Graduate Student Food Insecurity | Workday and knead 2 know feat. Kiera Quigley and Destiny Treloar

Now is the time to stop and smell the roses—as well as the apple blossoms, daffodils, and all the other flowers blooming on the Farm. On Friday, students practiced attuning to their senses and centering in the moment as part of a mindful kala practice led by Shruti Parthasarathy ’24, co-president of the Yale Student Mental Health Association. Participants took a break from the workday for a session that combined bharatanatyam, a form of Indian classical dance, with mindfulness meditation. They returned to the fields refreshed and ready to weed the peas, hops, and asparagus.

After the workday, students headed up to the Lazarus Pavilion for a knead 2 know by Kiera Quigley MEM ’23 and Destiny Treloar MESc ’23 about food insecurity amongst students at the Yale School of the Environment (YSE). Kiera and Destiny shared the campaign that began during their class “Organizing: People, Power, and Change.” After settling on the topic of food insecurity, the students disseminated a survey among YSE students that aimed to understand the scope of the problem and potential solutions. They found that one-third of YSE students experience food insecurity—compared to the national average of 10 percent. Rates of food insecurity are even higher among PhD students (compared to master’s students), first-generation students, low-income students, BIPOC students, and Latinx students. 

Respondents identified a range of barriers to consistent food access. Cost was the most significant problem for food-insecure students, in addition to a lack of transportation. Kiera pointed out that many YSE students live in East Rock, a neighborhood which lacks a large, affordable grocery store. The majority of respondents, both food-insecure and not, also indicated that lack of time was also a problem: many students don’t have the spare hours to shop and cook for themselves.

Students suggested a range of possible solutions. The most commonly proposed initiatives were increased stipends and financial aid. Others advocated for better transportation and shuttle options to local grocery stories, a community food pantry or fridge, community organizing to bring more affordable food stores to the area, and efforts to transport leftover food from campus events to an accessible location. 

Kiera, Destiny, and their classmates have shared these results widely. They organized a banner drop publicizing their findings in the YSE graduating class photo. They have also spoken with the Graduate and Professional Student Senate and with the YSE administration, and they plan to discuss their findings in a forthcoming publication.  

We thank Kiera and Destiny for sharing their important work with us, and we thank all the students who joined us for their presentation and at last Friday’s workday. We hope to see you at our last pizza workday of the semester this Friday, with a workday at 2:00 PM and a knead 2 know at 4:15 PM by Diego Ellis Soto, a PhD candidate in the department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, about his work turning the Yale Farm birdsongs into music. Photos from the workday by Reese Neal ’25 are available here.

Alumni Interviews | Sophie Mendelson '15

As the weather gets warmer, nothing sounds better than the sweet, cold taste of an ice cream sandwich. As co-founder and operations director of Sugarwitch Ice Cream Sandwiches, Sophie Mendelson ’15 is there to sate that summertime craving. Her St. Louis shop offers a range of frozen delicacies, all named after famous witches of literature. Whether you’re in the mood for an Ursula (vanilla ice cream, rainbow sprinkles, and a salty brownie) or a Zeniba (sencha tea ice cream with a nori rice crispy treat), Sugarwitch has something to offer. Sophie sat down with Communications Manager Sadie Bograd ’25 to share the story behind the scoops. 

This conversation is part of a Voices series about the exciting work YSFP alumni are doing in the worlds of food and agriculture. The transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Sophie (right) told Voices: “If kid me could see that I get to be making ice cream and recommending my favorite fantasy books to people, I would just be so overjoyed.”

Tell me about Sugarwitch! How did it get started? 

My wife Martha started making ice cream sandwiches and bringing them into work as a distraction in the wake of the 2016 election, and they were a hit. So I started making them and feeding them to my classmates, and they were also a hit there. We had daydreamed casually about trying to make it a business. When we found ourselves in Columbia, Missouri, as grad students, we were like, “Okay, let's give it a go.” We naively thought that we'd have a lot of free time in the summer as grad students, which wasn't true, but we took about a year researching all the regulations and getting set up, and then we started production in 2019. We just did it over the summer for the first couple of summers, selling at the farmers market. But it became something we didn't want to let go of, even when it wasn't necessarily practical. When Martha got a full time job in St. Louis at the end of 2019, we decided not to stop. That's when we really started looking for a more permanent space. We ended up in what is St. Louis's longest continually-operating bakery. Since then, we've been growing our team and just really enjoying St. Louis as our home.

Why ice cream? And why ice cream sandwiches?

Both Martha and I made a lot of ice cream growing up. My mom says that I used to talk about starting an ice cream shop when I was little. So if we were going to do something, it was going to be ice cream. The sandwiches came about because it was the best way that Martha could think of to make the ice cream more shareable. Bringing a tub of ice cream into an office is one thing: you need a scoop and bowls and spoons, and people have to feel like they can go into the freezer and scoop themselves some ice cream from the communal bucket. But with ice cream sandwiches, you have these little packets that everybody can grab. And then we were intrigued by the constraints of the ice cream sandwich and the creativity that it demanded, because of the structural considerations that aren't so much of a thing when you're just making a pint of ice cream. 

What do you mean by structural limitations? 

We make a very high density ice cream. There's less air in our ice cream than you would often find even in a super-premium ice cream, because we need it to stand up as a structural element. We pour our ice cream into a sheet pan with a cookie on the bottom, put another giant cookie on top, and then we slice it all into squares. So it has to be able to withstand that process and be firm enough and strong enough to be sliced and moved around. 

The other thing is with the cookies themselves: how they slice, how they freeze. Is it something that you can bite into, or is it something that’s going to be a rock? We have three main categories of cookies that we riff on. One is a very fudgy thin brownie cookie. That fudginess — the moisture there, and the high butterfat — makes them freeze in a nicely biteable way. We do a lot of nut-based shortbreads because they have a wonderful frozen texture. And then we do a fair amount with Rice Krispie treats that we press really thin, that being an easy gluten free option.

Where does your flavor inspiration come from? 

A lot of it comes from nostalgia. We have a very collaborative flavor development process with our team, with nostalgic impulses drawing from a lot of different food backgrounds. Additionally, we rely on seasonally available produce in this area. We work with the farmers market and a farm delivery program out of Illinois. My master's degree was with the Agroforestry Center at the University of Missouri, so we do a fair amount with agroforestry crops that do well in Missouri and Illinois, like pawpaws and hazelnuts and pecans. And we of course draw flavor inspiration from what we see happening around us. St. Louis has a really wonderful food scene, so we do a lot of collaborations with other businesses and restaurants. It's fun to look at somebody's menu and think about what would complement what they're already doing.

I also noticed your website highlights sustainability and ethical labor practices. You talked about sourcing local and seasonal ingredients, but could you elaborate on the ethical labor practices? How do you think about using business as a mechanism for food systems change and sustainability?

Both Martha and I, as grad students and as undergrads, were academically looking at food systems. We both were drawn to the labor side of things and were seeing this real lack of sustainability within labor practices all along the food chain. That is obviously a massive and very complicated problem, but in starting Sugarwitch, our core question really was, “Can we make a company where sustaining livelihoods is the driving force of all of the choices that we're making?” Not to say that we have an answer to that question, but that’s the touchstone of any strategic choices that we make about growth, about hiring, about how we set up the schedule and what kinds of tasks we ask people to do and how much creativity people get. We try to pay a living wage, we offer PTO and sick time, we just started salarying people, and we are working on developing healthcare benefits — we just don't have enough full-time employees yet to qualify. Those are some of those structural things that we are thinking about. A lot of what we've done, I don't think anybody would advise us to make these choices from a strict business perspective, because they go against the conventional logic of how you prioritize and where you want your margins to be. But what is the point of the company if we can't make it create these livelihoods for folks? The more that we prioritize the team and everybody's wellbeing, the stronger the company is. 

We are also in the process of converting to a worker-owned cooperative structure. We’re working with WashU’s legal entrepreneurship clinic, so this awesome group of law students is helping us draft an operating agreement and bylaws. It's slow going because there aren't a ton of resources in Missouri, specifically on the financial side of things. We have a lot of questions about the tax implications for staff who then become members of the coop. Finding a CPA who can actually explain that has been really difficult. That, to me, is another critical part: not only saying, “You have wonderful ideas, and I want your help with flavor development and your vision for the cafe,” but also, “You have actual ownership in this entity, and because we are all contributing to its ability to thrive, we will ideally all benefit from that as well.”

What else have been some of the biggest challenges of running a business?

Having zero business background has been quite challenging. We're self-teaching and we're figuring everything out from scratch. But we've also had tremendous mentorship from other businesses and people we can ask questions of, so it is possible to do it. It’s helpful to know the conventions before you break them. I am somebody who really likes to plan, and diving into this unknown territory has really challenged me to loosen my grip on the idea that I will know ahead of time exactly where I'm heading. I think that goes hand in hand with the desire for this to be a collaborative effort. Having a team of people working on it, and not just being one lone individual trying to make a go of things, is absolutely critical. 

I noticed that your menu is all witch-themed. Where did that idea come from?

It came from the sandwich pun. We’re both really big readers, and I have always loved fantasy and science fiction. And it was a way to keep it fun and lighthearted. It's been an awesome way to connect with both kids and adults. The partner of one of our staff members works for a bookstore in town, so we do a lot of collaborative events. I think we're going to be able to stock some of the books that we named the ice cream sandwiches after. If kid me could see that I get to be making ice cream and recommending my favorite fantasy books to people, I would just be so overjoyed. 

Given what you're saying about being able to appeal to children, who is your target audience?

We've done our best to not settle too hard into a specific target audience. But the other side of that is that we are very vocal about our politics. We have developed a following that is very on board with the fact that we talk on our social media about funding abortion and trans kids’ rights. So in that sense, our target audience are people who are down for that type of messaging, and we have really cultivated a wonderful and very queer customer base. 

