly by Bonnie, a master gardener who works at the college and lives in area. She taught us what we needed to know about the planting season, which neither of us was familiar with.

The semester is now over, and we’ve seen great progress! There will be more updates about what we’ve been working on, and what the future looks like. There is still much work to be done, but the motivation is there for students. The students in the Religion and Ecology class wrote reflections on their farm work. Here’s one student’s experience with farmwork:

“My experience on the campus farm this semester provided me with this very opportunity. Through farm labor, I was able to recognize my connections to the land, water, animals, place, and people. It was a new experience for me considering I have never engaged in farm work or even gardening of any kind. By actually getting to touch the soil with my hands, I feel I have been able to renew my connection with the land. Wearing shoes and constantly walking on paved ground deprives us of experiencing this connection. Feeling the earth, and getting your hands in the dirt, though, is incredibly refreshing and can remind us of it. Not only tilling and preparing the soil, but also actually getting to plant seeds was a very rewarding experience. It is very exciting to think that a small seed will one day become a ripe plant. We took care to plant the seeds far enough apart that they would have room to grow, and cover them with soil but without packing them in too much. In total, so far I have helped plant two beds and prepare multiple others. We even hammered in posts and strung up string between them for green beans to eventually grow and use as support. The most connection I felt between myself and food, though, was through the rearing of a sweet potato sapling. I was charged with the task of caring for it throughout the entirety of the semester until it grew stems that could themselves be planted in order to spawn even more potatoes. I have put much care into watering and nurturing my sweet potato, and have grown quite attached. I experienced much excitement at watching it grow, not for the purpose of wanting to eat the results, but simply because I was happy it was thriving. I am glad that I had this opportunity to connect with a plant. I have also developed a connection with the people that I worked with at the farm, since we bonded over shared labor. We worked together on all our tasks, and were able to make conversation as we worked. Lastly, I now have a relationship with the campus farm since I have spent much of my time there. I have really enjoyed my time spent working at the farm and will hold onto memories of this experience and all the connections that I have realized.”

Keep your eye out for more posts about the future of the farm!

Gardening as a Spiritual Practice

I am Jessica Paguirigan and I have been involved with the Campus Community Farm for about three years now. In a few weeks, I will be graduating from St. Mary's College of Maryland. I will be leaving this beautiful campus, but I will take away so many memories with incredibly-inspiring people. A lot of things about this campus have shaped who I have become as a person, but I would like to take up this blog post to talk about how the Campus Community Farm has influenced me.

My introduction to the Campus Community Farm was seeing a student-made documentary about the farm at TFMS night during my first year. At this point, I had started to become enraptured by the activist and environmentalist platforms raised by so many of the students here, and was inspired to join the members of the farm in their contribution to creating a sustainable community.

Before long, I began to realize everything that gardening at the farm actually meant to me. Gardening was not just a way to enrich the sustainable principles of the campus and an environmentally-friendly practice, but a spiritual teacher and counselor. Quite honestly, I feel that gardening has taught me the virtues and methods for understanding how I must grow and forge ahead in my future. 

I could go on for hours about everything that I have learned from the garden, but I think that this is best portrayed in the website that I have created for this very purpose at www.liturgiesoftheearth.com. Please visit the site to know more about my own perspective on gardening as a spiritual experience! Here is one of the videos you will see on the website that visually reflects upon the lessons I have learned while gardening.

I want to thank everyone who I have interacted with at the farm, and those who started the farm a mere five years ago for being a part of this crucial experience of my life. I have learned a lot about the earth, about the true definition of community, and about myself. I look forward to learning even more about farming, and hope to spread the joy of farming to others in the future!

The farm is winding down

The farm is winding down in a sense but that's due to fact that its staying colder more often and the harvest season is just about over. Due to a number of factors, there isn't any pictures, but there is something that should be shared. Its a short video created in September 2011 about the campus farm titled  'Sunshine, Water, Dirt: The Story of the Campus Farm':

Also see the campus farm's facebook page, and posts about us on the SMCM admissions tumblr here and here. Also we had an old blog on blogger as well. That's all.

The farm four days ago...

I've been busy with stuff but now I get to post pictures of time at the farm on Thursday before sunset. Enjoy! 

And this one later in the day of the sunset looking over the pond for funzies:

The farm before the rain

No one from SEAC was at the farm yesterday, but here's some pics of the farm on Thursday when some onions were planted. Those animals eating the veggies can be kept away (hopefully)!

Kale Chips!

For all you Martha haters out there, you should still check out this website and figure out how to make kale chips! The perfect, healthy, vitamin-packed snack. Crisp, salty, and delicioso! Martha even gives you five quick and easy alternative flavors to plain old salt.


Now, if you've always wanted to grow your own kale, or have wondered how we grow it at the farm...well, it's easy.  Kale is part of the cabbage family, and it is a very resilient leafy green that can withstand cold weather, can be grown through most seasons, and resists many diseases. Hot weather and cabbageworms are its enemies. Gentle World provides a good overview about how to grow kale in pots and in the garden.  When harvesting, snip the leaves from the outside rather than plucking.