Community Food: An Exploration of Cultural Foodscapes Through the Personal and Political| LSI '24

This post is part of Maia Roothaan’s 2024 Lazarus Summer Internship.

1. Around Our Kitchen Table

Out of 10? I’d ask after each of us had taken a bite of this morning’s buttermilk pancakes with flax and chia seeds. I always asked my family members to rate my cooking projects. And I did really wish to know how I could improve my skillset. It was my way of taking care of them, catering to dietary restrictions, flavor palates, comfort foods. 

Hmmmm, 9.5, a little too sweet. But still very good. Thank you, Maia. My dad reached across the table to dollop greek yogurt and applesauce on top of his stack, a combination I always found myself perplexed by. 

They’re good. My younger brother, Oliver, was dipping his pancakes in maple syrup using his hands. Even though we’re now 17 and 20, he still responds in much the same way to my queries. 

So, what’s in them? I loved this question. I still do. I recited the list of ingredients, noting how I’d added some seeds for just a bit of extra protein. 

2. Our Time in Aix

Je vous souviens! Vous êtes la fille qui a acheté la confiture des abricots et lavande, oui? I know you! You’re the girl who bought the jam with lavender and apricots, yes? 

It was one of our last mornings in France. Rose and I had visited the jam man, as we called him, several weeks ago to purchase an Aixoise special–apricot and lavender jam. I’d returned this morning to take in the scenery before this summer was over. 

Aix-en-Provence is a special place, especially for someone who loves food like I do. Each morning, vendors set up stands on cobblestoned streets. The market on the Rue Lapierre was on my path to class each morning. Often, I’d stop during my brisk morning commute to buy some tomatoes for a dinner salad with burrata or apricots for an upside down cake. Interestingly, these markets were cheaper than grocery stores, something I was unfamiliar with due to my American upbringing. 

My family had become regular Farmer’s Market go-ers during the pandemic several years before. I’d spot one of my elementary school teachers buying corn, or one of my friends working at the Hewn bakery stand. It became a spontaneous meeting place in a world that had become so insular. Instead of cobblestone streets, our Farmer’s Market was tucked into a parking lot downtown. We’d go religiously, even if just to buy a few things. 

Forever a hostess, the balcony of my house in Aix was the site of weekly Wednesday dinners. I’ve written, spoken, and thought a lot about these meals. We’d follow a ritual, Rose and I concocting a dessert without measurements (the house didn’t have measuring spoons or cups, something I reminisce on with delight) and Olivia and Isabel making the main and our salad. Each one a variation on the familiar. Hours passed with laughter and conversations I cannot recall, but I do remember the feeling of togetherness that hovered around those meals and on that balcony.

3. Vermont, July 2024

Our car curved along the road, following the path of a steady stream. My eyes took in the mist woven between the mountains ahead. I left my window open in the back despite the cool air whipping through the car, tossing my hair. 

We’d had a weekend full of alternative food, something I was both familiar and unacquainted with from my more urban upbringing. My parents had carved out their own alternative food spaces in our home, making homemade yogurt or bread. It was something they’d been intentional about. Here, it seemed that the practices I questioned growing up were the general cultural drift. 

On our first full day, my friends and I had climbed to the top of Mount Hunger. Our daypacks toted all the typical snack suspects–GORP, peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and some sliced fruit. Although not an uncommon experience, I know we all felt lucky as we ate our sandwiches in contemplative silence. 

Saturday morning consisted of a walk around the Montpelier Farmers Market. In service of learning more about the foodways and culture of those perched behind the tables selling their goods, my eyes fell upon each, deciding who might be most willing to speak with me. Suddenly, I recognized a classmate from my high school in Illinois working behind the breadstand. In this way, I’d become an acquaintance of the unfamiliar. 

Maeve and I spoke for a few minutes. Finally, I nervously told her about my project, hoping that she might have insight into the story of Red Hen Breads. Randy, the owner, came over and eagerly explained how he’d always been baking bread. 

Probably since I was three years old, with my mother. My mind flitted to helping my dad bake bread in our Breadmaster and returned to our conversation. I’ve always wondered if it’s the things we’re passionate about innately, when we’re young, that we will somehow make a return to. 

