The program uses an “integrated systems approach” to delivering hands-on education in nutrition, ecology, sustainability, and land stewardship . In practice, this consists of educating students in a garden classroom elective for elementary and middle school, hosting a high school farm elective course where students visit local farms, and preparing and preserving food from the school farm in the cafeteria, where local scratch-cooked meals are served year round. Part of the growing national movement around improving the quality of school meals through locally sourced produce, the LIFE program takes advantage of the exceptional quality of both locally produced foods and farm-based educational opportunities on the island. The LIFE program has been funded by a combination of a large private foundation and smaller donations, fundraisers, grants, and in-kind contributions. It is currently working towards a more sustainable, diversified finance model that will expand those invested in the program’s success as well as allow the educational activities associated with LIFE to grow. LCLT coordinates interns to support the LIFE program in the summer , and staff at the Family Resource Center run a volunteer-based gleaning operation on island orchards that yields up to 5,000 lbs. of fruit for the school cafeteria.
Production has grown steadily at the ½ acre school farm, from 1,400 to over 6,000 lbs. between 2009 and 2016 . The program is currently fundraising to purchase two beef cows raised by island teens for the cafeteria meat supply.The results of this research investigation led to the conclusion that students were not yet connecting their experiential learning activities in the school garden to bigger picture environmental themes and challenges, such as climate change,vertical farming companies greenhouse gas emissions, and the environmental impact of conventional food systems. The gaps in environmental knowledge, which forms an important but not complete piece of the environmental literacy equation became clear to teachers at the school, who sought to fill those gaps with new curricula. In partnership with Lopez school and LIFE staff, I developed a food systems and climate change 6-lesson curriculum, designed to engage students in questions at the climate and food nexus. The curriculum walks through the causes, effects, impact monitoring, and solutions to climate change, through the perspective of the food and agriculture sector. The culmination is a class or school-wide climate action project in partnership with the community, sparking informed hope through taking action. This curricular outcome of the LIFE program is evaluated and discussed further as a pathway to farm-based climate education and applied to other school contexts in Chapter 4. In addition to assessing environmental literacy outcomes, environmental impacts of the LIFE program were also investigated in 2015-2016. Using the Cool Climate Carbon Footprint Calculator for food-related emissions, eliminating the need to transport all meat, fruits and vegetables to the school could save 1.4 tons CO2 annually per person.
Adjusting this metric to account for the 9-month school year and multiplying by approximately 120 students who eat at the school cafeteria per day, this yields approximately 120 tons of CO2 savings annually. K-12 education is inherently social. The director of the Organic Farm School finds hope in the very nature of children working together in school gardens, that they might come to see farming as more social and collaborative, and thus more readily forge pathways into cooperative farming.Midnight’s Farm, a 100-acre property located near the center of Lopez Island, heralds the diversity of its operations from the initial entry point down a gravel driveway. A signpost indicates the direction of the compost operations, yoga studio, farm stand selling beef, pork and vegetables, and wood-fired bakery . In the words of the farm owners, “we farm to steward this wonderfully beautiful piece of earth and for the tangible, hands-dirty love of connecting people to the soil and storing a little bit of carbon there, too.” The land was purchased with savings from a previous career as an Alaskan salmon fishing captain, and the past 20 years have seen a progressive investment in land restoration and diversified agriculture operations. From the establishment of hundreds of trees at the property border to rotational grazing plans for cows on pasture and marshland, to fruit trees and ¼ acre home garden with greenhouse, to a blueberry patch being prepared for planting in 2019, biodiversity continues to grow. Revenue streams are accordingly diverse, with the compost and wood chips bringing in the most revenue annually, followed by Field House vacation rentals, beef and pork products, and vegetable sales.
The Field House, available for short term farm stays, hosts visitors year round and is booked throughout busy summer tourism season, capitalizing on the growing market for agritourism opportunities. The farm has typically provided housing for another couple in a barn apartment, in exchange for regular workdays or some combination of paid labor and housing work-trade. Sustainable Agriculture Interns coordinated by LCLT help out during summer months, and the farm is a popular destination for “WWOOFers” as well . Other Lopez Island youth work on the farm several days a week during the summer. At maximum capacity, the farm hosted nine farm employees during the summer 2019 season. Farming practices are the product of decades of experience, and soil fertility is the product of countless yards of compost and mulch application. In the vegetable garden, dozens of crops feed the farm families and neighbors each year. From spring seeding to bed preparation and transplanting, to weeding, irrigation, harvesting, cover cropping and winter greens cultivation in the greenhouse, every activity has its seasonal rhythm. Several planting strips are gradually converting to no-till farming, with compost, mulch, and broad-forking substituting for the mechanical mixing of the soil. Tilling is associated with carbon release and disturbance of the soil biota, so reducing or eliminating tillage is an effort several farmers are working towards, in balance with weed management. Irrigation ponds, dug on most farm properties, fill up with rain in the winter, and provide water to crops through the dry summer months.It is amended with lime and seeded with beneficial plants to boost nutrient quality of forage materials. The cows contribute to the regeneration of pasture soils, providing aeration from their hooves, growth stimulation from grass consumption, and fertilizer from their manure. David and Faith, the owners of Midnight’s Farm,equipment for vertical farming are passionate about researching and implementing agricultural solutions to climate change on their farm.