In terms of the types of flavors we do, we kind of span the range from very classic Americana flavors, like vanilla sprinkle brownie, to flavors that are derived from the cultural backgrounds of our staff, as well as some of the more out-there ideas that we have, more culinary flavors that we're seeing and wanting to play with. We have people who come in and are like, “I want the Ursula every time, I want the vanilla sprinkle brownie, and I never need to try anything else,” and that is great. And then we have folks who are like, “Give me everything with tea in it. Give me all of your herbal flavors.” We have fun spanning that range.

Could you tell me about your involvement with the YSFP?

When I was a student, I started out as a pizza intern my freshman year. I did that for two years and had a phenomenal time learning to work the pizza oven. But I was also super interested in the production side of things, and I transitioned over to the farm manager team for my junior and senior year. The summer following graduation, I helped run the internship program. 

The Farm really felt like it was my home at Yale. There were a lot of things that I was figuring out about myself in college. I had a lot of anxiety, though I wouldn't realize until later that I could put that name to it. But the YSFP was a place where I felt at ease and got to do tangible things. I had spent the year before college working on farms and working in kitchens, and it was kind of an odd transition back into the classroom. To have that continued opportunity through the YSFP really eased the transition and helped me maintain some of the confidence that I had developed in that year, and gave me a space where some of the pressures and expectations of the rest of the university got to fall away a little bit. 

Maple Syrup and Canadian Identity | Workday and knead 2 know feat. Sasha Carney ’23

Spring is in full swing on the Farm! The dandelions are popping, the tulips are blooming, and the sun is out. On Friday, students, clad in extra sunscreen on an abnormally warm afternoon, spent the workday weeding the asparagus and sage beds, turning over our cover crops with shovels, scuffle hoeing beds to prep for the planting of sweet potatoes, and tending to the chickens, (who are laying beautiful blue eggs, by the way!). The groundwork is being laid—literally—for a productive summer. 

After a great effort on the Old Acre, students headed over to the Lazarus Pavilion for some pizzas, topped with delicious produce like fresh mushrooms, potatoes, and squash puree. Students gathered to hear Sasha Carney ’23 present their knead 2 know about maple syrup and Canadian Identity. Carney was a 2022 Yale Farm Summer Intern and this research was part of their independent summer research project, which involved writing a short fiction story that wove in themes of maple of Canadian identity. Read Sasha’s post about their project here.

Carney talked about the role of the maple tree in the Canadian imagination and national education system—maple sugar shack visitation is a mandatory part of the curriculum for all Canadian students. Carney discussed the prevalence of maple in Canadian literature, and how Canadian national pride relates to its natural resources. They discussed how identities in Canada had botanical affiliations—i.e., the English were coined the “roses,” the Irish the “thistles,” etc.—and how the maple tree came to symbolize a kind of colonialist unity. Maple sugaring, a practice long embodied by Indigenous communities in Canada, was taken and presented as French Canadian culture. Carney also presented the work of a collaborative called Oh-oh Canada, which makes the nation’s popular maple sugar candies in shapes that symbolize painful and under-recognized aspects of Canada’s history and erasure of Indigenous peoples. It was a fascinating talk, and timely, given that it sugaring season lasts through April. 

There are only two more Friday workdays and knead 2 knows left this semester, and we’d love to have you join us. We’ll see you back on the Farm this Friday; there will be another workday at 2:00 PM and a knead 2 know at 4:15 PM by Kiera Quigley MEM ’23 and Destiny Treloar MESc ’23. Photos from the workday by Reese Neal '25 are available here. 

10th Annual Melon Forum | April 12, 2023

On April 12, 2023, from 5:00 – 7:00 P.M., the Yale Sustainable Food Program hosted its tenth annual Melon Forum at St. Anthony Hall, where ten Yale seniors presented senior theses relating to food and agriculture: Gavrielle Welbel, Meredith Ryan, Kayleigh Larsen, Brianna Jefferson, Ben Christensen, Catherine Webb, Caroline Beit, and Lucie Warga, majoring in subjects from Environmental Studies to Economics. Raphael Berz and Michael Min contributed their prospectuses to our 2023 Melon Forum brochure. Virginia Davis ’23 planned and led the event. The students’ projects ranged across disciplines, methodologies, and theories, utilizing novel approaches to tackling wicked problems in food systems. To view the Melon Forum brochure, please visit this link.

Lucie Warga ’22 began the event with her presentation, assessing the socio-political climate influencing school nutrition standards in the last decade. Drawing from archival research and discussing cultural norms, Warga engaged in an interdisciplinary exploration of food standards for students in U.S. schools.

Following Warga, Meredith Ryan ’22 explained how she used remote sensing and Google Earth Engine to analyze how the Russia-Ukraine war impacted agricultural production in Ukraine. Ryan used sensing technologies to analyze different types of wavelengths absorbed and reflected by chlorophyll in regions of interest to determine the impact of the war on agricultural yields. 

Presentations focused not only on fluctuations in geography, but also on their shifting relationships with the people and environments around them. Catherine Webb ’22 highlighted the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers, a collective of six Shinnecock women  who work to steward the land amidst “social geographies of antagonists and potential allies,” she wrote. Their ancestral relationship with kelp guides their present-day work in kelp farming. Themes of protection, spirituality, and connection imbued Catherine’s thoughtful presentation. 

“You can’t talk about hunger without talking about race,” said Kayleigh Larsen ’22. Larsen’s presentation explored American food politics, activism, and power from 1964 – 1973. Through three case studies—one of which highlighted the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program—she examined how grassroots organizers used food systems to contest values of an oppressive society. 

Next, Gavrielle Welbel ’22 presented their long-term research on rock weathering in agricultural settings through analyzing carbon dioxide removal, crop yields, and soil pH. In conjunction with a team of researchers and farmers, Welbel studies rock weathering at Zumwalt Acres, a farm which they co-steward in Sheldon, IL.

Next, Brianna Jefferson ’22—advised by YSFP Director Mark Bomford—presented on the intersections of hydroponics and environmental justice. Through interviews with companies in the Northeast and Florida, Jefferson investigated large hydroponic companies’ purported commitment to environmental justice and local communities. She found that while the companies’ commitments were largely opaque, they did at times positively impact communities by providing job opportunities in underserved areas. 

Jefferson’s presentation was followed by Caroline Beit ’22, whose project on the history of breastfeeding in American prisons tracked court cases and political visions of breastfeeding. Studying the racialized double-standards of white and Black women breastfeeding their children, Beit analyzed the effects of court decisions that have affected the accessibility and legality of breastfeeding in carceral settings. While breastfeeding has been repeatedly criminalized, other court decisions have elevated breastfeeding as a constitutional right. 

Finally, Ben Christenen ’22 presented a graph-theoretical project on human population clusters as a function of geography. “People tend to live where they can grow food,” he said. Christensen  used computational methods to explore the geographic conditions conducive to supporting large populations, and considered if natural geographic clusters correlated with canonical ideas of “regions.” 

Around forty students gathered to watch these seniors present their culminatingYale academic works. The YSFP provided wine, a variety of cheeses, and sweet treats. We hope you’ll join us next year at our 11th annual Melon Forum. 

To view photos from the event, please follow this link. Photos by Reese Neal ’25. 

Tapping the Yale Farm Maples | Philipp Hoehme

Post by Philipp Hoehme

Everyone likes the taste of sweet maple syrup, but not everyone has produced their own maple syrup by tapping a tree in their own garden.

This year, Philipp Hoehme – an international student at The Forest School – tried his hand at tapping a maple tree for the first time using the big sugar maple at the Yale Farm’s entrance on Edwards Street.

In tapping this tree, he aimed to test the methodology he will use to collect data for his master’s thesis. Through this thesis, he will tap several trees located at different elevations in southern Germany and investigate the effect of elevation on the syrup yield. Outside of this main research question, he will also provide general data on the feasibility of producing maple syrup in southern Germany.

The motivation for his master’s thesis comes from his study experience in Quebec at Laval University where he discovered the tradition around maple tapping. Director of Forest & Agricultural Operations Joseph Orefice, who runs a sugar bush at Yale Myers Forests, contributed his motivation and provided Philipp the knowledge about how to tap a maple tree.

Philipp tapped the big sugar maple on the Yale Farm on February 16th, 2023. Tapping a maple tree is relatively easy. For tapping and collection, Philipp drilled a 2-inch-deep hole into the tree, plugged a spout in this hole, and collected the sap coming out of the tree in a bucket. To reduce contamination of the sap, Philipp used a spout directing the sap into a tube connected to a bucket with a lid.

After installing the tap, Philipp measured the sugar content and the sap volume once a week. These two variables are needed to estimate the amount of syrup that can be produced per tree.

Since tapping is dependent on certain weather conditions occurring mainly during the end of the winter, the tapping season must end at some point. This year, the last sap flow at the Yale Farm was noted on March 26, 2023.

During this tapping period lasting from February 16th to March 26th, the tree produced about 46.6 liters of sap with an average sugar content of 2.2%. This would be enough sap to produce 1.23 liter of syrup or 0.316 gallons of syrup, which is about the average syrup yield in Connecticut.

Using the maple tree at the Yale Farm, Philipp successfully tested his research methods. He will now implement them in Germany for his research. Maybe one day, we will see German maple syrup.

Systemic Change with Food Systems Policy | Workday and knead 2 know feat. Nisreen Abo-Sido

The warm spring weather has brought new life to the Farm. The chickens are back in their coop, their clucks mixing with the sound of human conversations. At last Friday’s workday, students nurtured the Old Acre's budding sprouts: sowing snow peas, weeding our asparagus and sage, and scuffle-hoeing the fertile soil in the garlic beds. They got their hands dirty turning over the soil in a field which has lain fallow for the last five years—a task that left dirt caked under many fingernails—then headed to the Lazarus Pavilion for fresh pizza topped with mushrooms, pesto, and three kinds of potatoes. 