Later, I parted ways with my friends to see which other vendors I might be able to speak to. I found myself drawn to a honey and foraged mushroom stand. On one side jars of honey were displayed in varying shades of amber and opaqueness with dipping sticks to try each before purchase. I first tested the buckwheat honey–it was reminiscent of a Serbian wild honey brought to us by a family friend. 

I began to talk with Dave, the owner, who told me that his favorite way to eat his honey was by concocting a chocolate bar with a honeycomb filling. 

So, how’d you get into beekeeping? I picked up a jar of creamy honey, one of my favorite types to spread on an open-face slice of bread. 

It was this man right over there! Rick–he’s the one who got me into the beekeeping world. I’d noticed earlier how the two had engaged animatedly, laughing and cracking jokes with their customers. I smiled to myself, thinking about how the foods we come to love were like fingerprints we could leave on the lives of others. 

Sonya’s Subaru pulled into the driveway of the farm hosting the second annual Butterfest. After several hours of barn dancing and swimming in the river nearby to the farm, my friends and I joined the group of people gathered around a long table piled with potluck dishes. Clad in a butter-yellow dress, our host explained that this event was meant to commemorate the spirit of butter, of richness, and of community. 

My friends and I propped ourselves up against picnic tables, surveying the crowd as we ate our tapas-style meal. It was just the hour in the evening when everything was covered in the glowy haze one can usually only grasp on a movie screen. I began to realize, more and more, that the foodscape I wished to see, and had glimpsed here, in Vermont, was one cultivated by my community and individuals, rather than the invisible hands of government I’d frequently been taught could create successful preservation of foodways. 

As I look toward the future, I hope to continue writing about food, people, and my own relationship to both. Community and care drive food, and I plan to continue noticing how both seep into our American consciousness, something that is valuable in part because of the impossibility of encapsulating all of its truths.

Three Cakes & a Strawberry Salad | LSI '24

This post is part of Grey Battle’s 2024 Lazarus Summer Internship.

A few months ago, as my grandmother lay in a hospital bed, she told me, "You may not make Southern food, but you cook like a Southerner." She was sipping Cauliflower Miso Soup from a teaspoon when she added, "What I mean by that is, you don't make what we make, but you love people with food the way we do."

I am a well-fed child, and my grandmother, great-grandmother, and aunts are all teachers. I learned to read by sounding out recipes in a small, blue kitchen nestled among the trees in Tanner-Williams, Alabama. Here, I learned to set serveware, spell name cards, grin and swallow casseroles, say please and thank you, and hold hands for prayer around the dining room table. 

This project is an adaptation of four cherished family recipes, previously published in community cookbooks, to a plant-based style of baking. I have subbed ingredients, recalculated ratios, and transformed methods, allowing traditional recipes room to breathe, grow, and be inclusively shared and passed down. 

The traditional foods found in this booklet connect me to the women who raised me, and through these adaptations, this bond is strengthened. The language of loving through food is not constrictive but endlessly creative—a language my family taught me to speak and one I now share with you.

Find the zine here.

Modeling RegenAg Transition Finance | LSI '24

This post is part of Gus Renzin’s 2024 Lazarus Summer Internship.

It took me about five minutes to decide what I wanted my independent project this summer to focus on. Regenerative agriculture is just that awesome. Although no one single definition for it exists—some organizations classify a farm as regenerative based on practices (eg. cover cropping, no-till, mulching), others based on the outcomes (like raising soil organic matter levels, reducing runoff, and improving working conditions), and still others based on embracing certain foundational principles such maintaining living roots and welcoming animals—the bottom line is this: regenerative agriculture is all about farming in ways that leave land healthier than we found it. Farms practicing regenerative agriculture sequester more carbon, are more resilient to climate change and extreme weather events, and are more ecologically beneficial than conventional farms.

Given the numerous advantages that regenerative agriculture offers, I was surprised by the fact that less than 2% of US farms are regenerative. My immediate assumption was that the environmental benefits of regenerative agriculture must come at a financial cost, but nearly every report I read on the subject seemed to point in the opposite direction: studies by the Soil Health Institute and the American Farmland Trust used partial budget analysis methods to demonstrate that—even without upping prices or taking advantage of burgeoning ecosystem service and carbon markets—regenerative farms are, on average, significantly more profitable than they would be if operated conventionally. Regenerative farmers are rewarded for their focus on soil health with reduced dependence on expensive inputs like fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides, and as a result, wider margins.

