Dearest farm friends,

The calendula is blooming, strawberries and snap peas are rolling in, tomatoes and cucumbers are in the ground...we are barreling into summer! Another academic year has come and gone, and while the temperature rises and field production ramps up, our team is also working to slow down, reflect, and celebrate all that our students and soils have accomplished in the past year.

This spring we have been up to our ears in academic conferences, Alumni Reunion Weekend tours, speaker panels on local approaches to food justice, monthly eco-poetry discussions, soil fertility research, arts and fermentation workshops, research publications (check out "Soil as the Archive"), our spring Contra Dance, and beginning our new production and donation model. Our students have been hard at work on the farm and off, many of them completing senior theses and graduating from their departments with distinction.

Keep reading for some highlights from the past semester on the farm, as well as a list of exciting upcoming farm events to add to your summer calendar.

With love,

The Duke Campus Farm

From left to right: Aakanksha Saraf, Saskia Cornes, Abby Saks, Dan Richter, Simon Heinberg

We feel so lucky to work with students from such a wide array of academic disciplines, from Biology to International Comparative Studies and everywhere in between. Many of our crew members create unique connections between their work at the farm and their academic studies; Skijler Hutson's (T'24) English thesis explores how postmodern novelists have written about the development of the interstate freeway system in Los Angeles and its impact on the Californian landscape. They were inspired to do this research in part from a trip to California in 2021 with the Duke Campus Farm Immerse program, "Imagining the Future of Food." 

While some students bring inspiration from the farm into new realms, others root their research in the very land we farm. This year was the first iteration of our Soil Fertility Fellowship, which our crew member Abby tied closely to her studies in Biology. Abby Saks (T'24) has spent the past year working with the Farm, Richter Soils Lab, and the rest of the Soil Fertility Fellowship team to perform an in-depth analysis of DCF soils. Through a close study of over 100 samples of soil pulled from varying depths, Abby and the team offer the first quantitative assessment of our soil health and impact of our regenerative practices over the past 13 years. This research combines lab analysis with the experience and observations of our farm staff and crew, and it will fuel our future communication with the public about the regenerative work we are doing with our soils.

Click below to read more about Abby's conclusions and peruse the impressive work that the rest of our crew has accomplished this year!

Collards are biennial crops, which means that they complete their life cycle over two growing seasons. Because of this, we plant our collards in the fall and overwinter them in order to promote flowering and seed production in the spring. Once the plants flowered and produced seed pods, we cut them down and hang them to dry until the pods are brittle and seeds are viable.

This year, the Duke Campus Farm is participating in the Heirloom Collards Project. Led by Southern seed-saver Ira Wallace, HCP seeks to honor the history of collards in the Southeast by preserving both the endangered heirloom varieties themselves and the histories they represent. By growing these endangered varieties and saving their seeds to share and grow again, we not only preserve these seeds for another generation, but also ensure that communities have agency over their own food-ways.

The Farm elected to grow the Jernigan Yellow Cabbage Collard, a beautiful plant with large, yellow-tinged leaves that grow more than 2 feet in diameter. We let them overwinter in our high tunnel and harvested their leaves for many months. We were able to share these collard greens with many in the DCF community, including Duke students via the Blue Devils Market, families connected to our partner organizations Root Causes and the West End Free Market, and DCF student crew. Once the weather warmed, the plants flowered and developed seed pods, which we recently harvested and are now drying. Once they are completely dry, we will work to retrieve the seeds from the pods and store them for next year’s planting.

If you're curious to learn how to save these seeds, join us at our Collards Seed-Saving Workshop! While working together to save the seeds, we will also have the honor of hearing from Georie Bryant of Symbodied. Georie will share more about the history of collards in North Carolina, as well as the concept of food and land justice and the importance of considering both food and land access in the work toward collective liberation. See "Upcoming Events" for more information.

Students from Laura Florand's French class, "Terre, Savoir, Être," visited the farm for a workshop led by local potter, Julie Hinson. The students learned how to extract and filter clay from the soil, then built and fired their own clay vessels.

Dreamy evening sunset on the farm

Click here or the image below to view our 2023 Annual Report.

Our work toward food systems change and a restorative relationship to land is possible because of our network of support. Your continued generosity is essential to sustaining the growth of our program. If you are interested in supporting our work, we welcome your financial gift here.

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