While students ate, they listened to a knead 2 know from Nisreen Abo-Sido MEM '23, a YSE-YSFP liaison and Agroforester-in-Residence at the Farm. Abo-Sido’s undergraduate education was in the hard sciences, but after a fellowship living and working in rural communities internationally, she developed an interest in the economic, social, and political factors that shaped farmers’ abilities to earn a living and employ sustainable, agroecological practices. Abo-Sido shared her insights from working with New Haven’s Food System Policy Division (FSPD) last summer, where she explored how policy can create systemic change and promote more environmentally sustainable and just food systems. She connected contemporary inequities in food systems to the legacies of redlining and urban renewal, noting, “If policy was a part of the problem, we can also imagine that policy needs to be a part of the solution.” Eighty percent of New Haven residents live within half a mile of an urban farm, community garden, or farmer’s market, but there are still barriers to access, like a lack of information and financial resources, the absence of citywide efforts to connect urban growers with market opportunities, and continuous disinvestment in Black and Brown communities. 

Participatory processes are crucial to changing these systems, as seen in FSPD initiatives like the Community Advisory Board. The Division has also received a USDA grant to increase education and access to “specialty crops”—fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and other non-commodity crops. With the grant money, they are running community workshops on topics like beekeeping, connecting farmers and cooks within New Haven, and establishing a seed library in community spaces. In addition, the FSPD is working to expand values-based procurement practices. 

Many thanks to Abo-Sido for her informative and thoughtful presentation. We also thank all the students who joined us last Friday, and those who visited the Farm on Saturday for Battle of the Bands, where student performers competed for a chance to perform at this year’s Spring Fling. This week, we’ll have another workday at 2:00 PM and a knead 2 know at 4:15 PM by Sasha Carney ’23. Photos from the workday by Reese Neal '25 are available here.

Environmentalism and Anti-fatness | Workday and knead 2 know feat. Austin Bryniarski and Samara Brock

The weather was gray and windy, but spirits were warm and bright at our first workday of the semester. With tendrils of spring sprouting across the Farm, students broke ground in our fields, using shovels and hoes to turn and level the soil in preparation for peas and other crops. Others headed to the strawberry patch to gather leaf litter and give the berries space to grow. Many of the strawberries are sending off runners, or horizontal sprouts that must be pruned to leave room for others. Although their leaves are still brown, the plants are hale and hearty: according to farm manager Jacob Slaughter ’24, “they just haven’t woken up yet.” Meanwhile, our newest culinary events managers, proudly wearing our new YSFP hoodies, went for a tour of the Old Acre, where they learned about the many pizza toppings we can anticipate in coming weeks — garlic chives, anyone? On the other side of the Farm, Slifka Center affiliates gathered to harvest parsley and horseradish for Passover seder. 

With dirt under their fingernails and smiles on their faces, students returned to the Lazarus Pavilion for some long-awaited pizza. The team did not disappoint, slinging out pies layered with roasted garlic, sweet potato puree, caramelized onion, kale, and much, much more. Attendees then sat down for an engaging knead 2 know by YSE doctoral candidate Samara Brock and former Lazarus fellow Austin Bryniarski '16 YSE '19, in which they discussed their article, “How anti-fatness crept into the environmental sustainability movement.” Brock and Bryniarski explained that a growing number of environmentalists have started to promote the concept of “metabolic food waste”—the idea that fat people eat too much and therefore have a greater negative impact on the environment. The flaws with this theory are manifold. Firstly, it misunderstands the science of weight and metabolism while perpetuating fatphobia, discrimination, and the erroneous and damaging belief that fat people are “failed thin people.” The speakers quoted author and fat activist Virgie Tovar, who said, “Fat people are a natural part of human diversity, and if there are not fat people in the future, then that future has failed on some level.” In addition, it maintains a focus on individual consumption decisions rather than on systemic change to food systems, choosing to scrutinize the fat body while obscuring the bodies of farmworkers and others who are harmed by unsafe labor conditions, pesticide use, and more. 

After a thoughtful Q&A, attendees returned to conversations over pizza, accompanied by the songs of a cappella group Something Extra. 
Thank you to Brock and Bryniarski for their presentation, and to all those who spent the afternoon with us. Next week, we’ll be back on the Farm for a workday at 2:00 and a knead 2 know at 4:15 by Nisreen Abo-Sido MEM '23. Photos from Friday can be found here.

Thinking with Paint | Knead to know feat. Eli White ‘25

On Friday, March 3, students gathered in the Office of LGBTQ Resources over steaming bowls of salad, rice, black beans, cheddar cheese, and salsa, talking midterms, summer plans, and the community’s eager anticipation to return to the Old Acre this spring. The meal held a special significance for this week’s k2k speaker Eli White ’25, who interned on the Yale Farm last summer, helping to grow the beans that the community enjoyed. 

In addition to farm work, Eli spent a significant portion of their summer rendering the Old Acre in water color paint. In their presentation, titled “Thinking with Paint,” Eli discussed the primary theme that guided their work: beauty, and the meaning of the word beyond a visual sense. Eli argued that the beauty of food and agriculture is about more than aesthetics; to Eli, beauty is deeply interconnected with concepts of joy and sacredness. The central argument of Eli’s project is that the beauty of places matters, and that aesthetics are something that must be expressed, not qualified. 

Eli took a watercolor class last spring and learned about concepts of balance in painting. They expressed how art can become a tool of cultural and historical storytelling, and shared their fascination with the “Solar punk aesthetic movement,” which utilizes narratives of the future that bring hope. To Eli, questions of beauty are related to issues of justice and the experiences that make life meaningful. 

Eli explained that they chose watercolor as their medium because it is highly portable. They spent the summer practicing painting from life, perched in different spots around the Farm. Eli said that painting from life is not about cementing memories, but about learning, and the experience of looking. 

They described the process of their culminating work “The Liberty Apple Tree,” a large watercolor work which took a whole month to complete. Eli worked from the same spot on the Old Acre, detailing the titular tree, the grasses, the hoop houses, and the birds that would fly in and out of frame. As Eli worked from the left side of the paper to the right, they chronicled the change in colors and tones over the weeks. When scanning across the page, you can see the colors become more dried out, mirroring the progression of summer and of Eli’s work. The painting now hangs in the YSFP office to foster a “collective sense of purpose,” in Eli’s words. 

In a memorable moment, Eli said that watercolor has modern form and lends itself to transience—“memories that are gone as they are arriving.”

Eli spoke of their experience growing up in the Southwest, and how their project helped them explore personal histories of growing up in agriculture environments. 

Eli’s experience practicing watercolor techniques taught them that “things are less about talent and more about practice and care.” Eli tried to discard ideas of right and wrong and focus on play; they also tried to bring this mentality in their farmwork. 

After Eli’s presentation, students stayed to ask questions, eat, and paint their own watercolors. In addition to personal paintings, students passed around a community painting, filling in with color a sketch Eli had made of the Farm. 

It was a wonderful afternoon of learning, reflection, and creativity. To view Eli’s artwork and read more about Eli’s experience this summer in their own words, we encourage you to read this Voices piece. 

There will be no knead 2 know this Friday. After spring break, we’ll be back on the Farm! Looking forward to seeing you then. Photos from the event can be viewed here.

Costa Rican Fisher Ecological Knowledge | Knead 2 know feat. Daviana Berkowitz-Sklar '23

Scientific data and lived experience are often portrayed as conflicting sources of information. But in last Friday’s knead 2 know, Global Food Fellow Daviana Berkowitz-Sklar '23 explained how these two ways of knowing complement each other in her analysis of Costa Rican billfish. 

Costa Rica is home to various fishing interests, including sport fishing.. Sport fishing mainly targets billfish, a group of large fish with pointed bills that includes blue marlin and sailfish. Sport fishing generates hundreds of millions of ecotourism dollars each year, but many sport fishing captains have reported a perceived decline in the billfish population. 

Stanford’s Project DynaMAR (Dynamic Marine Animal Research), the group with which Berkowitz-Sklar works, has used satellite tags to track billfish movement and create models of where billfish are located, but these tags are very expensive and not always accessible to other fishery research projects. Incorporating local ecological knowledge in these models may be helpful to fill gaps in scientific data and to include local communities in the scientific process. Local fishers add a valuable perspective, as they observe the state of the billfish fishery on a daily basis, including at times when scientists are not present.

To document fishers’ knowledge, Berkowitz-Sklar conducted semi-structured interviews with 54 sport fishing captains in six different fishing communities along Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. She asked interviewees about the availability of billfish, how far offshore captains traveled to fish, whether this distance had changed over time, and what threats the billfish population faced. She also engaged fishers in a participatory mapping process, giving interviewees a map of the region and asking them to circle the best areas to find sailfish and blue marlin. 

Berkowitz-Sklar is generating habitat suitability models by combining the participatory map data with other environmental predictors that fishers had indicated were important, like bathymetry (the topography of the ocean floor), chlorophyll-a levels, and sea surface temperature. These kinds of models can be used to predict not only where billfish currently reside, but also where their populations might move and what regions are most in need of conservation as ocean conditions change. She will look at fisher-mapped billfish distributions and  DynaMAR’s satellite tag data side-by-side to explore how ecological knowledge and scientific methodologies can work together.  

In addition to gathering information from local fishers, Berkowitz-Sklar wants to ensure that her research is useful for her interviewees. To that end, she is writing a report and creating infographics to share with local fishers, and she presented her findings to Costa Rica’s Ministry of Fishing. In the future, Berkowitz-Sklar also plans to conduct similar interviews with other fishers in other fishing industries to include a wide range of perspectives.