The major roadblock to widespread adoption of regenerative agriculture, I've come to learn, is the period of depressed profitability that occurs as farmers transition from conventional to regenerative agriculture. Quite simply, it takes time for the land (and the farmer) to adjust to a new way of doing things, and in the interim, yields can suffer and costs can rise. According to studies by BCG and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Bain and the World Economic Forum, and the Environmental Defense Fund, farmers must often weather several years of significant losses before hitting original and then increased levels of profitability.

Learning this was the impetus for my independent project this summer. I decided to treat the transition to regenerative as an investment, model farm-level cash flows over time, and ultimately analyze the financial viability of the transition through a capital budgeting lens. I began by compiling data from the Soil Health's Institute's study, ECONOMICS of Soil Health Systems on 30 U.S. Farms, which used partial budget analysis to compare per-acre profitability of 30 existing regenerative farms to projected levels of profitability if they were to be operated conventionally. Using the projected levels of conventional profitability as a baseline, I used excel to create this interactive tool to model a 6 year transition to regenerative agriculture for each farm that ultimately results in each farm achieving its actual level of profitability as a regenerative farm and maintaining those levels (adjusted annually for projected inflation) in subsequent years. The tool allows the user to choose the discount rate, average rate of inflation, interest rate, and one of eight options for projected transition losses based on scenarios proposed in "100 Million Farmers: Breakthrough Models for Financing a Sustainability Transition" and "Cultivating Farmer Prosperity: Investing in Regenerative Agriculture" and see the 12, 20, and 100 year IRR and NPV for each farm transition as well as the amount of time it would take for the farmer to repay a loan that would cover transition losses (which is one type of arrangement that innovative new financial firms in the regenerative agriculture space are using to support farmers through the transition). In addition to demonstrating which transitions are ultimately sound investments, the tool can help viewers to visualize the enormous economic potential of the regenerative transition as well as the risks that it poses, even for farms that are—from an operational and ecological standpoint—successful.

Overall, working on my independent project this summer has been an incredible experience. I've learned more about regenerative agriculture, financial modeling, and the workings of Microsoft Excel than I could have hoped. The most important thing I've learned, though, is how much must be done before a widespread transition to regenerative agriculture is viable. The work done by organizations like the Soil Health Institute, the American Farmland Trust, Bain, BCG, and the Environmental Defense Fund is incredible, and they shed light on the enormous financial and environmental potential of regenerative agriculture. But they—and by extension my tool—are nowhere near comprehensive enough to give farmers or financial institutions the information they need to confidently embrace the regenerative transition. The read-world data required to create accurate models just isn't there yet.

For widespread adoption of regenerative practices to be viable, farmers need reliable tools that can accurately predict how regenerative transitions will impact both their land and their bank accounts, and financial institutions need to deeply understand the risks and rewards that they expose themselves to in supporting those farmers. The need for far greater real-world data collection is clear, but as more and more information about the financial implications of actual transitions—not just projections—comes to light, I have no doubt that farmers and investors alike will confidently embrace regenerative agriculture.

Floral Pigments: A Recipe for Water-Soluble Printmaking Ink | LSI '24

This post is part of Sonya Sagan-Dworsky’s 2024 Lazarus Summer Internship.

This summer my independent project grew from a continued interest in process as a form of artistic expression. As a sculptor and printmaker I am constantly playing with my definition of a finished piece. So much of the joy that surrounds my artistic practice grows from an appreciation for method, material and the act of physical experimentation. I view my work as a visual record of the time and labor that goes into the piece itself and all the materials or tools needed for the piece’s creation. 

For my project I chose to focus on relief printmaking because the medium straddles painting and sculpture. Even though the carved block is used to transfer the image onto paper the object can also exist as a piece of art.  Reduction prints, a specific method  of relief printmaking, requires the artist to revisit the same block and continue carving as a new color is applied on top of the previous prints. The process results in a final print with enhanced visual depth, but also limits the number of editions of the image. 

Nori Paste Base
1. Mix 3 Tbsp or 20 grams of rice flour with 100 ml of cold water. Stir and set aside. 
2. Heat up 150 ml of water in a small saucepan until boiling.
3. Pour rice flour mixture into boiling water and begin whisking constantly. Whisk until mixture thickens and becomes translucent, about five minutes.
4. Turn off heat and whisk until mixture is lukewarm. Transfer to a glass container and place in the refrigerator until cold. Mixture will last for two to three days.

