Armory Community Garden in Photos | YFSI '22

This post is part of Brianna Jefferson’s 2022 Yale Farm Summer Internship Independent Project.

The focus of my Independent Project was researching the significance of community gardens in cities experiencing food apartheid. I was interested in the role of these gardens, and how they helped connect individuals in their collective struggles. I also knew that I wanted to focus on New Haven, because it’s a space that I haven’t spent enough time examining in my regular coursework. My defining questions for my project were about the use of the word “community” to describe these gardens. Does the element of “community” help empower citizens and bring them together in their food struggles? How important is having a community? My research methods involved studying the different types of community gardens in New Haven and choosing one as the case study. I chose to focus on Armory Community Garden because not only does it do a wonderful job of connecting people with the land, and fresh produce, but it also emphasizes the importance of community. Armory is a place of gathering, and hosts community events that range from book club meetings, to Juneteenth celebrations, and cooking demonstrations. During my time volunteering at the garden, I saw children from as young as six years old running around and helping with the lettuce harvest, to an elderly woman in a wheelchair helping to water the crops. The space is open to everyone in the community and welcomes them in. My photo essay was a way for me to celebrate the work that Armory Garden does and share what I learned over the course of my summer.

Reclaiming Raíces: Tradition, Place, and Curanderismo in the Land of Enchantment | YFSI '22

This post is part of Carmen Ortega’s 2022 Yale Farm Summer Internship Independent Project.

This summer, I’ve thought a lot about the concept of place, which “encompasses not only a specific location and the physical world, but also the human relationships and meanings that unfold there” (Schnell 624). Physical space becomes place when we “get to know it better and endow it with value,” and “there is no place without self and no self without place.” (Casey 684, Tuan 6).

My independent project began with a question about place: how have Indigenous and Mestizo food and agricultural traditions in New Mexico contributed to the state’s unique sense of place, particularly as catalysts for spirituality, healing, and community? I came to this question after reflecting on why I was drawn to the Yale Farm internship in the first place: my raíces (roots). I am a proud Nuevo Mexicana, raised in Albuquerque and part of the Ortega, Maes, Chavez, and Padilla families from central and northern New Mexico. I identify as Mestiza; on both sides, my family can trace our ancestry back to the sixteenth-century Spanish colonists of the region, and, like most Hispanic New Mexicans, we also have Indigenous ancestry.

In preparation for a recent discussion, the farm interns read a piece about decolonization in settler colonial states. One sentence, about the way Native Americans have been racialized in the United States, stood out to me: "Native Americanness is subtractive: Native Americans are constructed to become fewer in number and less Native, but never exactly white, over time" (Tuck & Yang). First, I want to acknowledge that my racial identity of "Mestiza," of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry, gives me a certain degree of privilege. But this sentence also made me ponder how Mestizos in New Mexico were forcibly stripped of their "Native Americanness"-- my family speaks Spanish, and we were able to learn the names of our European ancestors through Catholic church records, yet we know extraordinarily little about our Indigenous ones. As a result, I have also been racialized by this country as less native, but never exactly white. This realm of precarity and uncertainty about my Indigeneity has always left me searching for my raíces that were lost to settler colonialism.

The path that I’ve chosen toward reclaiming these raíces and understanding “place” in New Mexico is through plants and food. In her article “Decolonize your Diet,” Catrióna Rueda Esquibel explains that growing and eating heritage food is a form of cultural and physical survival. When I think about both of my grandmothers and their commitment to nourishing their families with the recipes they learned from their mothers, grandmothers, and from preceding generations, I see this cultural survival at play. This project represents my love and admiration of food and plants as family, medicine, community, and place in “la tierra del encanto” (the land of enchantment).

Small Town Kid Goes to Yale to Dig Up Carrots | YFSI '22

This post is part of Eli White’s 2022 Yale Farm Summer Internship Independent Project.

Small Town Kid Goes to Yale to Dig Up Carrots

This summer I thought about beauty, aesthetics, and practice. The link to the watercolors I created can be found here, and my thoughts on the project follow. 

1: Why?

