Workday and knead 2 know | Friday, September 23

 On September 23, 2022, around two dozen folks came up to the Farm to participate in our weekly workday. The fall harvest was fully upon us, and the afternoon was all about pulling, picking, and prepping.

One group pulled weeds from the lower culinary berm, a tangled texture of green. YSFP’s Manager of Field Academics Jeremy Oldfield taught attendees how to distinguish the weeds from the crops: lemon balm—a cousin of mint—was the target crop, and an eggplant cousin—with spikes!—needed to be pulled, along with unwanted veins of ivy growing in the underbrush. One group of participants dedicated itself to the berm, other students picked sweet peppers (and snuck a couple delicious bites), Still another strung up chrysanthemums.

After the berm was cleared of weeds, workday attendees took turns digging holes and planting black eyed susans. These seedlings had been growing in the Yale Science Building greenhouse for about a month, and they'll spend the next month pushing their roots into the berm. In the winter they’ll die back; come spring, they’ll bloom gold.

As the workday faded towards pizza-time, the sun started to dip towards the horizon and some workday participants wandered the flower field adjacent to Prospect Street. YSFP Communications Manager and photographer extraordinaire Reese Neal ’25 aptly noted that what makes our Farm so special is its dedication, not just to growing food and creating community, but also to celebrating the beauty that comes from working the earth.

 All the while, our undergraduate culinary events team was working hard to whip up some delicious pizza and press some fresh apple cider. Workday attendees—happy to sit down after two hours of farmwork—were spoiled with platters of pizza. As they ate, former Yale Farm Summer Intern and beloved YSFP community member Donasia Gray ’23 gave a moving knead 2 know about her summer working with the Sweet Water Foundation. She helped build and grow a neighborhood space in Chicago that uplifted the local community, recycled discarded materials, and redefined public space. Afterwards, participants asked questions, ate more pizza, mingled, and laughed. As always, many thanks to those who came; and, please join us next time.  

To view all photos from the event, please follow this link.

All Pib Slow Play: A sedimentation of history and sound | Friday, April 15th

On April 15th, 2022, from 3:00-5:00 P.M., the YSFP hosted a workday followed by an event called “All Pib Slow Play: A sedimentation of history and sound,” organized by  MFA student Miguel Gaydosh, SOA ‘22, which featured pibil style cooking. In the early afternoon, volunteers started off the workday by preparing for and planting strawberries. They used “flamethrowers” to cut perfectly shaped holes in a black tarp, laid the tarps over a lower field, and planted strawberries in the circular openings. Using silver rods, they pushed the yellowed, spindly roots of the nascent strawberries into the dirt and packed them in with their fingers into the wet mud, careful to leave the fragile web of roots intact and buried deep in the dirt, but the green bud at the top exposed to the sunlight. Long-time  and first-time workday participants squatted side by side over the bunched tarps and planted three rows of strawberries; conversation sprouted between graduate students at the School of  the Environment, farm managers, and first-years meeting each other for the first time. 

At 4:00 PM, volunteers migrated upwards to the Lazarus Pavilion, where the culinary events team had been hard at work preparing food for the event, alongside Guatemalan chef Sandra of La Cocina de Sandra, her husband, and her son. The family slow-cooked some truly spectacular food for the undergrads and many School of Art students in attendance. Throughout the event, Sandra stood supervising several large silver pots with an array of bowls full of chopped and diced vegetables, steam billowing out; she was working on preparing pupusas and tamales. In front of the Farm’s brick oven, culinary events managers heated up a silver tray full of cilantro and lime rice, slowly stirred a basin of beans, and cooked Guatemalan-style chow mein. At the wooden picnic tables, Catherine Rutherfurd ’22 mashed coconut rice pudding she made in a tray with gloved hands. Underneath our chalk sign sat a few pots of agua de jamaica (hibicus water). As all this culinary goodness unfolded, Miguel and his fellow students soundtracked the event with slowed Xumbia and ambient music, reflecting the slow cooking which was happening in the pib. 

Back behind all the action under the Lazarus Pavilion was the star of the event: the pib. Before the event began, culinary events managers took turns digging into the hardened earth to create a 3-feet-wide by 3-feet-deep pit. Once it was dug, the pit was lined with rings of stones stacked atop each other. The team then lit a fire at the bottom of the pib, which heated the stones for several hours and created tons of hot coals. Attendees dropped in sweet potatoes, wrapped in banana leaves and tinfoil, directly over the coals and rocks. Miguel and others then worked together to cover the potatoes with the soil, leaving them to cook underground for an hour. After digging up part of the pit and finding they weren’t yet fully cooked, we re-covered the potatoes with soil for another hour or so, letting them bake underground in the slow cooking pibil style. When the potatoes were finished, they were smothered in honey butter with Cobanero chili and lime. The event was a beautiful fulfillment of Miguel’s vision, which intended in part to teach, practice, and evolve a tradition long held by his Guatemalan family.

Big thank you to Miguel; Sandra and her family; Geo Barrios, who helped organize this event; and everyone who turned out to make this event such a beautifully unique and meaningful evening on the Farm. 

Photographs by Reese Neal ‘25. To view all the photos, please follow this link.

Post by Sarah Feng ‘25.

Farm Musings

Logan Howard ’21 is a Creative Visual Lead on the YSFP’s communications team. She is an Environmental Studies major, concentrating in Urban Environments. She loves that her time with the YSFP involves connecting people and place through art.

Over the past few weeks, I've been on the Farm helping to document the physically distanced workshops and workdays. I started the semester doing this through photography: a dynamic and mobile method of capturing many different moments. I would move all throughout the Farm in an effort to get as many different shots of  crops, the harvesting hands, the candid laughs, or the bees and butterflies on the flowers. It was active and exciting-- interrupted with brief pauses to focus in on a shot or to see how a quick shutter turned out. But sometimes, I found myself wanting to just sit. To find one corner of the Farm and just watch as my peers filled buckets with tomatoes, or as the sun’s glimmer on the hoop houses changed with each passing cloud. I wanted to slow down. What would happen if I focused less on capturing everything, and instead focused more on a few special moments? 

So I started illustrating. 

Instead of a camera, every workday I came to the Farm with my iPad or sketchbook. The hour or two that I spent drawing was slower, but more intense, much like the pace of life I’ve grown accustomed to this year. I spent longer looking at one crop, observing one person, listening to conversations, and absorbing the energy of the Farm. It was static and calm, interrupted only when picking a new spot and subject. The refreshing feeling of being outdoors, away from Zoom calls, and near people other than my roommates was something I wanted to bask in. I’m grateful for the beauty, spirit, and resilience of the Farm always, but especially now in my senior year and in these unprecedented times.

First Farm Workday of the Semester

With Yale’s arrival quarantine period ending last week, the Yale Farm welcomed back our first students since last March for a physically distanced farm workday. This fall, workdays will focus on harvesting and packing produce for the Semilla Collective of New Haven.

For more details on our programming during COVID-19, please refer to this page.

Photos by Noa Hines ‘21 and Logan Howard ‘21.