Pigment Powder
1. Harvest fresh Marigold and Cosmos blossoms plucking flowers from stem.
2. Pack blossoms tightly on the shelves of the dehydrator separating marigolds and cosmos. Set to low temp and dry for at least twenty four hours.  
3. Once dry, place blossoms in an airtight container. If desired, separate marigolds by color into yellow and orange flowers. 
4. For Marigolds take scissors and cut blossoms away from seed pod minimizing any green material from being cut. For Cosmos either pull petals from the center by hand or carefully cut petals loose. 
5. Place a half cup of dried petals into the spice grinder. Begin grinding, adding more dried petals until powder covers blades of grinder. Blend for multiple minutes for a fine powder. If needed, sifted powder with fine mesh sieve before storing in an airtight container. 

Printmaking Ink
1. Mix equal parts water with alcohol preferably gin which is best for archival purposes. I use about one teaspoon of each for four prints worth of ink. 
2. Slowly add gin and water mixture to one tablespoon of pigment powder until a thick smooth consistency is achieved. If too liquidy, continue adding pigment powder.
3. Mix two tablespoons of nori paste into the pigment mixture with a palette knife making sure there are no lumps. Once smooth take a soft brayer and roll out ink. Listen for a sticky noise and even coverage on the brayer. Roll ink onto prepared woodblock, applying two to three coats.
4a. When using a press, adjust pressure to work with the thickness of the carved block. Place dry paper on top of the inked block and roll through twice stopping in the middle to switch direction. Pull paper off the block and place on the drying rack. 
4b. When working by hand, place paper on an inked block and apply even pressure with a barren or back of one’s hand. 
5. Pull paper off the block and place on the drying rack.

A Summer of Fermentation on the Yale Farm | LSI '24

This post is part of Hardy Eville’s 2024 Lazarus Summer Internship.

This past fall, I brewed my first batch of beer for the Yale Farm. Over the rest of the academic year, I continued to brew and expanded into other forms of fermentation – making a few varieties of miso during the winter. My goal for the Lazarus Summer Internship was to build on these projects. I wanted to undertake projects that highlighted the summer produce of the Yale Farm, preserving some of these flavors for students to try in the Fall and Winter months. I also endeavored to experiment with new methods, build a better repertoire of fermentation techniques, and work on developing my own recipes. 

Why fermentation? I see fermentation as a unique way to process the many things that grow on the Yale Farm. Apart from additions like salt and sugar, many fermented products are not mixed with any additional ingredients as they would with cooking. I see fermentation as a way to enhance the flavors of any produce by bringing out qualities that already exist within it. With fermentation, less inputs (besides waiting time) are needed to create diverse flavors.

Over the course of the summer, I was very aware of the timing of everything growing at the farm. In order to properly ferment things on schedule I had to know exactly when something would be ripe or in bloom. Through this, I felt very connected with the week by week changes of the farm. There was always an exciting anticipation about what would be ready next for a project. I also enjoyed thinking about the ways to process each ingredient, deciding between kombucha, beer, vinegar, lacto-fermentation, miso pickling, koji fermentation, and more. 

Recipes:

Oysters and Sunshine | knead 2 know ft. Elizabeth Chivers '26

Friday, October 13th saw a bright sunny sky, which supercharged a very productive workday at the Yale Farm. Among merry chatter people uncovered sweet potatoes, strung red pepper ristras, and harvested basil in large buckets. In the midst of mid autumn stress, workday participants also dyed strips of fabric into a dye bath of turmeric powder and ʻŌlena. Soon the fabric will be knitted together and strung up into a garland to adorn the Lazarus Pavilion during the Indigenous Fall Feast later this month. After a full fall workday, everyone made their way to the pavilion afterwards to listen to the Friday talk by Yale sophomore Elizabeth Chivers ’26. 

Chivers was a Lazarus Summer Intern this summer who undertook independent research over the summer about the dynamics of change, relationships, and industry in the Point Judith Pond Oyster Farms with the goal of answering one question: “What are the defining practices and economics of Southern Rhode Island’s oyster aquaculture?” She conversed with three local farmers on-the-ground to hear their experiences on practices, as well as how the practices have changed in response to global warming over the years. 