I wrote this web of questions down at the beginning of the summer not as a laundry list of answers I hoped to walk out of this project with, but as the lens through which I wanted to approach all our conversations about agriculture. Beauty. Other words I considered: wonder, wholesome, magic, healthy, right, aesthetics, good—but I kept returning to beauty. Sometimes it seems silly, in a world with this many problems, to think about what is beautiful. And yet, I’m becoming more and more convinced that it’s not silly at all. Beauty is a serious matter. Beauty provokes serious questions. 

“Why?” is a serious question. There are two ways to ask it—first, as a matter of causality. The food system is a dense, intricate web of causality. When you start to examine the roots of beauty in it, you find both astonishing and terrible sources. Genocide, opression, ongoing dispossesion of personhood. Yet also resistance, tradition, culture, family, human connection. Food as the ugly blade of injustice. Food as the shield of human care, a tapestry of community. If I’m doing nothing else with this project, I’m trying to convince you it’s worth thinking about what is beautiful. Beauty is revealing, both in its presence and its absence. It’s worth trying to see the world as a painter, thinking in color. Thinking in beauty. 

The second way to ask the question “Why?” is a question of purpose and meaning. Of all the questions we ask, this is the one with the answer that doesn’t exist. “Why?” isn’t out there as “who?” or “what?” or “when?” or “where?” or “why?” as a question of “how?” are; we made “why?” up. It’s only in our heads. And I suppose that’s not to say that it doesn’t exist at all—our heads are part of this strange universe too—but it remains up to us. I found I could not write my answer in words, so I turned to watercolor. 

2: Control

Farming and food are defined by control. The history of food, which we continue to write, is an account of how various human societies try to control and organize themselves. It contains examples of extreme cruelty. It contains examples of staggering kindness. What do the aesthetics of different farms say about their practices? Take for example the enormous monoculture crop of corn, bred to choke out all other life with the help of synthetic pesticides, or the tomato bred for uniformity and mechanical sorting. And consider alongside them a permaculture homestead where, despite endeavoring to follow nature’s example, every foot of land has been shaped by human hands. 

Consider also, the loss of control in farming. With the ongoing drought ravaging the West, many of the farmers I knew growing up in Colorado are facing an increasingly bleak future. Native farmers of the Diné, Ute, and other tribes that have farmed in the Southwest for generations no longer can. Farmers everywhere are looking at a future of less and less control. 

Water soluble pigments also have a long human history of control. There are varied traditions of mediums that can be called watercolor, ranging from the 19th century British watercolorists, to the much older brush paintings of East Asia, to prehistoric cave paintings. Watercolor, generally requiring less resources than oil, helped increase access to art in Europe as it gained respect. But watercolor was also used as a tool of British imperialism, with traveling painters in India bringing landscapes back to wealthy British oligarchs to help justify colonization. 

I try to find a middle ground when painting and farming—between wanting to control every inch of a project, and letting it take what form it will. We cannot hold the entirety of things in our small, mortal hands; we have to learn to let things be as they will. Working in watercolor is already giving up a lot of control. Even with the strongest lightfast paint, watercolors will fade eventually. But natural water soluble pigments fade even faster. In some ways, I think I achieved that middle ground with my work this summer, and in others, I didn’t. The amount of control I end up having over my painting is, often, out of my control. 

My painting bag, containing: one chronically messy palette, nine brushes rubber-banded to each other, a bag of pigments, pencils, metal sharpener, sandpaper sharpener, a kneaded eraser that I’m always losing, an ever-growing collection of ink pens, one small sketchbook, and one tiny sketchbook

3: Agriculture and Home, Space and Change

Agriculture is space.

Mancos valley, where I grew up, looking west, towards Mesa Verde and Sleeping Ute, Winter 2021

Megan Tallmadge (left) and my mother Sara Wakefield (right) in the grocery store they founded, Zuma Natural Foods with their children. Photo credit: Megan Tallmadge

My father (far left) covering a high tunnel in the Mancos Valley, circa 2014. Photo credit: Sarah Syverson

The Wily Carrot, an organic vegetable farm in the Mancos Valley, Southwest Colorado, Summer 2021. Photo credit: Kellie Pettyjohn

Kellie Pettyjohn working in a tomato high tunnel, Wily Carrot Farm, 2013. Photo credit: Kellie Pettyjohn, Tim Stubbs

The first “urban community garden” in my life, Mancos Valley Mount Lookout Grange, Summer 2013. Photo credit: Jennifer Bamesberger

Agriculture is change.

