Community Corner

Students Give Themselves to the Land — and Harvest A Bounty of Knowledge

Five Wesleyan University students are organically tending 1.33 acres of farmland in Middletown this summer, sharing their bounty with the local food pantry and farmers markets — and earning a substantial education along the way.

seems a long way from the postcard campus of Wesleyan University.

But there, on the outskirts of the university proper, lies 1.33 acres of bucolic farmland tended entirely by hand this summer by five industrious students.

Drivers whizzing by on Long Lane Road may see the familiar red hand-lettered wooden farm sign, weathered and peeling, leaning against the post it once hung from, or compost mounds covered in sawdust, or tools, containers and gardening implements scattered across the grounds, and think the farm is on sabbatical.

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But these desolate images belie the dedication, fortitude and inventiveness of a handful of Wesleyan interns who have dedicated their summer to rehabbing this fertile vista.

And it’s every bit an academic education. Liberal studies at their best.

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An Agricultural Revival

Gillian Goslinga, Ph.D., an assistant professor of anthropology and science in society, has happily taken on the role of long-term faculty advisor to the students working the farmland. It’s one she takes very seriously.

“Mine is more a mentorship role … I garner resources from the community and from the university to make this project successful,” Goslinga says, sitting on the earth as two students ready seedlings for planting. “We have a great bunch of kids working this summer and we’re really trying to revive Long Lane Farm and put it on the map of Middletown again.”

Goslinga gestures toward two young men — Jon Lubeck and William Curran-Groome — who today are sandal-clad and shirtless, with smudges of earth on their faces and backs of their hands.

“The students work five, six, seven, even eight hours a day, every day. It’s a lot more land than for five people,” she admits. “They’re having a hard time keeping up with the weeding.”

This Saturday, the community is invited to help out at a working group at the farm from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Just stop by and lend a hand.

“It’s definitely a lot of physical work,” Curran-Groome says. “Usually the work is in between strenuous and relaxing.”

The old rototiller broke earlier this morning, which left Curran-Groome and Lubeck turning over soil with a pitchfork in order to get their pumpkin seedlings in the ground. The slightly darkening skies promise a chance of showers to ease the hard soil — but nothing is taken for granted here at Long Lane Farm.

Covered Cultivation

Toward the back of the farm, which, including faculty plots, totals 2 acres, sits a new addition, an unheated greenhouse, or hoop house, that covers a 30-by-45-foot tract. It’s on wheels, which means it can be rolled to cover any portion of the 30-by-90-foot plot, “and we roll it, alternating which end it’s on,” Curran-Groome says.

It’s a perfect greenhouse environment, which helps to grow tomatoes and peppers in the summer and greens in the winter.

“Just from concentrating the sunlight, the temperature will rise 30 to 40 degrees,” he says.

And pests are a non-issue. When beetles or bugs invade the squash or some other crop, students use an organic spray — or, Curran-Groome says, “We go through and pick them off often.”

“They’re very committed to organic farming by hand,” Goslinga says.

Some dozen black and red chickens — very curiously eyeing, then greeting, visitors — live in two separate henhouses toward the area of the farm that borders Long Lane Road.

In past years, Long Lane Farm has offered a Community Supported Agriculture program, in which people are encouraged to buy a share for an entire season and each week can pick up a box full of freshly harvested produce.

This year, Goslinga says, the group had hoped to get a CSA up and running, “but we don’t feel we have enough produce. Now with the hoop house up, it depends on how that goes this winter. We might have some [CSAs] going on during the year, but will definitely next year.”

An 'Unselfish Pursuit'

One thing she’s thrilled to share is a visit next week with Elliot Coleman, “a very famous small-scale organic farmer who's put into the public discourse” the idea of organic farming.

He cultivates with a hoop house, Goslinga says, and she and the students have been invited to Maine to spend a couple of days with him.

“He’s interested in using farming and gardening as an educational space.”

Echoing the points of a Coleman essay titled, “Educational Agriculture,” Goslinga explains how working the land — so often perceived as a menial task or relegated to the uneducated — is essential to a true academic education. In fact, doing so could reframe one’s thinking about the world.

“That’s what I see my role as over the next few years — what farming means to the development of a young person. What does it mean to work the land, to be responsible for crops, what does it mean to have that kind of knowledge and that kind of pragmatic knowing, and how that can shape an individual.”

Working the land, she said, is inherently an interdependent, unselfish pursuit, and its bounty transcends the toiler.

“Farming is a collective endeavor, it’s a collective of the farm but also the land, the crops, the animals, the weather — the larger community,” Goslinga says.

That spirit of community is illustrated by the generosity of the local businesses and individuals who have donated items to the farm. New Image Landscaping and Tree Service at 136 Meriden Road and its greenhouse on Route 66 in Middlefield have donated seedlings; and David Zemelski of Starlight Gardens in Durham has been immensely helpful with his offerings, Goslinga says.

To facilitate future aid, the farm is applying to be recognized as a charity through

But that’s not to say the students have anywhere near what they need.

They welcome donations of equipment, compost, any old (working) rototiller, broad forks, spare lumber, trellises, plants, fruit trees and perennial cuttings. And they have a very specific request for the weekly , where the sun, heat and humidity can make even four hours at a farm stand a difficult endeavor.

“We need a small 5-by-5-foot or 4-by-4-foot pop-up tent awning,” Goslinga says. “The kind people prop up in their backyards. Basically we’ll take anything that people can’t use.”

If you’ve stopped by the on Fridays, you’ve likely seen several of the students selling heirloom lettuce, perky Black-Eyed Susans, fat cucumbers and tea samples brewed from fresh herbs.

Long Lane Farm also supplies fresh produce to the , Sunday lunches that support peace and social justice, and the university catering service Bon Appetit.

The farm, sponsored by the College of the Environment, harvests produce the morning of each farm stand, including lettuce, greens, herbs, radishes, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, carrots and corn. They employ a crop-rotation system to keep the soil fertile.

In the fall, the farm hosts a free pumpkin fest for the public with music, food and crafts, and a May Day celebration with student bands, food and a May pole.

Stop by the Long Lane Farm Stand Fridays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the North End Farmers Market, Neon Deli from 2 to 4 p.m., or the farm itself at the corner of Wadsworth Street and Long Lane Road.

For information and more pictures, see longlanefarm.blogspot.com.

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