Among the interviewees was Harvey Cataldo, founder and owner of Bluff Hill Cove Oyster Company. The primary method used by their farm is the floating bag system, where the mechanisms are spread out horizontally over the ocean’s surface. Chivers also added discussion about how climate change has impacted the industry from the point of view of people constantly engaged in it, highlighting to the audience how global warming results in higher water temperatures, which in turn leads to higher bacteria growth in the sea. This results in a higher likelihood of people getting sick from seafood, a challenge that those in the oyster industry have had to face more and more urgently in recent years. Another interviewee was Chris Morris, a fisherman and a lifelong resident of Rhode Island, who discussed his first-hand observations of oyster farming throughout his many years as an active member. His individual perspective provided a complementary contrast to Cataldo’s larger-scale one. The third interviewee was Mick Chivers, a college student receiving mentorship from Cataldo and Morris as someone new to the industry. The intensive interview-based project drew observations in three primary realms, namely the changes oyster farms have noted from warming sea waters, the relationships between people in the industry, and how technology and policy have shaped the industry as we know it today. 

Chivers’ personal connection to her research project led to a high-impact presentation, which was then followed by inspiring and thoughtful conversation as The New Blue a cappella group performed. Read her Voices post recapping more of her project here. Pizza and concord grapes made their way through the crowd as the sun began to set. 

Photos from the event by Elio Wentzel ’26 and Arrow Zhang ’26 can be found here. 

The Effects of the Old Acre’s Hill on Its Soil | LSI '23

This post is part of Pete Muhitch’s 2023 O’Donohue Summer Fellowship.

The Yale Farm’s slope uniquely impacts both its above-ground management and the structure and properties of the soil that lies beneath. Along the farm’s hill, are a series of berms running north to south. The berms, consisting of a wonderful variety of perennial herbs and flowers, are in place to mitigate runoff, erosion, and leaching, and carve out a flatter surface for crop production. Pictured below is a map and picture of the farm from the perspective of the path between beds 2U and MAPLE. The yellow lines highlight the elevation change of the land, while the blue lines highlight the berms. 

On its own small scale, the Old Acre slope and its terraces tie the Yale Farm into a global history of farming on hillsides. Indeed numerous societies across the world have employed terracing techniques to transform thin-soiled slopes into soils viable for agriculture. A cursory wikipedia search offers rice farming in mountainous areas of Vietnam as one prime example. 

Topography is a major factor of a given soil’s development. As biological, chemical, and physical processes weather a parent rock (in the case of the Yale Farm, a reddish sandstone called New Haven Arkose) into soil, gravity can transport soil particles depending on an area's topography. Pictured below is a slide adapted from a presentation from Scott Fendorf PhD, a Stanford University soil scientist. This topography principle suggests that soils at the base of a slope tend to be deeper and wetter, as a result of the leaching and accumulation of fine-particle clays from the upper parts of the slopes. Soils on a slope, therefore, will be shallower and more rich in heavier sand particles, and resultantly are well drained. 

With a historic and scientific backdrop of hillside farming, this project aims to study what effects, if any, the slope has yield on the farm’s soil in varying locations. Acknowledging my own lack of expertise in soil science, to the best of my abilities, the goals of this project were to (1) determine the chemical and physical properties of the Yale Farm soil, (2) determine any variance in soil properties versus soil position on the slope, and (3) determine any variance between cultivated and uncultivated soils. In pursuit of accomplishing these goals, I was able to practice soil field analysis techniques, offer scientific suggestions for patterns in the soils, and further inform one thread of the farm’s narrative (its hill!) with data collected. 

A series of four holes were dug to study these thoughts. Though more holes would increase the accuracy of the project, at a certain point too many holes would be beyond the scope of the project (digging is laborious and impractical for the farm). The location of each hole is denoted with an ‘X’ in the map above. Each site was selected to form a line down the hillside, in order to compare the soil at various points along the slope. A hole was additionally dug in field 2M to discover the effects twenty years of agriculture has had on the soil there, compared to the rest of the hill around it. At each site, the soil’s horizons, depth, texture, aggregation, relative wetness, color, and nutrient content was assessed. Texture was determined using the wire method; the Munsell soil color guidebook was used to determine color and aggregation; samples of the near-surface soil of each site were collected and sent to the University of Connecticut soil nutrient laboratory for analysis. Below are the physical results of the project. 

