- I always tell students who are working at the farm or interested in working that we care about
people first. The veggies are a close second, but the people come first. Sometimes, farming - you
can feel pressure to really stay focused only on production and see labor kind of falling by the
wayside to meet your production goals. We really believe that through our well-being we do better
work. We are a student-centered farm. We work with students on campus, hire them to come help us grow
between four and seven acres of vegetables in a given year, and the majority of that food
goes to the dining hall. We also run a CSA (campus-supported agriculture) program - a
vegetable share - and then donate any produce. We collaborate with professors to have classes visit
and set up some social and educational programming for students. Yeah, that's what we do.
- The thing that I think is rather unique about Book and Plow is that
we are an education-based farm. It's providing students an opportunity to see
not only how much work is involved in producing food but also the different steps that are
involved in growing a vegetable, give the context about why we're weeding the carrots or
how we should be working with our bodies so we're not straining ourselves.
- Part of the really cool thing about the Book and Plow is I feel like there's a huge
disconnect between the the people who grow our food and us, who eat the food.
Most people don't really know where our food comes from and just having
a farm on campus and really getting to see the people that grow the food and the food itself.
It's a humbling experience. It's also an eye-opening experience, and it makes
people think about other farms and the sort of natural systems that help us create food.
- I was an environmental studies major. My first class Environmental History of the 20th Century,
basically the history of agriculture at that time, and I loved it. It was like my favorite class. I
studied abroad in the spring of 2018, and really seeing how people across the world - we went
to Malawi, India and Italy - were thinking about food, were producing food, were understanding the
food system. While I was on that trip, I really realized like, I want to farm. The farm fellow
position was envisioned to be an opportunity for professional development of a recent Amherst
graduate and also an ability to kind of get the student perspective and a previous student's input
on the actual decision making of the farm and try and engage new students to come to the farm.
This farm was really a space that was very welcoming and a great space to be in when
I was a student. It was kind of an escape from campus stress it was a place to build community,
and so it feels really good to be able to invite students into a space that was so fulfilling for
me personally as a student and just kind of see students experiencing that every day.
- The part of working at Book and Plow that excites me the most and keeps me showing up
is getting to support and celebrate students learning new skills and being proud of what
they've accomplished. The overwhelming feedback we hear from students who work at the farm is: This
is a place where we can come decompress, where it's okay to make mistakes and learn from it,
where they can be in their bodies and experience the outdoors and all while growing food for their
peers and for the community. We want to get better at growing vegetables sustainably.
We want to get better at incorporating the work we're doing into more classes on campus.
But we're really succeeding, I think, at creating an environment
for students to connect with each other to do meaningful work and to learn more about
food systems and become more engaged eaters in the future.