oneVillage Foundation

It was beatiful and sunny day as we rode into Santa Cruz. UC Santa Cruz is on the top of a hill overlooking Santa Cruz and the ocean. The university is unique, as its built environment (which consists mainly of 70s style concrete buildings) sprawls several miles with buildings interspersed with trees.

UCSC has a reputation for being a center of the counterculture and of so does Santa Cruz itself. Recently Rolling Stone Magazine featured UCSC on its cover claiming that they were the most stoned out campus in the nation. A recent newspaper report noted that this irked many at the university who have sought to shed that repuation. Regardless, USCS has one of the most innovative sustainable agriculture programs in the nation and when one visits The Farm, one can very much pick up that counterculture influence there. While visiting though i did not experience the ever recognizable aroma of pot smoke--a common warning sign that indicates that ominous countercultural influences are nearby.

one of the first we saw was a composter and other devices pivotal in creating a sustainable farm. Each was labeled to provide an interpretative experience for the visitor. After that was the wood shop and then amidst the flora was a small building with porch in the front. This is where the people who worked and lived at the Farm cooked and ate healthy organic food, much of which is grown at the Farm. There are no paid cooks at the farm each intern takes turns cooking and they work in teams of two. It was lively in the cafe with lots of people eating healthy food and socializing. After a lunch of bean burgers and salad - in which we ate too much and spoke too long keeping many of the interns from their jobs - we headed out to the fields with Joy Msomi in the lead. Joy is an seasoned second year veteran and she seemed so happy that we had come down to see her and to explore the work she does at the Farm.

The first stop was the strawberry field. Joy discussed one of the strategies employed to increase strawberry yields is to use green plastic to absorb the heat from sun.

Recently in collaboration with local berry farmers, the UCSC recieved a 500,000 dollar government grant to study how to improve organic strawberrying growing practices. One thing they are doing is testing biological alternatives to methyl bromide to suppress Verticillium dahliae, a soil pathogen that poses the greatest threat for organic strawberry production in the state. While specific solutions are important to researchers at UCSC, they increasingly want to take their work to a new level and provide alternative to current monoculture farming. They plan to do this by redesigning agricultural systems from a whole systems perpective so that they can better resist disease. The result will be radical and it may turn out to look very different from what were used to which is acre after acre of organic strawberries. Environmental studies professor Stephen Gliessman says, "You may see a patchwork of strawberries and other crops, because monoculture brings problems. We need to build on the strengths of diversity.”

The next event of interest was the barn where many of the second year interns lived. The showers right next to the barn were powered by solar panels. Nothing is more fascinating for those seeking out ecoliving solutions than to see a functional solar shower! Joy then took us down a road where most of the first year interns stay in tents. She also showed us the "free store" where people leave the stuff they do not need so that others can enjoy them. As we went down the dirt path, we saw many tents equipped with PV panels. One of the nicer tents was where Joy lived and she showed us inside.

Frugal living means very little power is needed to live on. Unfortunately, we did not take pictures of the shower area, that runs on PV solar and also solar hot water panels. The panels while simple heat the water up very nicely says Joy.

We then went to the tomato fields and we all seemed very much to like tomatoes. Harvesting and even planting is tricky especially when you need a consistent flow of produce throughout the harvest peroid. Plantings are staggered so that plants that are particularly suceptable to rot like tomatos can be harvested consistently without much time to rot in storage. Those who are members of the UCSC Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program are a priority because they pay a monthly fee to get fresh organic produce from the Farm. As we passed through the potato field Joy mentioned that they were doing experimentation with metal plates inserted into the ground to make them grow quicker. Also of note was the greenhouses where the seedlings are prepared for eventual planting in the fields. It turns out that there are specific processes of germinating the seeds to ensure maximum growth.

We then got into Joy's car and took a while up the hill deeper into UCSC to the much smaller 2 acre Chadwick Garden. Its a tottaly different vibe with what seemed to be mostly apple trees surrounded by a large forest. We saw several interns making - you guessed it - apple juice. The apple trees were enchanting to us as there were so many varieties and some of them were so large images of eden kept croping up in our minds. Joy encouraged us to take as many as we could carry.

After leaving Chadwick Farm we went back to the Farm and settled down for dinner at the cafe/activity center. The special that night was burritos with all the fixins set out in a row, ready to be placed into tortillas. After dinner Joy went back to her tent house to fix Dimpho's hair and Joyayo and I rested on the community couch. Before we left they told us to go raid the walk-in refridgerator. At first I was a little reluctant thinking i had misunderstood - what they want to give me free organic food? Finally after getting assurances, I found that this indeed was official Farm policy: visitors were entitled to find a box and then fill it up! I then proceed to load my box up with the best produce I could find in the walk-in.

One last note: While Joy was able to intern at the Farm through a scholarship grant, the grant was cut after she came. This only demonstrates to us how much more we need to work to get the word out about the importance of places like The Farm in educating people about sustainable agricultural practices.

The Farm proves it is possible to live cheaply, live sustainably and live well. The dynamism and energy of this place as well as its obvious sustainability, makes it a model not only for ecoliving but for living itself. However it is not a fully featured community, but a place for interns to learn about sustainable farming. It would not be such a leap to assume that most people would be much happier living in such a frugal environment, if only their minds could be opened to even consider such a change in their lifestyles.