New Haven at sunrise from East Rock, Winter 2021

View of Harkness tower, Yale Campus, New Haven from Sterling Library, fall 2021

The Yale Farm, Summer 2022

Sparrow rests next to the Yale Farm tomato high tunnel, Summer 2022

Yale Farm: Hens, Red Oak Butter Lettuce, Sugar Ann Snap Peas, Summer 2022

4: Water

Few things are as essential as water. I tend to enjoy painting, when I can, en plein air—outside, from life. During the hot summer days I spent painting on the Yale Farm this summer, my paint “drank” the same water as I did, poured gently from my nalgene to the little cuts that clip on to the side of my palette. Without water, the brushes and the little dry mounds of pigment on my palette are useless, essentially dead. Similarly, a plant may have roots in the most nutrient rich soil in the world, but without water, it will die. 

I grew up in a place that was more desert than forest or farm. The dry season at home is defined by dusty skies and raging forest fires. But when the winter snow melts in April, and the monsoons arrive in August, the valley blooms. Of course, there has never been a moment I have been alive where the Southwest has not been in a drought. Sometimes it looks like there might never be. And, largely due to agriculture, the Colorado River never reaches the sea. 

5: Care

In Buddhist practice, there are two broad categories of meditation—mindfulness and metta, a sanskrit word meaning loving-kindness. Mindfulness focuses on bringing awareness to the entirety of what a person is experiencing. Loving-kindness focuses on cultivating compassion, often visualized as a light that expands from yourself, to the people you love, to the people you know, to the whole world, to the whole universe. Painting—often sitting rather still with a particular subject or place for many hours on end in solitude and silence—I have learned is a wonderful activity to apply what I have learned in meditation. 

As an active, intentional practice, I love the Yale Farm, and I love agriculture. I think there’s a lot to be said for the potential of agriculture to transform us. This summer I spent a lot of time just sitting with the space, painting. Caring. Asking why it was here, why it was beautiful, why I found it beautiful. Controlling, and letting go of control. Thinking about where I came from. Drinking water from the Yale Farm spigot—which I swear tastes better than any other water in New Haven. And I found most of what I was feeling could not be put into words, but it could be put into color. 

Here are my paintings and sketches. They’re not just of what the Yale Farm looks like, but of the experience of being there. Or, at least, my experience. And I hope they spark some thoughts, or some joy. I hope there’s some beauty to be found here. 

Hens

Sugar Ann Snap Peas

Looking toward Edwards St

Young Corn

Red Oak Butter Lettuce

Incomplete painting of the pavillion

Sketch for apple tree painting

A Sonnet for an Apple Tree

When I consider our time together,

Ere the invocations of the falling leaves,

It will not matter much, I gather

That we, being mortal, must take our leave

In study of the fracturing of light

Into viridescence upon your boughs,

The name of beauty I found I could not write,

But I knew that it did not matter now.

Our bodies carry many questions

But affording them no resolution

No longer loads me with fear or tensions

We seek the deeper roots: revolution.

This is love, not as an afterthought

If you leave the fruit, it may go to rot

(I write one thing: It matters)

Liberty Apple Tree

"Peaking" Into Colorado's Regenerative Agriculture | YFSI '22

This post is part of Natalie Smink’s 2022 Yale Farm Summer Internship Independent Project

This summer I asked myself the question: What is the intersection of ecology, climate change, and agriculture, and how does this intersection point to possible forms of climate change mitigation? Specifically, what does this intersection look like in my home state of Colorado? 

Growing up in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado I had very little exposure to farming. My dad kept a garden in our backyard, but whenever I thought of farming I imagined a grain field far off to the east in the plains or scent of manure carried by the winds from feed lots up north. I was ignorant to the impact of agriculture on the environment and its contribution to climate change and even more oblivious to the fact that it could also serve as a solution. 

Regenerative agriculture is a farming concept that focuses on the health of the soil and overall ecosystem over the yield and its practices stem from indigenous knowledge. By employing certain practices such as low or no tilling, cover cropping, compost application, and livestock integration, regenerative agriculture fosters a healthy soil ecosystem that requires no chemical inputs and is more adaptable to climate fluxes. Regenerative agriculture works with the natural ecosystems to grow food, while also sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere. The philosophies of its practices also extend beyond the field and into social spaces. The wholistic approach to regnerate the land also calls for people to regenerate their connection with the land and for land to be given back to the communities that have historically farmed it. The current industrial practices that are stripping the soils of their nutrients are reliant on the same government systems that have stolen land from indigenous groups and black farmers for hundreds of years. Thus regnerative agriculture calls for a fight against climate change and a fight for social justice. 

