Students swinging their partners at our spring Contra dance, which boasted a record breaking 200+ dancers!

Hello and happy early summer from the Duke Campus Farm team!

May is a time of transition at the farm in many ways. Last weekend, we graduated 17 students from across the university, celebrating all that they have contributed to our acre as they launch into the next steps of their lives. Fittingly, the farm is changing quickly as well: leafy spring greens and fragrant herbs will soon be joined by summer squash, potatoes, garlic, and onions. A new summer student crew has joined us just in time for bigger harvests and more frequent deliveries to our community partners.

Even as we look ahead with energy for the work to come, we celebrate the spectacular spring we've had! We've been busy with new research, food production, and programmatic and academic collaborations. Read on to hear what we have been up to at the farm, and to discover ways to get involved!

Warmly,

Amy Curran, Assistant Director

Alyssa Briggs, MEM and Soil Fertility Fellow, leading a group of volunteers in a worm census, one way to assess the health of our soil.

Our Soil Fertility Fellows have been hard at work this year, continuing to test our soil and the effect our regenerative practices have had on its health. Anna Clauer, Soil Fertility Fellowship, has shared the team's most recent findings with us below:

Background: Phosphorus (P) is one of the three main macronutrients for plant growth and development, but it is also often a limiting factor in soils. It is found naturally in phosphate rock but can be broken down into plant-available forms and added to fertilizers. Various factors such as organic matter content, soil pH, temperature, and crops grown influence the bioavailability of phosphorus for plants. This year, soil fertility fellows quantified the amount of phosphorus in soils through wet-lab extraction to understand phosphorus conditions on the Duke Campus Farm (DCF).

Results: We tested soils both in and outside of the farm, with samples from plots with a range of years cultivated, to see how regenerative agriculture practices have influenced soil phosphorus. Our results showed that the highest P content was in plots inside farm beds, and in the top 30 cm of soil. It also indicated that plots under cultivation for longer have higher P reserves, especially in the top 30 cm from built-up fertility practices. Additionally, phosphorus content from amendments were calculated for four years back from the time of sampling and are reported by farm quadrant. This leads to a conclusion that at least 12.8-28.6% of soil phosphorus is explainable by added amendments.

Conclusions: The phosphorus content on the farm is sufficient for crop growing, and in some cases slightly excessive, leading DCF to reduce their phosphorus amendment application.

Many thanks to Dr. Dan Richter and the Soil Fertility Fellowship team!

Amy works with Cherokee scholars from across the nation to plant flour corn in our Southeastern American Indian Garden

This past semester was full of new and fruitful collaborations campus and community partners. We worked together with the Nasher for a joint museum/farm tour focused on humans' relationship with the natural world, welcomed Duke Alumni and their families to connect with the farm during Alumni Weekend, worked with Drs. Rytas Vilgalys,  Khalid Hameed and DCF alum Mira Polishook to host a mushroom inoculation workshop, and met with the Cherokee Scholars Symposium. We look forward to deepening these relationships as we continue to offer connection-building programming. We hold community building alongside academic growth, allowing all participants to connect with place and people.

Field Education Manager Izzy Brace teaches the ins and outs of bed preparation and soil health to House Course students.

It’s been a busy semester on the academic front, with the third iteration of the DCF House Course “Regenerating Our Food Systems” + ten course integrations across disciplines (including one with Germain Choffart and his French 101 course that made the news!)  Undergraduates in our spring course offering “Climate Culture and Identity” created short documentaries on local approaches to climate resilience, including the Duke Campus Farm. This course closed out with a celebratory film festival that included students’ friends and families, community collaborators, and the Duke Campus Farm team. Saskia is heading out on sabbatical this summer, but will come back with some fresh perspectives from two civic agriculture spaces where she will be a visiting fellow - the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and the Fogo Island Collaborative Inquiry Project.

Field Education Manager Izzy Brace with two new graduates, Olivia Ares and Sage Hirshfeld.

The seventeen members of the extended farm family who graduated last week each contributed greatly to the life of the farm during their tenure at Duke, whether as student field crew, researchers, dedicated volunteers or academic collaborators. We hold gratitude for the vibrancy, thoughtfulness, and embodied energy they have contributed to our farm; we would not be the same without each of them.

This past Friday, we welcomed graduates and their families for a bittersweet celebration under our pavilion. Among hugs and homegrown flowers, we sent each of our beloved students into the next phase of their lives.

Claire Pajka and Brooke Rose, both graduates of Duke's Masters of Environmental Management program, have been among our most faithful volunteers for the past two years. We wish them well as they take their next steps!

At the Duke Campus Farm, we seek to catalyze positive change in the food system. In addition to offering healthy, seasonal, sustainable produce to our community, we work to grow climate and food systems  leaders with the tools to navigate a quickly changing landscape.

Now more than ever, we rely on the generosity of our community to continue offering sustainably grown food, and food systems education, to those in our network. If you are interested in supporting our work, we welcome your financial gift here.

Click here or the image below to view our 2024 Annual Report.

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