Their bookshelves are filled with books such as Grass, Soil, Hope; Dirt to Soil; and Growing a Revolution: Bringing our Soil Back to Life, and their social calendar is filled with attending climate talks and hosting climate researchers from University of Washington , WSU, and other institutions. Most recently they are engaged in a carbon footprint analysis of their compost operation, land use, and cattle herd, in order to understand highest impact opportunities for emissions reduction and carbon removal. The results show that currently the farm is contributing to the sequestration of approximately 250 mtCO2e, via forest cover, marshland, managed pastures, compost production and application, which together more than offset emissions from farm machinery, diesel use, and cattle as shown in Figure 9. David and Faith advocate for a “big tent” approach to food systems transition where many different people and groups can see themselves in a process of growing food with a lighter climate impact, and better human health impact. Their vision rests on a premise of developing strong interpersonal relationships, infusing the work with joy, humor, social connection, and opportunities for personal growth. An onsite yoga studio offers space for interns and farming friends to stretch and reinvigorate bodies feeling the effects of hard physical work. David and Faith continue to articulate better and brighter ideas for the future, such as finding long-term land partners and helping launch a climate farm school on the island, pushing forward the vision of a truly regenerative agroecosystem on Lopez. Orderly rows of greens and vegetables lend a sense of efficiency and purpose to the fields of Lopez Harvest. Successional plantings of diverse lettuce varieties march westward across the field, with the largest plants cut for weekly harvests while each neighboring row showcases one fewer week in the field. 500 lettuce plants go in the ground on Wednesdays, and plants are harvested on Tuesdays and Fridays for twice a week deliveries. The humming schedule of running a successful greens production farm serving the two island grocery stores as well as 5-6 island restaurants and food businesses creates a strong weekly rhythm for farm owner and farm workers. Dig, transplant, bed down, repeat.
Six inch spacing, four rows per planting bed. Finish the row, water it in, keep moving. Lopez Harvest sells lettuce mix, a specialty blend of “Island Greens,” chard, microgreens, arugula, herbs, and various seasonal vegetables and specialty crops to most of the for-profit food retail and business operations on the island. Christine, the farm owner, sends out a “pick list” to all customers a week in advance, takes orders by a certain day, and harvests and delivers all orders herself. This is her answer to the question “what does it take to be a successful small-scale farmer on a small island?” She sells her surplus produce directly to retail and restaurant, finding this to be more profitable than selling at the seasonal weekly Farmer’s Market or direct to consumers. She raises additional vegetables for personal consumption, reducing her own need to purchase store-bought foods, and facilitates a meat-share program where costs and benefits from raising meat chickens are shared among participating households. These non-monetary and cooperative forms of exchange are important to the economic viability of her operations. Christine now receives additional revenue from her participation in a beginning farmer mentoring program, where she earns up to $1,000 annually for mentoring younger farmers in their first year of operation . Her farm is on shared land purchased by three couples, and was acquired with family support, a common method for overcoming high barriers to entry for farmland access . While some rows of her field are planted to commercial crops, others are in rye-vetch cover crop mix gaining fertility for next year, or mustards to deter wire worms. The cover crop is mowed down and incorporated into the beds, with some beds serving as experiments for no-till practices where she has also tried occultation techniques to germinate and kill weeds prior to transplanting. This is difficult to enact on her land due to heavy clay soils that need some disturbance to be made ready for tender transplants and is a work in progress. Commercial crops are rotated onto previously cover cropped beds, a dance between production of plants and soil. In Christine’s mind, “good farming is good for the climate;” she adopts practices when they prove beneficial for her land, crops, soil, and business model, and it just so happens that many of these practices are anointed in academic research as climate mitigating strategies. Christine exemplifies a successful independent, woman-owned business model. She receives seasonal labor support through the LCLT intern program and through informal worktrade agreements with friends and neighbors. Christine is a vocal contributor at the monthly farmer coffees, sharing what she’s learned about effective weed control strategies , and a gifted farmer educator. She collaborates with WSU San Extension on a research project to reduce wire worm pest pressure in lettuce crops and is also a collaborator on the Western SARE bio-char cocompost grant, participating in the field trial and soil/crop data collection processes. Christine recognizes the attractiveness of entering into farming cooperatively or with farm partners but struggles with the difficult proposition of supporting multiple households with limited farm revenue streams and land use restrictions. When it comes to sharing land in her current situation, she would love to be able to build and provide more farm worker housing, but is restricted from doing so by county zoning policies that prevent more than two houses from being built on a parcel designated as “farmland7.” The county zoning codes are ripe for reform, but notoriously difficult to get right in terms of regulatory verbiage that protects farmland from becoming housing developments yet allows for ample and affordable farm worker housing.