Hill, 41.32041 N, 72.92198 W:

The soil at the hill site consisted of a sandy, well drained, reddish soil (increasing numbers before YR in the color column denotes a change in hue from red to yellow, i.e lower numbers before YR mean a redder hue). After around 26 inches of digging, I reached what I refer to (throughout this project) as the soil’s BC horizon. Though not quite a C horizon of unconsolidated rock, the BC horizon still largely contains soil particles, but is significantly rockier (and more annoying to dig) than the B horizon that lies above. At the risk of oversimplification, I will describe basic soil horizons: an O horizon consists of organic matter and detritus at the surface of the ground; an A horizon is the uppermost soil level, typically high in organic matter and home to plant roots; the B horizon is found below the A, and is lower in organic matter but higher in rock derived nutrients, which are weathered from the C horizon; the C horizon is unconsolidated rock material, just starting to be weathered in soil. Beneath the C horizon is rock. Texture and color changes commonly denote a change in horizon. 

Upper farm, 41.32036 N, 72.92130 W:

The upper farm hole was the most difficult and confusing hole of the project. The soil there is very compacted, sandy (to the point I could not form a ball for the texture test), and shallow. After 28 inches of hard digging, I reached what I believed to be a C layer of solid, impenetrable red rock. This soil presented the same red hue as the hill site.

Field 2M, 41.32036 N, 72.92132 W:

Field 2M yielded a greater clay content than the two higher dig locations. This included a Bt horizon, referring to a translocation, or leaching, of clay to the B horizon of more than 20% increase from the upper horizon. 2M is also deeper (requiring 33 inches of digging before the BC layer was reached) and of a more yellow hue than the upper locations. The relative moisture of this site is altered by the field’s irrigation, resulting in a very dry surface soil, but wetter in the more clay-rich deeper regions. 

Lower farm, 41.32036 N, 72.92133 W:

The most clay rich soil was found at the lowest dig site, which aligns with the topography principle of soil formation. This hole had the same yellow-ish hue of 2M, but required more than 43 inches of digging before any semblance of a BC horizon was reached. As a result of its clay content, it was the moistest soil of the project as well. 

Overall physical results: 

**relative wetness affected by irrigation schedules 

The principle of topography and resulting soil properties largely hold true on the old acre. Lower dig sites tended to yield wetter, deeper, more clay rich soils, while the upper two sites were sandier, shallower, and drier. The upper farm site does preclude the farm from perfectly following the topography principle, with abnormally shallow and coarse for its slope position. This could be due to leaching from the slope it is on, but also could be a result of other factors, such as the berm lying above it trapping erosion from the upper slope, or the many tree roots that surround it. Another perennial possibility is that the land was altered by unbeknownst human activity. Upper soils also tended to be redder. I offer the following explanation: soil color is largely determined by the predominant oxidation state of the soil’s iron. Given the difference in moisture and other physical properties of the upper and lower dig sites, the iron oxidation could be likewise different, explaining the color difference. 

The topography principle also has implications for a soil’s nutrient content. Nutrient leaching will often occur on slopes as a result of runoff, causing nutrients to settle at the bottom of a hill. Moreover, clays and organic matter, also more abundant at a hill’s base, generally have a greater capacity to hold nutrients due to greater particle surface area.

Hill: 

Upper Farm:

2M:

Lower Farm:

Overall there does appear to be a greater concentration of nutrients, and a higher pH, at the base of the hill on the farm. While it is possible that this is due in part to topography and the accumulation of clay there, it is likely because the soils of the farm have been affected by 20 years of fertilization and lime application. It is therefore clear that years of farming has drastically increased the soil’s fertility and improved its pH. These improvements appear to not be limited to the field 2M, the only site currently being cultivated, but extend to the other on-farm sites (upper and lower farm holes). This could be a result of leaching of fertilizer, or due to an accumulation of nutrients at the base of the steeped part of the hill. Regardless, the data shows a greater nutrient content, pH, cation exchange capacity, and base saturation in the three on-farm soils tested in contrast to the hill site. 

Revisiting the goals of the project, the four holes dug largely appear to uphold the topography principle of soil formation, as the project does show a trend of deeper, more clay rich and fertile soils at the base of the hill. Cultivated soils also tend to be more fertile and higher in pH, but this does not appear to be localized to beds that are currently being cultivated. Personally, it was great fun to get dirty, dig some holes, and practice some soil science techniques while investigating this unique characteristic of the Yale farm. 