Initially, my researching into regenerative farming in Colorado focused on its potential to help protect farmers from the chronic drought conditions that the state faces. Investigating regenerative agriculture in Colorado provided me the opportunity to learn how my home is adapting to changing climates, while also getting to connect with farms in the state. I looked into the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Soil Health Program that is working to educate more farmers on practices that will improve their soil health and identified self-labled regenerative farmers across the state. All of the farms I looked into were small scale farms that offered Community Shared Agriculture programs to their local communities that allow communities members to pay for shares of the farm’s produce. They all used a variety of regenerative farming techniques like no tilling, cover cropping, and compost application. Through a conversation with a regenerative farmer and the implementation of the CDA’s Soil Health Program, regenerative farming practices seem to be gaining momentum through out the state and more farmers are starting to adopt them. This provides hope that overtime these practices will be come more wide spread and will reduce the impact that human agriculture is having on the planet. 

Despite this increasing push towards regenerative farming, through out my research into Colorado regenerative farmers, all but one of the farmers that I encountered was white. This observation leaves me with my next steps to continue this project. I hope to continue investigating agriculture in Colorado, but through a more social lens in the future that asks what Colorado is doing to increase land availability to farmers of color. In order for regenerative farming to truely regenerate the land and the people who live on it, it must fight the systems of injustice that continuously disempower BIPOC communities and keep them from the land. 

Symbiosis and Community, as Taught by Fungi | YFSI '22

This post is part of Raina Sparks’s 2022 Yale Farm Summer Internship Independent Project.

How does a mushroom interact with the world around it? What does a mushroom represent? How can we learn from a mushroom? These were the guiding questions that brought me to center fungi in my final project. Early in my research for the internship, I learned how mycorrhizal fungi use tendrils called hyphae to attach to plant roots and form a symbiotic relationship with them, allowing the roots to uptake more nutrients from the soil and allowing the hyphae sugars from the plant roots. These interactions form robust underground networks which even allow plants to “communicate” with each other by sharing nutrients through mycorrhizae. This set of relationships seemed to me so positive and wholesome, and a wonderful model for healthy community interactions even in human relationships, those formed through mutual exchange and helping each other. This inspired me to use my Independent Project to explore and celebrate fungi, in two parts. First, I chose to explore an embodied practice and grow some Blue Oyster Mushrooms, so as to gain a hands-on understanding of what fungi need to thrive. Second, I used oil pastels to make a few art pieces in celebration of the relationships fostered by fungi, of their abundance and necessity to a healthy community. You can view my full project presentation here.

Maple Syrup: A Sugar Shack’s History | YFSI '22

This post is part of Sasha Carney’s 2022 Yale Farm Summer Internship Independent Project.

I have a longstanding academic, creative, and personal interest in the specific ecology and plants of the Ottawa Valley region, a swathe of unceded Algonquin Anishinaabeg land that straddles from the country’s political capital in anglophone Ontario to the quasi-rural communities of southwestern francophone Québec. I was raised in the city of Ottawa, a sleepy bilingual city of a million that is notable for two things: its strong outdoors culture and investment in the Canadian “wilderness,” and the construction and maintenance of a national Canadian political identity in a city whose primary employer is the federal government.

For my independent project, I looked at the particular ways in which maple tree, and the associated sap drilled from its trunk and refined into a food product, serve as a metonymy for “Canadian identity.” In particular, my final piece, in the form of a creative short story looked at the regional phenomenon of the “sugar shack,” a semi-commercial establishment that operates both the production of syrup and syrup products, and the hosting of guests who are given the opportunity to eat maple-based meals in pioneer-style cabins, boil their own syrup, and feel a “part of” the production processes themselves. Every Ottawa public school student is taken on a yearly field trip to the space; in working on this project, I began the process of digging through and beyond my own affective emotional and memory-based ties to “the sugar shack” and towards their wider cultural and political meaning(s).

Here is a link to my powerpoint presentation on my independent project.

Here is the link to my short story (a work in progress).