We thank Berkowitz-Sklar for her insightful knead 2 know and hope her work inspires future Global Food Fellows. We also thank all those who joined us for warm soup, crusty bread, and fresh chili oil (homemade by Caitlin Chung ’25). This Friday, former Yale Farm Summer Intern Eli White ’25 will deliver our last indoor knead 2 know of the semester, as they present their work on the aesthetics of food and agriculture — and give attendees a chance to make their own watercolor paintings. We’ll be back on the Farm after spring break.

Vermont Land Ethics | Knead 2 know feat. Katie Michels

Yale students gathered over bowls of warm sweet potato soup last Friday for a knead 2 know from Katie Michels MESc '23, MBA '24. Michels spent last summer driving around Vermont as a Global Food Fellow, interviewing both conventional and organic livestock farmers about their relationships with the land. Michels positioned her interviews in the context of longstanding tensions between local farming and environmental communities over water quality and other issues. Farmers’ perspectives are often silenced or marginalized, but Michels wanted to give those perspectives their due, asking weighty questions like “What does stewardship mean to you?” and “Why do you manage your land in the ways that you do?” 

The answers she received were as varied as the farms she visited. Michels said it was difficult to draw themes from her 21 semi-structured interviews, but she identified a few cross-cutting motivations underpinning her subjects’ land management practices. Many farmers cited ecological incentives: this grass keeps the songbirds coming back, or this crop keeps carbon in the soil. Others referenced a dedication to their community or expressed a desire to raise their children on a farm. Farmers of all backgrounds and beliefs displayed a strong independent streak. As one of them told Michels, “I think the decision to farm was that I didn’t have to apologize for my lifestyle… that it was defensible.” 

Although Michels aimed to interview an even mix of conventional and organic farmers, she found that conventional farmers were much less willing to speak with her, perhaps because of the intense media scrutiny commodity farmers often face, in contrast with the valorization of small-scale, direct-market operators. Among the five conventional farmers she interviewed, a focus on feeding people was a consistent theme. One conventional farmer said she wouldn’t adopt organic practices because she wanted to be able to sell her ground beef at five dollars a pound—to ensure that “more than just the college professors can access the food.” Michels described how conventional farmers are constrained by markets. Many of them use ecologically-sensitive techniques, but choose not to sell into the organic market because of the challenges of obtaining certification and the downward price pressure in the industry. “We have a country that doesn’t pay very much for food, and that comes on the backs of farmers,” Michels noted. 

Certain limiting factors also kept reappearing in Michels’ conversations. The weather was intense last summer, and the labor market was tight. Farmers told Michels that even if they offered employees twice as much as they paid themselves, they couldn’t get enough applicants. Knead 2 know attendees also asked questions about the role of technology in land stewardship. Michels mentioned that the Natural Resources Conservation Service (a technical assistance agency at the U.S. Department of Agriculture) has been pushing farmers to implement expensive, tech-driven solutions. Farmers face a difficult decision: these innovations would reduce labor expenses, but create a long-term dependence on technology companies. At the same time, Michels highlighted the ways in which farmers have adapted to a changing tech world. Almost everyone she interviewed used smartphones to help manage their farms, for example. 

Michels hopes to share her findings with technical assistance providers and policymakers. She is partnering with the American Farmland Trust to do a larger survey focused on similar questions. We thank Michels for her willingness to share her findings with us, and hope future Global Food Fellows take inspiration from her thoughtful approach to her research. Photos from the event can be found here.

Join us at future winter knead 2 knows at 12:30 PM at the Office of LGBTQ Resources (135 Prospect St). We’ll be back outdoors at the Yale Farm after spring break.

Fungi Communities l k2k Friday, February 17

On Friday, February 17, a rainy afternoon, students gathered in the Office of LGBTQ resources on Prospect Street for lentil soup, fresh bread, and some agricultural learning. While the Old Acre has been quiet during these cold winter months, the YSFP community has been staying warm, connected, and engaged in food systems work, continuing our Friday learning tradition with indoor knead 2 know discussions. 

This week, students gathered to hear Raina Sparks ’25, a 2022 Yale Farm Summer Intern, share what she learned about mycorrhizal fungi networks, which are fungi that interact with plant roots, forming complicated and extensive mutualistic connections. 

After spending her gap year working on an organic farm, Raina has been fascinated by the complex nature of fungi. They began their presentation with slides of various mushrooms they’ve found hiking around New England. For their project this summer, Raina attempted to grow Blue Oyster Mushrooms. She walked attendees through the process of inoculation and pasteurizing substrates, experimenting with materials like burlap, wheat, and rye. Raina left the mushrooms in a cool, dark spot in the YSFP office to grow. While Raina didn’t end up with giant blue oyster mushrooms as expected, she did grow some small, endearing mushrooms, and she’s eager to try again. 

Raina originally intended to complement their summer project with online research. After their computer broke unexpectedly in the middle of the summer, they pivoted and made a series of gorgeous oil pastel drawings inspired by mycorrhizal fungi, letting their imagination run wild with “adult crayons.” The very nature of her art medium, Raina emphasized, is an encapsulation of the spirit of fungi. Just as the colors of pastels bleed, combine, and overlap, so too do fungal networks; the organisms are “playful and collaborative.” Raina’s art pieces spoke to themes of nourishment, abundance, and mutualism. She also spoke about the history of the Blue Oyster Mushroom; growing the mushrooms became more commonplace during World War I to address food scarcity. Americans have come to rely on mushrooms for their heartiness—they are now a commonplace meat substitute. 

Last semester, Raina took Professor Marlyese Duguid’s Forest Dynamics course at the Yale School of the Environment, in which she made mycorrhizal fungi the subject of the course’s annotated bibliography research project. Raina shared their additional findings from this work, elaborating on the impacts of varying soil CO2 and nitrogen levels. Raina discussed fungi’s responsiveness to environmental disturbances; fungi are incredibly attuned to changes in their host plant and are able to bounce back quickly. 

To end her k2k, Raina extrapolated on the connected nature of fungi networks as allegory and blueprint for human communities. They discussed how they came to see fungi as symbolic of the power of mutualistic care and impact. It was a fascinating talk, and we would love to see you at the next one! Join us at 12:30 P.M. in the Office of LGBTQ Resources at 135 Prospect St. No registration is required. 

Alumni Interviews | Chloe Zale '12

Busy college students across the country are familiar with Chloe Zale’s cooking, although most of them don’t know it. Zale is a senior recipe developer at HelloFresh, a meal kit company which sends its customers a weekly box of recipes and pre-measured ingredients. The 2012 alumna took a circuitous path from prepping pizzas on the Yale Farm to crafting meals in a test kitchen — she was a strategy consultant for seven years before going to culinary school. In this interview with YSFP communications manager Sadie Bograd ’25, she shares her insights on finding inspiration, in cooking and in life.

This conversation is part of a Voices series about the exciting work YSFP alumni are doing in the worlds of food and agriculture. The transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

I want to start off by asking about recipe development. How do you craft a recipe from start to finish?

There are different organizations in which recipe developers have a home. People develop recipes for magazines or blogs, for meal kits like myself, or even for brands — someone could be hired by Betty Crocker to do seven things with some cake mix. But the end goal is typically to have a home-cook-friendly recipe that tastes the same way it did when it was developed in a test kitchen.

I start with an assignment from our product team, which is called a brief. They give me a protein, any operational constraints, and sometimes an inspiration or things not to do. So it could be “Chicken dish, and don't do Mexican because we have a lot of Mexican chicken dishes right now.” But that leaves a lot of options open. I get four of those every week, and for each of those briefs, I come up with a few ideas. I present them to my team in a brainstorming session, and we pick one idea for each of those briefs. 

From there, I actually write the recipe and cook it a couple times. Every time I cook it, my team tastes it, and we decide whether I need to change something. When everyone's aligned, someone else on the team will cross-test it to make sure that it is exactly the same as my version. Then it gets edited by our editorial team, laid out on a recipe card and sent to the customers who order it. From my brain to someone's plate, it could be up to six months. 

Customers can also see out six weeks in advance. And for the most part, there are no repeat recipes for any six-week period. So there are a lot of recipes in rotation.

Where do you find inspiration for all those recipes? Particularly, how do you think about exploring other cuisines that you're not as familiar with?

I would say our customer is relatively mainstream. So I'm not going to be doing anything crazy that you might find in a three Michelin star restaurant in New York. We would maybe look at the Cheesecake Factory as a restaurant for inspiration, or I look at cookbooks. Sometimes I come up with ideas completely out of the blue. 

As far as ingredients or recipes from other cultures, we have a limited set of ingredients available to us. There are occasions where I might need to use an ingredient that wouldn't be the most authentic. Let's say we want to make a paella from Spain. The ingredient that gives the rice its yellow color is saffron, but we do not have saffron as an ingredient. So for our paella dishes, we put a little bit of turmeric to color the rice. I personally try to do more cuisines that I have more familiarity with, but occasionally I will take inspiration from various world cuisines. I like to order food from restaurants in New York and try to emulate those dishes. 

I'm curious about this idea of making cooking approachable for a mainstream audience. How do you balance introducing your customers to new flavors with recognizing that they may view some foods and cuisines as more ‘adventurous’ than others? 

It's interesting because America is so hugely diverse. Our customer base is primarily white, but I don't want to make it seem like we're only catering to a white audience. I think that the most important thing for a company like HelloFresh is, if you're introducing a new flavor, can you do it in a familiar format? Like if we have a new Vietnamese sauce, can we put it in a stir fry with vegetables that people are used to? You may not get the perfect representation of how that dish would be made in its home country. But you introduce people to new ingredients, new flavors, and then as they become more familiar with them, you can add more and more complexity and interest, and people develop a palate over time for that.

It sounds like developing recipes is pretty complex. What are the hardest parts?