Dynamics of Change, Relationships, and Industry; Point Judith Pond Oyster Farmers’ Reflections | LSI '23

This post is part of Elizabeth Chiver’s 2023 Lazarus Summer Internship.

I grew up with four brothers in Rhode Island, where we were raised by two distinctively wise parents who loved teaching us. One central part of this education-rich upbringing was the way we explored and strengthened the capacity to sustain ourselves and others using the land and sea surrounding our home. We dug, weeded, raked, fed, harvested, and caught in the blooming backyard, shallow salt ponds, messy coops, and open ocean that I call home. It was a vein of my life that so wholly centered a meaningful ethos and community. Ths vein is even more present in the experiences of my father and many of his friends, who engage with these practices on an industry level. The understandings and ways of learning cultivated by growing up in this context have been deeply defining to my personhood and perspective. When I was offered the opportunity to delve into a food-related topic for my independent project, I knew I wanted to return to my home state and communities, centering the breadth of experience, knowledge, and sovereignty that food producers in the area possess. One industry that particularly interested me was the oyster aquaculture industry, which is blossoming, sustainable, and local in ways inherent to its product and contexts. I decided to conduct interviews with oyster farmers who work in the Point Judith Salt Pond and ended up centering three–Chris Morris, Harvey Cataldo, and Mick Chivers–who all share common connections. I wanted this to be guided by their voices and reflections, rather than preconceived vision, so my research question was loose, asking “what are the defining practices and economics of Southern Rhode Island’s oyster aquaculture?” 

I headed to the salt pond a few times, each day with a list of questions and an open mind. Standing on the docks, we looked over the gear and bags as each of the interviewees reflected broadly on their skills, contexts, and work. The focus shifted; as I conducted my interviews with these farmers, I noticed the topics that kept cropping up and the threads that connected them to one another. I was left with hours of recorded interviews rich with parallels and intersections going far deeper and beyond just “defining practices and economics.” Those were certainly central aspects of the conversation, but I noticed that the reflections and memories shared in the interviews were defined by three core dynamics – change, relationships, and industry. Further, one relationship in particular stuck out as a root for each person’s connection to the work – that with brother, fisherman, mentor, and lifelong Rhode Islander Tom Hoxsie, who passed away in 2021. With this in mind, I opted to write an account of what was pertinent and omnipresent throughout these interviews, with the aim of highlighting the knowledge and recollections of these three different individuals, with their varied positionalities and perspectives.

My final project takes the form of a written piece. On an academic level, it provided me an opportunity to attempt new ways of learning and sharing information in a way that was true to the interviewees that first held and shared it. The project involved learning to utilize new technology, conducting dynamic interviews, responding to a depth of information, and synthesizing different but overlapping voices into an informative, truthful piece. The material and experience garnered throughout this project is thanks to the farmers who shared their labor and minds with me and my Sony recorder. The gift of their rich voices enables so much further thought on what the food and fishing industry looks like, particularly at this personal scale. It is clear that relationships to land and sustenance (of self, of community, of climate) are vital ones, as seen in their experiences, in my childhood, and wherever people grow and eat. 

This writing is linked here (in progress). It centers the knowledge and memory expressed by these farmers, with the aim of accurately recording these practitioners' reflections on their defining practices and experiences of the industry, one which lends itself well to sustainability, growth, and small-scale ownership.

Additionally, the slides I used for my presentation are linked here.

The Three Sisters of Abya Yala: Mesoamerican Histories of Agroforestry, Animacy, and Agency | LSI '23

This post is part of Rebecca Salazar’s 2023 Lazarus Summer Internship.

A bit on creating a podcast episode for my independent project: I chose to record a short pilot episode for my project because I wanted to move away from the traditional written academic work and think about how sound and movement, all those things that contribute to the animacy of life, cannot be flattened down into the written word. In the podcast I reflect on my positionality as a reconnecting native who was raised mestize but prefers to take on the placeholder of xicanx identity. My experience in dissecting why the Three Sisters is a site of resistance and rematriation has been the basis of my understanding of the role of seedkeeper as somebody who maintains the sanctity of plant-human relationships and can place them in terms of the community-identity that characterizes diverse indigenous communities. The cross-time and cross-generation relationship or kinship building that maintains life and culture today has given me hope for our relationship to the earth and the role of indigenous activists, farmers, scholars, and people to lead the way in restoring human-non-human relationships during the growth of climate change as a symptom of neocolonialism. 

