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Slow Farming: Resilient,
Just, and Joyful Agriculture 2019
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Course Description
In this senior
capstone course, students will explore solutions to problems created by our
current food systems. We will critically examine recent movements in organic,
local, and sustainable agriculture and discuss how we might engage in
transforming our individual, institutional, community, and political
relationships with food and farming. This course includes a practicum in “slow farming”
at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC.
In addition,
students in this course will engage in envisioning a food and farming justice
“pathway” that includes academic courses and experiential opportunities that
will help future K students deepen their understanding of and engagement with
food and farming systems.
Senior Capstone
Programmatic Components
- draw students from various majors together through collaborative engagement with critical issues facing the world today.
- encourage cross-disciplinary thinking and problem solving.
- maximize student control of content, process, and knowledge generation.
- encourage students to explore connections (and disconnections) among components of their K-Plan.
- invite students to articulate a narrative of their education in anticipation of their lives after graduation.
Course-Specific Objectives
- To discuss our responsibilities and relationships to the human and non-human beings who provide our food
- To envision practical solutions to current agricultural crises
- To explore different approaches to manifesting the changes we desire, including (but not limited to) personal lifestyle and career choices, community advocacy, and political activism
- To examine the implications of the individual and cultural narratives that frame our relationships to food, farming, and ecology; to re-envision these stories in ways that enable healthier, more resilient and satisfying systems to emerge
- To practice “living in resistance” through the development of food production skills and knowledge at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC
- To practice collaborative, community-based action by mapping current opportunities available to K students to learn about food and farming systems and by envisioning how these opportunities could be expanded and connected
Course Framework
Shared teaching & learning: This class will meet on campus once each week for a
two-hour class period. The bulk of these class periods will be led by students.
Each student will be responsible for facilitating (or co-facilitating) at least
one class period in which they will engage the class in an exploration of an
issue related to agriculture and/or food systems.
Students will provide the class with background information
and multiple perspectives on the topic of their choice, present examples of
attempts to solve problems related to that issue, and lead the class in an
exploration of how we might personally engage with solutions to these problems.
One week before the class period that they are to facilitate, they will post a
reflection on our class blog that includes an exploration of their personal
relationship with the issue they would like us to discuss, a list of materials
they’d like the class to review (they should provide links to any of these that
are online and hard copies of those that are not), and a question (or
questions) that they would like the class to reflect upon prior to our next
class meeting.
Because of our assignment to assist with the Food and
Farming “Pathway” project (see below), students are encouraged to include
reflections on the following questions in their blog posts:
- What do you know or currently believe about this issue?
- How do you know what you know (where and when did you learn it)?
- How do you expect this issue might intersect with your life now and in the future?
- What more would you like to understand?
Food and Farming
“Pathway” project: Students will engage with the grant funded initiative to
re-envision experiential education at K by helping to develop a pilot Food and
Farming Justice “pathway” that will include cross-disciplinary coursework and
experiential opportunities such as study abroad sites, internships, and
on-campus employment. The development of this pathway is ongoing, with the
intention to have a proposal completed by the end of 2019.
Our job in this course will be to map current locations in
which K students are learning about food and farming systems and to come up
with suggestions for ways that this pathway might offer additional
opportunities for students to critically examine these systems through the lens
of social justice and food sovereignty. We will do this by using by using
ourselves as a sample of the student body and reflecting on what we’ve learned,
what we haven’t learned, and what we would like to understand more deeply.
On-farm participation:
Students will spend three hours each week on the farm, participating in farm
activities under the supervision of the farm’s owners. They will learn how
these activities fit into the larger scope of the farm’s operations, how the
farm fits in to the food-shed within which it operates, and how Amy & John
address critical agricultural issues through their farming practices. Prior to
coming to the farm each week, students will review and respond to materials
posted to the course blog that provide context to help them better understand
the significance of what they’ll be doing on the farm that week.
Reflections: Each week students will be asked to write a reflection on
our class blog in response to the question posed by the facilitator of our next
on-campus meeting. Students are also asked to respond on a weekly basis to John
and Amy’s weekly farm practicum posts. At the end of the quarter, students will
write a reflection on their overall experience in the course.
Grading: Since the
success of this course depends on the efforts and investment of the students
involved, this class will be graded on participation in each of these
activities:
Class facilitation (blog post that provides background
information, multiple perspectives &
reflection questions; leading one hour of class): 30%
On-farm participation (responding to weekly farm blogs; showing
up on time each week prepared to dig in!):
30%
On-campus class participation, weekly reflections (thoughtful,
in-depth engagement on the blog & in class): 30%
Final reflection (thoughtful, in-depth engagement): 10%
Course Materials
Course materials will be determined primarily by the course
participants. The facilitator of each class period will determine what
information he or she would like the class to review prior to that class
meeting. Amy and John will also provide informational materials to help the
class better understand their farming practices. Most of this information will
be conveyed via the class blog, but some may be in hard copy form. We may decide
to read books or watch films together and there may be opportunities for students
to attend food and farming events throughout the quarter.
For the on-farm classes, students should bring clothes,
shoes, and gloves that can get wet, dirty, torn, and/or otherwise ruined. They
should check the weather report prior to leaving campus and bring multiple
layers of clothing in order to adapt to changing weather conditions. It is
often much colder and windier on the farm than in town. Rain happens. This
course offers students the opportunity to experience daily farm life, which
includes working outdoors in less-than-wonderful weather.