I think that the hardest part is nailing the flow, and making sure that it's an enjoyable cooking experience for someone at home. We don't want to have three pans going at the same time. It's about working backwards from the final plate — like, I know I need to have cooked zucchini and cooked rice and cooked chicken on this plate. If I'm going to be cooking the chicken on the stove and it takes this much time, maybe I need to do the zucchini in the oven and not on the stove, because otherwise the rice will be cold by the time the zucchini is cooked and the chicken is done.

Apart from the cooking itself, I would think there must be challenges in communicating the cooking process clearly. Are there skills that you've had to learn in terms of writing the recipes?

The most important thing when you're writing a recipe is to include as many sensory cues as possible. You want to make sure that you're touching on the way an ingredient looks when it's done, the way it smells. It's not just about time, because every stove has a different power; every oven is calibrated a little differently. I would never say, “Roast zucchini until it's done, 10 to 12 minutes.” You would give a “brown and tender” or “brown and fragrant” so that people can anchor on multiple elements of completion, not just a timeframe.

Shifting gears, could you tell me about your history with food and what made you want to be a recipe developer?

I am from New York City, and I still live here. When you live in New York, food is so deeply ingrained in the culture that it becomes key to your existence. As a kid, I remember doing taste tests all around New York with my dad, where we would find the best pizza or the best ice cream. We'd do research in the newspapers — there wasn't Yelp or anything like that back then — and we would try seven slices of pizza in different boroughs and take notes. It built this appreciation in me for refining something into its best form. 

That started to play out when I was a preteen. I think I was in fifth grade when I baked twelve batches of chocolate chip cookies. I tweaked one thing every time so that I could make my perfect cookie. I really liked that iterative process of cooking, tasting, refining, cooking again, tasting again, getting input from other people, and refining until it met my vision. That was foreshadowing that recipe development might be a career I was interested in. 

It was something that I didn't even really know was a career until I went to culinary school in 2019, after I had been a strategy consultant for seven years. I definitely had some other paths that I followed as a teenager and early adult. I studied opera, and when I got to Yale, I was really intense about singing for my first couple years. Then I realized that I did not want to be a professional opera singer. It wasn't the thing that lit me up. And I figured I should probably focus on something else. 

How did you find that “something else”? 

There was a college tea for an alum who was the vice president of Murray's Cheese, which is a fantastic cheese store in New York. I went home for Christmas break right after that. I was looking at all of the internships in the Yale career database, and they all looked so boring to me. I had this low moment where I was like, “I hate everything. What am I going to do with myself?” My dad sat me down and said, “Well, what do you like?” I was fresh off that cheese tasting, so I said, “I like cheese.” He said, “Why don't you do something with cheese, then?”

I emailed the Murray's VP and asked her if I could spend the summer working at Murray’s. She responded immediately and said, “Go for it. I'm going to connect you with my head of HR. You can rotate through all the different departments and learn all about cheese and food business.” I thought that sounded amazing. It sounded way more interesting than all of the PR and finance and marketing internships that were listed in that database. 

Wow! That sounds like an incredible opportunity for a Yale student. You were also involved with the YSFP as an undergrad. What was your experience like at the Yale Farm? 

When I came back from my summer at Murray’s, that was when I switched gears. I wanted to get involved with every food-related thing on campus. One of those things was the YSFP. As soon as the communications manager job popped up in the student job database, I applied for it. I didn’t necessarily want to work as a farm manager because I'm a city girl, and it felt a little too far afield. But the communications piece — talking to all the professors of food-related courses and assisting with the speaker series — that sounded super fun. The next year, I worked as an events and pizza intern. I loved that we were using Liuzzi local cheese and the vegetables from the Farm and making our own dough in the oven. It was such a special community. I worked at one event where René Redzepi from Noma came. We had a big meal at Miya’s and pulled out all the stops.

I know I've asked you a bunch of questions. Is there anything I didn't ask about that you want to mention?

I think it's important to underscore that life is long, and it's okay if it takes you a little while to find your calling. I found mine in college, and then I had a little diversion when I worked in consulting, but I gained so much from that experience. Even though at the time, I certainly had some existential strife, I ended up in a place that I'm really happy with. It’s important to listen to yourself and take advantage of opportunities when they come up. And when you do find something that you're passionate about, really go after it. Believing in yourself and your intelligence and seeking the things that call to you will make for a happy life.

Alumni Interviews | Emily Farr '14

From our landlocked Farm at the top of Science Hill, you might forget that New Haven is a coastal city. Not so for Emily Farr YC ’14 YSE ’17. After getting degrees in Geology and Environmental Management, Farr embarked on a career in aquatic food systems. Previously, she was a Fishery Management Specialist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She now works as Senior Fisheries Program Manager at Manomet, a nonprofit that uses science and collaboration to protect coastal ecosystems. She spoke with YSFP communications manager Sadie Bograd ’25 about the challenges and opportunities facing Maine’s fisheries. 

This conversation is part of a Voices series about the exciting work YSFP alumni are doing in the worlds of food and agriculture. The transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

What does it mean to be a senior fisheries program manager? What does your day-to-day job look like? 

At Manomet, we're focused on building resilience in the fishing community in the Gulf of Maine. The area is changing rapidly due to climate change, gentrification, and other pressures that are happening along the coast. I support the fishing community and coastal communities in responding and adapting to that change. I work with shellfish harvesters out on the mudflats, I work with river herring harvesters. I do a lot of convening, bringing people together to share what they're learning and hearing and seeing, and then figuring out how we can collaboratively address the challenges they're facing.

Could you describe the landscape that you're working in?

There are fisheries that take place far out in the ocean, but the fisheries that I work in are mainly coastal. I primarily work with the shellfish fishery, which is mostly wild clams, both soft shell and hard shell. Those clams live in the mudflats, which are in the intertidal zone, between the high tide and the low tide line. Harvesters often walk out onto the flat; sometimes they take a boat. They often use a clam rake to get the clams out of the mud at low tide, while the mudflats are exposed.

And the river herring fishery — Maine is actually the only state that has a commercial fishery for river herring. The species spends most of its life in the ocean, then comes up into lakes and ponds to spawn in the spring. Some harvesters use nets, some of them have traps. In all of those cases, they're harvesting just a portion of the run and letting much of it continue upriver to spawn. It's a really cool fishery, because the harvesters are the stewards of that resource. They're responsible for monitoring it, for sending data to the state to help manage it, and so they play a critical role in making sure that it's a healthy species.

Why are fisheries so important and what challenges are they facing?

Fisheries, like all food production systems, are an important livelihood for thousands of people. Maine coastal communities are culturally and economically dependent on fisheries. Like people who farm, people who fish are always coming up with new ways to adapt to the pressures that they're facing. But that's not always easy to do, and it often requires support and collaboration. 

One of the biggest changes to ocean ecosystems today is that the water is warming quickly and species are shifting their ranges. Many of the species that people have long harvested in the Northeast are either moving North or moving further offshore, and new species are coming in. For example, lobsters are the most important fishery in Maine, and their range has started to shift. They are fished using pots — traps at the bottom with vertical lines in the water column. There have been increasing entanglements with right whales, not necessarily from the lobster fishery, but entanglement is a big risk, and it's a very endangered whale. The whale populations are also shifting, in part because their food source, plankton, is changing in its relative abundance. So climate change is creating all of these shifts in the places where species are and where their food is and where people are fishing, and it's creating these new conflicts with no easy solutions. 

I also mentioned gentrification along the coast. I work with shellfish harvesters who have to cross private property to access the intertidal mudflats where they work. They rely on informal agreements with landowners, but there's been a lot of turnover. Many of the new landowners don't understand that traditional use of the coast, so these harvesters are losing access.

How are you responding to that coastline development and privatization?

In Maine, shellfish are managed collaboratively between the state and municipalities. Each town is responsible for stewarding its own shellfish resource. We've been sitting down with the shellfish committees of the towns that we work closely with and mapping out where they currently access the coast to harvest. That hadn't been captured for a variety of reasons, partly because some of that information is sensitive and confidential: as a harvester, I might have a relationship with this landowner, and they allow me to cross their property to get to the flats, but they might not allow every other harvester in town to do that. But everyone agreed that change is happening so rapidly that we need to sit down and document where access is, and then figure out creative ways to preserve it. That looks like working with land trusts and thinking about easements on private property, or acquiring land that the town can use to allow access. The harvesters are doing landowner appreciation days, where they bring landowners together and share, “This is why clams are important. Let's all eat clams together, talk about the resource, build some relationships and trust.”

And what are some of the adaptations that you're investigating on the climate change side?

Another species that's been increasing in abundance in the Gulf of Maine is the invasive green crab. It's originally from Europe, and it's been in the Gulf of Maine for 200 years — it came over mostly in ballast water from ships. But it's really exploded in abundance as the water has warmed because it's a super resilient species. The green crab is an extremely voracious predator of shellfish, clams in particular, and it's creating a real pressure on that important resource. One of the things that we've been working on is developing a commercial fishery for green crabs, to help relieve that pressure on the ecosystem and create a new fishing opportunity for harvesters. 

Are there difficulties that arise in trying to convene people from so many different groups? Or unexpected partnerships? 

It's always challenging when people are speaking different languages and are coming from different backgrounds. Fishers, scientists, managers — their day-to-day lives look really different. But I think there's great success that comes out of bringing all those groups together on a regular basis. It really requires trust, and it requires true relationships. 

I facilitate a network of people working on river herring. There are harvesters, there are communities that volunteer to count the river herring as they're coming back into ponds, there are tons of scientists, there are managers at the state and federal and local level. We have this network that brings people together to share information and talk about what questions they want to answer and how they can partner. It’s been really gratifying to see how, as that network has continued, new relationships have formed. People are meeting outside of it to collaborate on projects. It’s slowly building trust, and that’s really great to see. 

