Fresh Vegetables, Fresh Eggs, and Fresh Ideas

In a few weeks, our campus will be repopulated with students, signalling a shift on the farm from planting and weeding to harvesting. The CSA barn will be all hustle and bustle starting on August 26th when our first crop of vegetables will be picked and washed and promptly packed away in member’s tote bags at the first share distribution. The campus CSA has been an essential facet of Hampshire College for over 20 years.

An early CSA distribution in the Thorpe Barn.

The program was started as a divisional project in 1992 with an initial membership of 30 shareholders. Today our membership is over 6 times what it was then, and is comprised of faculty, staff, and students not just from Hampshire College but from the entire 5 College Community. The CSA is great way for Hampshire’s shared living communities to have access to fresh, local produce without having to leave campus. Roughly 35% of our shares go to the student population, and for those students who won’t be preparing their own meals, Bon Appetit will be purchasing 50 shares this fall for use in the dining commons.

If you haven’t reserved a CSA share yet, there’s no time like the present! Share pickup up is once a week from August 26th through November 21st and includes a wide variety of vegetables, all grown right on the Hampshire College Farm! Members also have access to the bountiful Pick-Your-Own fields of flowers, beans, tomatoes, and herbs! Sign Up Online >>

In order to have so many gorgeous vegetables ready for the dining hall and our fall CSA, someone had to do all of the work. Our vegetable work crew has put in countless hours seeding, transplanting, pruning, mowing, hoeing, and hand-weeding! In their spare time, Walter and Matt have also been interning this summer managing the Market Garden and the Community Garden. Look at some of the beautiful things Ali, Elijah, Matt, and Walter have grown this summer:

While the vegetable crew has been cultivating the foundations of a fruitful CSA season, the Livestock crew has been involved in the very exciting establishment of a large flock of laying hens here at Hampshire. Over the summer, the farm has acquired 300 chickens that will be supplying all of the eggs used by the dining commons throughout the school year. Sophie, Danny, Alex, and Sophie have been integral to this project – constructing three hen houses and establishing routines for moving the mobile grazing pens throughout the pastures. The structures are designed to allow the birds access to plenty of fresh grass, while protecting them from aerial predators like hawks. The student crew moves all three hoop houses daily to keep the chickens healthy and well fed.

While the students were busy getting a hands-on education at the farm, CSA Manager Nancy Hanson; Food Farm, and Sustainability Director Beth Hooker; and Food, Farm, and Sustainability faculty Brian Schultz attended the Sustainable Agriculture Education Association (SAEA) Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. The representatives from Hampshire provided an update on the Food, Farm, and Sustainability Institute and shared new developments in expanding food and farm related programs here at Hampshire. View the poster >> The conference brought together a wide range of agricultural educators, students, and scholars, and explored the breadth of sustainable agriculture programming at schools of all sizes, providing plenty of inspiration for the Food, Farm, and Sustainability related programs at Hampshire.

When students return to campus in a few weeks, they will arrive to fresh vegetables, fresh eggs, and fresh ideas here at the farm!