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buckets of collard and chard

New this semester – cooking tips, recipes, and what to do with your CSA share!

Are you a new student CSA member? Don’t know a chef’s knife from a paring knife? Can’t tell the difference between collards and chard? Never fear, the Food, Farm, and Sustainability Blog is here for you!   This semester, we will posting weekly recipes, cooking skills, and announcements of classes or other events to help you learn how to cook (or become a better cook than you already are), how t
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display of CSA vegetables

Free Veggie CSA shares for Hampshire College students!!

FundCom and the Hampshire College Farm are excited to announce that in order to increase food options for students, we are offering FREE Hampshire College Farm Vegetable Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Shares to mod residents – sponsored by the Student Activities Fund! Individual Mods in Prescott, Enfield, and Greenwich are eligible to sign up for free CSA shares beginning on August 1. Share availability
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red seed against black background

Save our Seeds: The Crisis in Seed Diversity

Thanks to everyone who came out for our showing last night of SEED: The Untold Story! If you want to take action on protecting seed diversity, here are some terrific ideas: https://www.seedthemovie.com/takeaction/. If you missed our screening, it is about the severe but relatively-unknown crisis in seed diversity, its implications for the planet, and what people around the world are doing to try to solve the problem.
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3 people in cafeteria behind table featuring local food

Hampshire College Farm and Bon Appetit team up for a big win!!

Congratulations to Executive Chef Jamil Asad for his Local Food Challenge meal on September 26th, which was in the top three out of 44,000 Bon Appetit submissions in the country!! It featured primarily Hampshire College Farm produce, with a few additional products from Horse Listener’s Orchard and Four Star Farms. Go Team Local!! Did we mention that it was delicious? Because it sure was!! As many readers of thi
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Sow in straw hat by waterer

Researching and Raising Gloucestershire Old Spots

As promised in the previous post, we wanted to provide you with more details on the Gloucestershire Old Spot breeding program, a student-run project by April Nugent, 15F, funded by the Coppinger Research Grant. This study involves breeding heritage pigs in two separate environments (pasture and woodlot) and then comparing the pigs raised on pasture with the pigs raised on woodlot, with the goal of providing baseline
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Nancy Hanson in field harvesting veggies

Nancy Hanson – 2017 Carol and Blair Brown Staff Excellence Award Winner!!

  Congratulations to the Farm’s own Nancy Hanson, CSA Manager and 2017 winner of the Carol and Blair Brown Award for Staff Excellence!! This prestigious, community-based award recognizes a staff member’s exceptional contribution to the College. As one letter of support says, “At Hampshire College, Nancy has provided exceptional service, created cross-campus connections, fostered diversity and i
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NOFA Summer Conference returns to Hampshire College!

Be part of this annual celebration of the organic movement! 2017 NOFA Summer Conference August 11-13, 2017 Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass. The NOFA Summer Conference is a three day solutions-oriented annual celebration of the grassroots organic movement. Gardeners, farmers, growers and food-lovers from across the Northeast will again share their inspiration and ideas for organic food, farming, health, activism, and
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Botanical explorer Joseph Simcox brings new seeds to Hampshire Farm

by Eve Allen, F14 On a warm Wednesday afternoon in early March, botanical explorer and ethnobotanist, Joseph Simcox, paid a visit to the Hampshire College Farm to distribute seeds in promotion of his Gardens Across America project. Joseph has spent decades circling the globe documenting, tasting, and collecting the seeds of thousands of rare and underutilized edibles. Visiting over 100 countries and collecting the se
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Food, Farming, and Climate: Discussions at Hampshire and in Paris

While national leaders met in Paris this past week to work toward collaborative solutions to climate change, author and 5 College professor Michael Klare delivered the annual Jackie Pritzen Lecture here at Hampshire College, focusing on conflict and resource depletion in the climate change era. Klare described a future in which croplands in Africa, Asia, and America turn to dustbowls, fisheries fail, and billions of
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November Farm Bulletin

Monthly updates from the farm recorded by Owen Aptekar-Cassels F14 with input from Farmers Nancy Hanson and Jason Dragon. The shift in weather patterns that made this an amazing growing season also affects the lives of insects. This year’s experimental Brussels sprouts crop, the first on the farm in 10 years, was covered in gray aphids that do well in warm weather. Next season the farm plans to adapt by introducing l
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Report: Accounting Systems for the 100% Local Food Challenge By Joshua Minot and Shelby Gaiss

In March of 2015, student interns Joshua Minot F12 and Shelby Gaiss F13 were tasked to track and record Bon Appetit’s local purchasing practices in the context of Hampshire’s 100% Local Food Challenge and to conduct preliminary research and analysis around the Real Food Challenge in comparison to Hampshire’s Sustainable Food Purchasing Guidelines. Over the past several months, the interns have worked to identify all
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Finding beauty through Farm Work: Reflections on the Growing Season

Owen Aptekar-Cassels is a third-year student at Hampshire College and one of 4 Hampshire students who worked as a vegetable farm intern this summer. I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for months, but I’m only now, when popcorn and pumpkin plants that started off so small and strong are now fruiting and dying back, getting the chance to write it. Farming can make other things slip to the side, I’m learning. My
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1200 Pounds of Blueberries Bound for Campus Dining Hall!

How many blueberries would it take to feed Hampshire College for a year? This was the question campus farmer Nancy Hanson asked dining service general manager Jim Lachance last July. Farmer Nancy proposed to take her hard working crew of student farmers out of the campus vegetable fields and up to the blueberry barrens of the Berkshires to pick enough berries to supply the dining for the entire school year. According
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