What have been the barriers to building trust in the past?

Both fishermen and the management community are under different pressures and different mandates, and it's hard to be in someone else's shoes. There have also been regulatory decisions that people didn't agree with, and that has eroded trust. There wasn't necessarily a ton of listening from the management side in the past, and I think we've gotten better in that department. But trust is something that you have to earn, and it takes time. And it's harder to build back when it's lost.

One of the biggest examples in New England is the groundfish fishery, which includes cod. There was a population collapse in the 1990s, which led to new regulations, including the institution of a ‘catch shares’ system that allocated the right to fish based on your historic participation in the fishery. This was a problem for some of the smaller-scale fishers who had relied on the fishery but didn't have a huge amount of harvest, or who didn't fish for a few years, and so didn't end up getting access when the regulation changed. That created real conflict. 

Our work at Manomet is pretty much completely driven by what the fishing communities want to see. We're guided by their ideas and perspectives and knowledge. I think that's really important, because they've historically been excluded from decision-making arenas.

Could you tell me more about your roles at the YSFP? 

Oh, man. What roles didn't I have? I started as a farm intern the summer after my sophomore year, after volunteering every now and again. Then I was a farm manager for the next few years. I took notes at staff meetings for a semester. And then I spent the summer before grad school helping to support the summer internship work. When I was at YSE, I helped to manage the berms and the perennial beds.

Did your work on the Farm influence your choice of career or teach you any skills that you use now?

Definitely. My undergraduate geology degree was focused on climate science. Working at the Yale Sustainable Food Program, I was interested in the connection between food systems and climate change. I thought that fisheries and the ocean were an interesting place where those two things meet. When I did the summer internship, we visited the farm that Bren Smith was starting at the time. He now runs GreenWave, but he was growing and still grows kelp and oysters. We went out on his boat to see the farm and learn about that operation. That was one of my first real introductions to growing and harvesting seafood from the sea.

He talked about how he was using seaweed and oysters as both carbon cycling and buffering from storm surge. To me, that really clicked as, “We're growing food, and we're thinking about climate resilience at the same time. What does that look like in other parts of the ocean and in other seafood systems?” It was a really formative experience for me.

Fall Feast | Friday, November 11

Friday, November 11 looked a little different from the typical afternoon on the Yale Farm. Due to heavy rains, YSFP canceled the workday and moved Fall Feast, our final celebratory meal of the fall semester, to the Native American Cultural Center (NACC). 

Fall Feast is a yearly collaboration between NACC and YSFP. This year’s event was also cosponsored by the Native and Indigenous Student Association at Yale (NISAY); the Program in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration; and the Poorvu Center. 

Hi’ilei Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies, has partnered with YSFP since her arrival at Yale this fall. She brought students from her First Year Seminar, Indigenous Food Sovereignty, to the Farm for six visits over the course of the semester. Her students were an invaluable part of the preparations for the Feast. During their time on the Farm, the students put the Three Sisters to bed; threshed black turtle beans by hand; filled tea bags with Yale Farm-grown tea; milled corn and created cornbread mixes; chopped and roasted peppers; prepared the Three Sisters chili; and so much more, all in stewardship of the Three Sisters and in preparation for the Feast.

Erita Chen ’26, a student in the course, said the class’s visits to the Farm provoked “fascinating conversations about sustainable farming practices, labour, and capitalism…making for a unique discussion-based learning time.” 

Jaleyna Lawes ’26, another one of Professor Hobart’s students, reflected: “Fall Feast was a very fulfilling way to culminate our experience growing and preparing food on the Yale Farm in that same sense of community I felt threshing beans or cutting squash or spooning each of the Three Sisters into the chili pot. Every dish on my plate I could trace to a story or a lesson or a laugh on the Farm or in the classroom. Hearing from [Catherine Webb ’23,] the Seedkeeper, as well as about the Native food producers who contributed to the feast and other people who were a part of the process really fostered that feeling that those Farm visits were part of a larger community effort to bring food to the table.”

The Fall Feast menu centered beans, corn, and squash, the symbiotic indigenous polyculture known as the Three Sisters. The menu featured a Three Sisters chili, wild rice salad, beet poké, white cap & Ute Mountain blue cornbread, and chia pudding with popped amaranth and maple candied seeds. Students in ER&M040 had a hand in tending the Yale Farm beans, corn, squash, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, carrots, chilies, and eggs that contributed to the meal. We are grateful to Bow & Arrow Foods, Massaro Community Farm, NOH Foods of Hawai’i, Passamaquoddy Maple, Ramona’s American Indian Foods, Sweetgrass Trading Co., and Ute Mountain Tribe, the producers who supplied the meal’s other ingredients. 

Since 2017, YSFP has had a dedicated Three Sisters plot on the Farm. The NACC also has a garden where the Three Sisters are grown. Catherine Webb ’23, the YSFP and NACC Seedkeeper and programs liaison who has stewarded both these plots, offers reflections on her relationship with the Three Sisters in this poem. In her introduction, she also provides some of the history of planting the Three Sisters at Yale. Catherine notes that while she was the inaugural official link between NACC and YSFP, “Noah Schlager (Poarch Creek Band of Indians) and Kap`iolani Laronal (Haida/Tsimshian and Native Hawaiian) began the partnership and gardens in 2017,” when Noah Schlager YSE ’18 was a YSFP graduate student affiliate.

Attendees at this year’s Fall Feast (including Handsome Dan!) enjoyed the delicious meal, shared over warm conversation and community. To close out the event, Red Territory performed drum songs. 

YSFP extends our deepest appreciation to NACC, the YSFP Culinary Events Team, and all students and staff who made this event happen. We hope you’ll join us next year! 

Photos of the event can be found here. 

Learn more: Professor Hobart’s work was recently featured in this fascinating Yale Talk podcast, a conversation between Professor Hobart; Mark Bomford, Director of the Yale Sustainable Food Program; and Peter Salovey, Yale President, about agriculture, sustainability, food insecurity and sovereignty, and the role of scholarship therein. 

Alumni Interviews | Lauren Kohler '19

Lauren Kohler ’19 did just about everything there is to do at the YSFP, from tending Yale Farm crops to writing our ever-popular newsletter. The former Farm Manager is no longer harvesting carrots on the Old Acre, but she’s not done thinking about the food we eat and where it comes from. Kohler is now the Director of Food Systems Philanthropy at Stray Dog Institute, a private operating foundation that provides funding to and conducts research with organizations in the food systems and farmed animal advocacy movements. YSFP communications team member Sadie Bograd ’25 spoke with Kohler about her work and how it was shaped by her time at the Yale Farm.

This conversation is part of a new Voices series about the exciting work YSFP alumni are doing in the world of food and agriculture. The transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

How would you describe your work at Stray Dog Institute?

I help execute, develop, and manage our food systems programming, philanthropy, and strategy. In addition to managing our grants, I provide support beyond the check: for example, sharing a funder perspective on a presentation, or weighing in on a new strategy. I've also facilitated three different working groups since I came onto the team [in 2019], helping to provide a space for collaboration and a facilitating force for organizations in the movement. My work spans the philanthropic side and the connector, facilitator, and collaborative space-builder role.

On that note, could you describe the general landscape of food systems grant-making and the food systems movement?

Stray Dog Institute sits at the intersection of the farmed animal advocacy and food system transformation movements. Our benefactors, Chuck and Jennifer [Laue], have dedicated their time and their money to trying to end factory farming and make the world better for people, animals, and the planet. Because of their vision, we keep animals at the center of our work, and that's why we're focused on ending factory farming specifically. But we also recognize that factory farming exists within the broader landscape of the food system. And you can't look at industrial animal agriculture without looking at the intersecting oppressions and injustices that create the extractive, exploitative food system that we have today. We find a lot of overlap with [food systems] groups that are fighting to end factory farming in the US. It may not be for animals: it may be for rural communities, environmental justice reasons, public health reasons, soil health reasons.

Do all those different groups usually work together? And what are some of the challenges with doing so?

Different issues will bring different folks together. For example, one issue that I led a working group on was checkoff programs. Checkoff programs are a fund that producers of certain commodities, like dairy or beef or soybeans, will pay into per amount that they produce. That money is supposed to go to broadly promoting the consumption of that product and R&D for that product — we all know the “Got Milk?" campaign and “Beef. It’s What's for Dinner.” One of the issues is that the program has basically been co-opted by industrial animal agriculture, and that money is being used to support their interests at the expense of family farmers. That's a case where cattle ranchers and animal welfare advocates came together to fight a common enemy.

One challenge to collaboration between the farmed animal advocacy and food systems movements has been, rightly or wrongly, the idea that animal advocates prioritize animals at the expense of human interests. Today, the animal advocacy movement is a lot more inclusive and intersectional. There's also some understandable historical distrust there between rural communities and farmers and animal advocates. I think that that's been a difficult gap to bridge. On the other side, there continue to be challenges to collaboration between some food systems groups. Some folks see farmed animals as central to regenerative agriculture and aren't open to considering regenerative models that decenter animal farming. I think it can be off-putting to some animal advocates to see that side of the food systems movement promote beef consumption or cattle ranching as integral to a sustainable food system.

But I think that the animal advocacy movement overall has become much more aware of the importance of a big tent approach, and I think that has helped bridge the gap. There's a place for animals in conversations about the food system, and that doesn't take away the place of any other food systems actors. Animal issues have historically been seen as naive or pie in the sky. We’re really interested in having open conversations that challenge that, recognizing that conversations about the food system have to be about everything in the food system.

What have been some of the historic and current gaps in funding for food systems and farmed animal advocacy, and how do you try to fill that niche?

Historically, the animal advocacy movement has been predominantly very white, leadership has been male-dominated, and the funders have been white and male. That has led to an under-resourcing of groups that are not led by people of those demographics, particularly BIPOC-led groups and community-led groups. That's changing in some really good ways, and we have tried to be part of that change.