Listen to the podcast episode The Three Sisters of Abya Yala: Mesoamerican Histories of Agroforestry, Animacy, and Agency below:

Mapping the "Grandparents' Garden"

What’s in a history of a garden?

I first learned about the Grandparents’ Garden** through fellow Yale Sustainable Food Program student and friend, Addee Kim. We were at our friend Lauren Kim’s Knead 2 Know talk on urban food forests in Taiwan, when Addee mentioned the Garden during the Q & A session. At the time, I had just formally accepted my summer internship with the Yale Farm, the beginning of a (hopefully!) lifelong engagement with food systems, food justice, and sustainable agriculture. I knew I wanted to do my independent project on the Garden, even though I had never been there, let alone walked past it.

When Covid-19 outbreaks worsened across the United States, I struggled with finding ways to connect with the gardeners. People were already on edge, so a stranger walking over and striking up a conversation would likely cause alarm or at the very least, discomfort. Given that many of the gardeners were elderly, I hesitated to conduct ethnographic research face-to-face in the first few weeks of my internship. What follows is a mental and visual roadmap of the many, many conversations with people— from my housemates Emily Sigman and Steve Winter to our next door neighbor Caroline Posner (one of the few younger, non-immigrant gardeners)— that eventually led me to meeting several gardeners, who have their own sections below. This project would not be possible without them, their patience, generosity, and openness to a complete stranger. Aside from those who have a direct connection to the Garden, I am incredibly grateful to Jacquie Munno, Sarah Mele, Erwin Li, Abby Lee, and Mark Bomford for giving me insightful guidance throughout this project period.

This project is ultimately the culmination of my journey among a web of interrelated people and communities. My time in New Haven this summer has also given me time to experiment with gardening and growing. I like to think that by doing gardening every day across the street from the Grandparents’ Garden, I was engaging in an indirect form of “participant observation.” By learning and experiencing the challenges of growing vegetables from seed with limited knowledge and resources, I could also manage to understand some of the challenges and delights that my neighbor gardeners were experiencing.

A link to the full zine can be found here.

**The “Grandparents’ Garden” is an informal name, one that I choose to use throughout this zine for ease of reference. I borrow this name from Addee, and from local news articles that highlight the elderly demographic of the Gardeners.

It is important to note that not all of the gardeners are necessarily grandparents, and even more so, that the Garden is living and transforming even as I conduct my research. Even my usage of the term “Grandparents’ Garden” (rather than “the garden” or “my plot”) denotes my status as an outside observer looking in, since each gardener has their own ways of naming and thinking about the Garden.

We Could Play Eden All Day

Failed Inosculation, Part of Multimedia Project by Angela Higuera ‘22.

“Do you know what it’s like to live on land who loves you back?” - Danez Smith, Don’t Call Us Dead

For the Yale Farm summer internship, I created a multimedia project that explores my relationship to land and agriculture.

The conception of my project first occurred after reading William Cronon’s astute piece, “The Trouble with Wilderness.” His was the first piece of writing I had come across to explicitly question and undermine my own understanding of Nature and the American landscape. I’ve always been drawn to landscapes for their unique ability to convey our subdued emotional states. Contemporary photographers, such as Rebecca Norris Webb and Jennifer Garza-Cuen, were great inspirations; they both use people-less shots of American landscapes to express internal turmoil. Only after reading “Changes in the Land” by Cronon and “Uncommon Ground,” a series of essays concerning the human relationship to land, did I become attuned to the ways Webb’s and Cuen’s images reify our mythologized portrayal of Nature.

The imagery in this exhibit is accompanied by excerpts from Danez Smith’s book of poetry, Don’t Call Us Dead. Smith’s poems —in addition to discussing a plethora of challenges specific to Black Americans— offer Land as an ever shifting and complex character. “we could play Eden all day” is a line from Smith’s poem, “Summer, somewhere.” Though this current body of work doesn’t explicitly address the role that Western religion plays in my fraught relationship to land, the title is meant to suggest an alternative and liberating understanding of Christianity’s confined representation of Nature, one that celebrates the mundane and encourages human engagement with our non-human material surroundings.

To view the full multimedia project, click here.