In addition, the animal advocacy movement has historically seen a lot of project-based funding. I can understand why a funder would be motivated to ensure that as much of their money goes specifically to their highest concerns, such as chickens in crates or the separation of cows from their babies at birth. However, focusing funding on specific issues may create challenges for nonprofits in covering their basic operating expenses. As a result, Stray Dog Institute has shifted to giving mostly unrestricted, general operating grants. Additionally, we used to give larger grants to fewer organizations. About a year after I came on the team, we decided that we wanted to take a movement-building approach and to spread that support across more organizations in the movement at necessarily smaller grant amounts.

Along with funding in smaller amounts, are you generally funding smaller organizations?

It varies. Sometimes our support may be a drop in the bucket for an organization with a multi-million-dollar budget. Those organizations are doing great work, and we do want to support them. But I find it really meaningful to provide support to smaller organizations who might not have a lot of funder support. A smaller grant can have a larger impact for an organization with a smaller budget. And I think that for those organizations, our support can mean more than the money itself, like having a funder who knows other funders say, “Hey, I'm supporting this organization, I think you might want to consider supporting them, too.”

I've asked you a bunch of questions about your job. I also want to talk a bit about your time at Yale. How do you think your work on the Farm influenced your career path?

My time at the Farm was so foundational to everything that I did in college and beyond. I have always been interested in the intersections between people and animals and the environment. I came into Yale knowing that I wanted to major in environmental studies, but not thinking that I would connect it to the food system so directly. I got pretty burnt out in college because so many of the issues in the food system are just so entrenched and sometimes feel hopeless. It felt hard to be like, ‘I want to focus my career on this.’

Working with the YSFP gave me a space where I could feel optimistic about the food system and working in the food system. The Farm was my happy place at Yale. The Farm was always the place where I went to feel at peace. And the people on the Farm are some of my favorite people in the world. It was very influential in making me feel like this work could be sustainable, and something that brought me joy, and something that's meaningful.

I'm a very hands-on, tactile person. Reading and writing and talking all day gets so exhausting. The appreciation of both hands-on and intellectual food systems work, and the way that those two things combined at the YSFP, felt very energizing.

That's great to hear. I feel like I'm constantly telling people this is the happiest place on campus. Every week I pick a tomato off the vine and I’m like, ‘Ah, life is going to be okay.’ Do you have any favorite memories from your time at the Farm?

Oh, all of them. I remember my sophomore year, when I was a Farm Manager, I worked with another awesome Farm Manager named Adam. We were Sunday workday managers, so there were fewer visitors on the Farm during our workday. There was one time where we raked all the leaves on the Farm into a huge pile and jumped in it. That's just a really happy memory, one of those where you take a photograph in your mind. I also think about the tomatoes in the hoop houses, and seeing the rows and rows of them strung up, and having been part of stringing them up when they were little tiny tomato plants and then seeing them go all the way to the top. Just all of the times walking around the Farm and it feeling like home. Even when there wasn't anyone there, it felt like home.

The Yale Farm Birds Sing a Song | GFF '22

This post is part of Diego Ellis Soto’s 2022 Global Food Fellowship.

Birds are chirping, be in the present, I tell myself as I make my way up the familiar hill on Edwards Street. Cars roar up the street containing a mixture of old and new scientific buildings to study physics and chemistry; supercomputing and environmental science are to my left.

Thousands of computers are humming, calculating anything from creating new chemical molecules, to exploring new planets in far galaxies, to identifying areas where hummingbirds will migrate under climate change.

Speaking of migration. Sweaty, but happy, arriving to a 1-acre urban farm that is about to create a song to the buzz of bees, birds, humans, and whoever decides to join and jam along !

Microphone check, says the chicken. The chalkboard next to the Farm’s pizza oven says ‘welcome to the Farm’ in purple colors. Purple like the soundwave of bird calls of what’s there to come; purple like tulips beginning to blossom in the most beautiful of shapes, purple like a red onion about to be chopped for a knead 2 know event. Smile; your shoulders get less tense and let go. Truly, it’s okay. Let go.

Not just the weight of a backpack full of research gear; also, from thinking about the myriad of different things related to other different things, in complicated ways to connect and measure these different things; each somehow related to understanding the natural world.

Be the present.

Working with the land, with bare hands, after hours of meeting someone, on a screen, developing algorithms, on a screen, applying for funding, on a screen. Let the screen go, listen to what birds are chirping, which insects are crawling, frogs are burping, or humans are laughing. We may get some warm cider at the end of the workday if we are lucky or a warm slice of pizza with veggies harvested today.

Today we’ll hear an animal opera. Yes, an opera! Really. Produced and directed locally, by the Farm. We have a chicken on the high hat, howling barred owls looking for small mice around the tomato plants under the protection of a windbreaker, and migratory white and black warbler as an ephemeral vocalist while they replenish themselves of whatever the Farm has in stock. Some bird actors – like the Blue Jay with his clear blue suit – proudly sing dozens of times a day year round; a shy small migratory warbler only sings for the lucky ear a few days a year.

The soil is still a tad cold, it was a cold winter and spring time is reminding us of the change of time, life is waking up in New England. Yet below it all, plants are talking with each other, through the real plant life social network of their roots.

Soon birds will start, one after the other, billion by billion, to fly south – on a voyage across hundreds of miles to Central and South America. We can peek into a snapshot of their life thanks to a small computer and a $9.99 microphone ! (Figure 1)

Figure 1: Setting up the bird spy microphones on a sunny day at the Yale Farm, in Edwards Street, New Haven. This allowed us to listen to and identify birds during the annual spring migration season.

A Black box fancy computer algorithm detects which bird species is singing at all times using ‘deep learning’, while outside, students are learning about organic farming, the logistics connecting farm to table, and baking a great pizza in the wood-fired brick oven.

Next to the compost, tied to a white Maple tree, is a game camera which takes pictures of gophers, squirrels, and other furry or winged musicians – critters of the animal orchestra at Edwards street. To the headache of the farm manager, the gophers have been active lately (Figure 3).

Figure 2: By installing a camera trap next to the Farm’s compost we were able to obtain various pictures of critters, such as this curious gopher (Figure 3), looking for new ways of causing headache to the farm manager.

Figure 3: A Farm-curious gopher.

Bird microphones, and gopher pictures aside; today’s volunteers weed several beds away. The recent rain makes handling the soil incredibly nourishing as I get to learn about the story of today’s volunteers, their relationship with the soil, the soil of their respective home countries, and their day to day lives at Yale. One of them has taught me new dishes from Sri Lanka, while another one became a dear friend.

When asking farm manager Jeremy Oldfield about the right time to seed carrots and radishes, he gives a great answer with a contagious and warm optimism and wisdom of a farmer. He also gives a bag full of carrot and radish seeds, to be planted at the home garden.

Time passes, seeds are planted, spinach, kale, and corn have germinated and grown. They see the days become longer.

It’s summer, it’s warm, nature is in full swing. Every single second our surroundings are exploding with life and reinventing configurations in which every living organism, including us fancy humans, are a collective pulse of.

Ok, enough philosophy and inner monologues! I leave Friday’s workday at the Farm with a smile on my face, a lower stress level, research gear up and running listening to the main actors of tonight sing. At home, I harvest my greens to make space for carrots and radishes while blue jays orchestrate tonight’s outdoors and a Downy woodpecker decides to add some drum and bass.

Fast forward four weeks and the Farm is looking great!

The garlic is several inches taller and there is a vibrant atmosphere of excitement among workday participants and farm managers. I hear laughter, friendly chatter and the sounds of rakes, shovels and chirping birds. Today we will learn and plant corn, beans, and squash together for symbiotic growing, admiring and learning from indigenous peoples’ planting practices.

We pick up cameras and microphones (Figure 2) and learn that several dozens of bird species have used the Yale Farm during spring migration. Some of these species are vulnerable and in decline due to human driven landscape modification and climate change, highlighting the importance of urban farms for birds across the world!

Figure 4: Hundreds of garlic cloves stretching in sun salutation with their leaves on a sunny day at the Farm.

In fact, in the last 50 years alone we have lost up to 30% of all birds in the United States! At the Farm, we see so many different layers and facets of biodiversity – from bees pollinating a plant whose pathogens are being eaten by bats, to birds foraging on some of the falling apples by the apple tree. It doesn’t hurt when a warm cup of cider, a lecture on sustainability, live music or poetry awaits at the end of the day.

The first building block to halting biodiversity loss requires us to know where species are and where they are not. It is also key to understand the relationship of biodiversity and our working landscapes from which us humans acquire our food. We all come from, end up in, depend on healthy soil, and must share this in a sustainable manner in an ever-crowded planet.

Identifying which species occupy small farms – such as the Yale Farm – helps understand how small-scale farm operations can be stewards of biodiversity while ensuring food production.

Let’s move from farming and science to music! At home, close all browser tabs used for research, put on headphones on. Open the music production software Ableton Live. After scrolling through some bird spy microphone recordings, we add recordings of ‘background noise’ to our opera as background; a good old trick for making Lo-fi beats sounding rawer.

We then add recordings from American Robins, the A.I. of the bird spy microphones has birds nicely labeled by name in each folder separately.

The chirping of birds, the clucking of chickens and the sound of a breeze evoke mellowness and tranquility. The same content felt after a day of working at the Farm. I try to transfer this feeling of tranquility into musical notes by jamming along with my synthesizer. The result is called ‘The Yale Farm Birds sing a song’ and can be found on Soundcloud.

Figure 5: The Yale farm birds sing a song, available on Soundcloud.

But why does farm music matter? Why does this matter for food systems, biodiversity, and us as people?

Perhaps to start by acknowledging that most of the food cultivated on earth is grown by small scale farm owners, which also increases resilience to extreme climatic events and increases food security. The field of agroecology studies how farming can align with ecological processes in a more sustainable way.

A better understanding of what birds live in farms, whether they provide important ecosystem services, or contribute negatively by eating crops, is critical for sustainable planning.

If we zoom out and think about the future, perhaps we can teach about biodiversity through the lens of music; we could motivate a whole new generation of youth to record and document the trends of birds in our neighborhoods, farms, backyards, schools or hospitals. This of bird bachata or cricket LoFi.

Such effort should be embedded into environmental and social justice principles. Lessons learned at the Yale Farm taught by the animal opera, could be applied as educational material for K12 STEM initiatives in New Haven and beyond. Our youth could collect environmental justice-rooted information on our city birds, improving our understanding on biodiversity, while making music and being able to connect with nature in urban environments. Nature is everywhere and offers music to those who listen; or who record it with a bird spy microphone (you can see this recording if you want to find out more)!

Can we apply lessons learned in New Haven somewhere else? Yes, definitely! At larger scales, initiatives such as TUBA (Training Undergraduate Biologists through urban Agriculture) are creating new hands-on curriculum for undergraduates by combining urban farming with biodiversity. This could attract a whole new range of computer science, art and musical students through music making of the natural world!

Figure 6: Panoramic photo of setting up cameras in the NW corner of the Yale Farm, facing the Lazarus Pavilion.

Months pass by again and it is Fall. Every single tree on my way up to Edwards Street has put on their best dress in a color palette with hundreds of shapes of green, yellow, red, and maroon. I am distracted from the beautiful old and new buildings by the red maple trees, which will provide delicious syrup later in the year. This time at the Farm there is no music recording, perhaps weeding, perhaps being, perhaps harvesting, perhaps cleaning.

The birds at the Farm are still chirping. Together they represent an ecosystem, ecosystems playing jazz from Monday to Sunday. This jazz will play long before and after we are gone and go back to the soil, to feed the earthworm that the early bird had for breakfast.

Thank you for listening.

Workday and knead 2 know | Friday, November 4

The last pizza workday of the semester was a warm and sunny one. The atmosphere on the Farm was ebullient as students rounded out old harvests and prepared for new crops to come. Students were grateful for the sunshine as they harvested and sprayed 20 pounds of carrots for the Dwight Community Fridge, misting themselves in the process. After many weeks of garland-making, workday participants harvested all the marigolds they could to make a final round of summery decor. Preparing for garlic was a multi-stage process, with some students breaking up softneck garlic bulbs while the rest used scuffle hoes to prepare the fields. They all gathered to plant the hundreds of cloves, each of which will grow into a full-fledged bulb of its own. They also delighted in threshing and winnowing our Midnight Black Turtle beans. Some students tossed the pods in pillow cases, beating them against the ground in order to remove the beans from their husks. But many took the more meditative route, separating the beans by hand, and the hoop house was full of the sound of pods cracking and beans cascading into buckets. The beans will be used in this week’s Fall Feast—a partnership with the Native American Cultural Center—while the husks will end up as dry matter for the compost. Other students helped pick hot peppers, resulting in many tests of spice tolerance—tempered by spoonfuls of ricotta donated by the Culinary Events Team. 

Hot peppers weren’t the only things eaten, as participants gathered for pizza in the Lazarus Pavilion. This week’s knead 2 know was delivered by Camilla Ledezma ’23.5, a Culinary Events Manager and 2021 Global Food Fellow who spent her summer in Spain. Her presentation focused on the role of non-human animals and animality in the Spanish colonial project. She described how Spanish colonists believed in a humoral theory of health, in which the body contained a mixture of four humors, each tied to a respective temperament: blood (sanguine), phlegm (phlegmatic), black bile (melancholic), and yellow bile (choleric). Food played a role in balancing these humors—beef and pork, for example, were sanguine, while fish was phlegmatic. Upon arriving in what is now called the Americas, Spanish colonists were concerned that eating Indigenous foods would affect their humors, making them more like Indigenous people. In the colonial imagination, Indigenous people were seen as animal-like, in part because of their different foodways and agricultural practices. For example, the land was supposedly insufficiently developed, at least until the arrival of European cows wreaked havoc on the environment in an “ungulate eruption.” Ledezma also reflected on the ways in which Indigenous people resisted the imposition of colonial foodways. She noted that high rates of lactose intolerance among Native peoples can be read as the body resisting the forced introduction of beef and dairy.

After a round of questions about Ledezma’s thought-provoking presentation, students enjoyed the last Farm-fresh pizzas of the semester. Next week from 3:00 to 5:00 PM at the Native American Cultural Center, the Farm will co-host its annual Fall Feast, a celebration of Indigenous foodways. Thank you to everyone who has joined us on the fields and under the Lazarus Pavilion this semester. Photos from the event can be found here.

Moonlight Hauntings | Friday, October 28

On Friday, October 28th, after the pizza had been eaten, the workday had been completed, and the sun had set, students made their way back to the Old Acre for Moonlight Hauntings, a live poetry Halloween event in the Lazarus Pavillion. The event, a collaboration between the Asian American Cultural Center and YSFP, featured poets and performers from Jook Songs, Oye, and WORD, the predominant slam poetry groups on Yale’s campus. 

Snacking on berries and cookies warmed by the embers of the woodfire oven, still hot from the afternoon pizza, students were treated to myriad performances, guitar songs, and poems ranging from topics such as climate change, love, and insects. 

We could not have thought of a better way to keep of Halloweekend; everyone’s poems brought so much light and joy to a chilly evening. We love having student groups at the Farm. Come chat with us during workdays or knead 2 know if you have an idea for an event collaboration with YSFP. More photos of the event can be found here. 

Workday and knead 2 know | Friday, October 28

On Friday, October 28th, students kicked off Halloweekend with a workday and knead 2 now. There was nothing spooky about the workday, though, as students braved the fall chill and got to work preparing the Farm for winter. The workday was heavily garlic themed— students clipped garlic heads and broke them into cloves. Students also sowed garlic beds, laying cloves on top of beds and tucking them into the soil. 

Students threshed midnight turtle beans, which will be used to make a Three Sisters chili at our upcoming Fall Feast on Friday, November 11. 

Students also spruced up the chicken coop with some plants and pulled basil plants for compost, which made the Old Acre smell like one giant margherita pizza. 

And there was pizza, and plenty of it, as the Culinary Events Team churned out its usual stellar selection of pies. 

With cider, tea, and pizza in hand, students gathered to hear Ismini Ethridge, a second-year Masters of Environmental Management student at Yale School of the Environment, Agroforester-in-Residence, and 2022 Global Food Fellow, give her knead 2 now. Ismini presented her summer research on Tree Gardens in the buffer zone of the Sinharaja Forest Reserve in Sri Lanka. 

When Ethridge arrived in Sri Lanka, the country was in crisis. The previous year, the president passed a total ban on fertilizer and agrochemical imports, without consulting farmers about the decision. Ethridge visited Sri Lanka at a moment of national reckoning about the country’s economic and agricultural future. Ethridge visited the last remaining primary forest in Sri Lanka, and immersed herself in a village of 35 households, learning how tree gardens can be used for tea production, non-timber products, herbal medicine, and maintenance of biodiversity. Ethridge talked about a groundbreaking research paper published by Cindy Caron thirty years prior. Visiting Sri Lanka this summer, after the area had greatly improved its infrastructure and increased its emphasis on tea production, Ethridge could see how the landscape of agroforestry in the area had since changed. Ethridge was inspired by how increased tea production did not encroach upon the subsistence portion of the village’s agriculture; villagers were able to retain agency in the market. Ethridge was also impressed by the generational knowledge imparted to village children about the varieties and uses of plants. She also talked about her strategies for cultural immersion. She spoke about how she waited weeks to begin her research and spent the beginning of her time in Sri Lanka meeting the community. 

After the k2k, students stuck around the Lazarus Pavillion as Raffa Sindoni MEM ’23 and math lecturer Erik Hiltunen of Spirit of the Glacier played some Swedish folk tunes on flute. 

Thank you to everyone who attended and has been attending our workdays. It is the participants at these events who truly make them special. Photos from the event can be found here. 

Workday and knead 2 know | Friday, October 14

With each sunny Friday workday on the Old Acre, we’ve thought the warm conditions may be the last of the season. This Friday was no exception. 

On this particular glorious afternoon, students threshed and winnowed Einkorn wheat, chopped corn stalks, and scuffled plots in preparation for planting. Reaping the fall bounty of a summer’s hard work, students harvested persimmons, heads of lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and 25 lbs of beets. The beets were used on Saturday at Yale Pop-Up’s lunch event, hosted at the Old Acre. 

After an afternoon of hard work, students gathered in the Lazarus Pavilion, now fully decked out in dried flower bouquets, garlic bunches, chile ristras, and marigold garlands from previous workdays. Natalie Smink ’24, a Farm Manager and 2022 Yale Farm Summer Intern, presented her summer research as the knead 2 know. Smink, who hails from Boulder, CO, spoke about regenerative agriculture in her home state, and the ways that farmers are working to adjust to a changing climate. Smink talked about soil health in a drought state, the dangers of flash flooding, and the importance of cover crops to protect soil health. She spoke about ranching and grazing techniques, such as sending goats through agricultural fields, and the ways that these practices leave root systems intact and naturally introduce fertilizer into the area. Smink also noted how ‘regenerative agriculture’ has become somewhat of a buzzword, and that all the self-identifying regenerative farms in Colorado are white-owned. She spoke of the importance of bringing native communities back to the lands from which they have been disposed as a means of making agricultural practices more genuinely regenerative and justice-oriented.

Thank you to everyone who has been coming out to our events this fall. You can view photos from the event here.