Lauren, our new student farm manager, transplanting fall collards.

Hello, dear farm friends!

As summer draws to a close and we take deep breaths before jumping into the Fall CSA season, we offer you this newsletter as a recap of the past few months on the Duke Campus Farm. Our team is growing (food, and in size!), and we are delighted to have spent the past couple of months working with Amy Curran in her new position as Assistant Director. Izzy has captained a team of hard-working students through summer CSA, keeping spirits high even in the hottest, sweatiest, doggiest days of August. Saskia has steered our ship forward, bringing together folks from across the university to help us collectively work with our strategic plan and decide what the farm's future will look like. And to top off the summer, our team hosted 72 Duke students as a part of Duke's Experiential Orientation Program. We pickled okra, visited the Durham Farmer's Market, had our own Chopped cooking competition, and stargazed on the farm while enjoying a bonfire and s'mores. What a joy to welcome so many new faces to the farm and to Durham!

Keep reading below to hear more from the rest of our team and see the latest photos of life on the farm.

Take care,

Maia and the DCF Team

Duke first years and farm crew enjoy an evening bonfire on the farm during orientation.

Josie, one of our summer crew members, practices using the BCS tractor.

What a summer it’s been here at the Duke Campus Farm! As August comes to a humid close, we find ourselves in the midst of many transitions. The tomatoes, eggplant, okra, peppers and basil are nearing the end of their production cycles, and our soil once more finds itself nourishing rows of baby kale, carrots, chard, and arugula. We have welcomed a shift in temperature this week as September looms, a welcome reprieve from the string of steamy summer days. Mornings now bring a breath of refreshing cool air, and the sun begins its descent a bit sooner each evening, meaning afternoons of slanted light and lengthening shadows.

We are so proud of our summer crew, who ran a successful Spring/Summer Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) program for a total of 15 weeks, growing everything from carrots and tomatoes to radicchio and fennel. Our student crew learned how to operate our walk-behind tractor as well as streamline our CSA packing process. It took the crew less than 15 minutes to pack over 30 boxes by the end of the season! If you want to taste the fruits of our labor, be sure to sign up for our 10 week Fall CSA below.

We have said goodbye to Natalie, our fantastic student field manager, as well as Ming and Josie, some of our spectacular summer crew. But we also welcomed some wonderful new volunteers – Jean, Rae, Sarah, and Tirza – who joined our work days every Thursday morning. They were enthusiastically committed throughout these hot summer days and it’s been a pleasure getting to know each of them. We also welcomed many groups to our work days, including folks from the Duke Career Center and a seminar class on Theology for Scientists and Engineers. We are thrilled to begin the fall season with fresh energy and the promise of both new and deepening relationships at the farm. Be sure to join us this fall for our weekly community workdays every Friday from 1-4pm starting on September 8th.

This growing season, the farm is partnering with the Heirloom Collard Project, hosted by Seed Saver Exchange, to grow Jernigan Yellow Cabbage Collards. These collards were saved by Nancy Jernigan of Snow Hill, North Carolina. “Nancy and her late husband, James, grew this heirloom variety all their married life, carrying forward the seed-saving tradition passed on to them by James’ father, James Albert Jernigan. In 2005, Nancy Jernigan shared some seeds and this history with Dr. John Morgan, a cultural geographer and professor of geography at Emory & Henry College, who was collecting heirloom collard strains for preservation on behalf of the USDA Accession” (Seed Saver Exchange). Our student crew will plant these collards in the late fall, allow them to overwinter in the field through the early spring, and wait for them to flower in March. We will collect, thresh, and clean the seeds, then send them back to the project to multiply the Jernigan seed stock. Keep an eye on your CSA box – Read more about the Seed Savers Exchange Heirloom Collard Project and other seed varieties!

A handful of first years saved our young carrots by thoroughly hand weeding the bed.

Though temperatures are deceiving, fall is just around the corner and school started up again this week for Duke students. Last week we welcomed a group of 60 incoming first years and 12 student leaders to the farm for Duke’s undergraduate orientation week! Together, we learned about sustainability from friends at Duke Dining and Sustainable Duke, weeded some baby carrots, made pickled okra and pepper jelly, and celebrated their arrival to Durham with a night of homemade farm pizzas and a bonfire. It was a joy to have them and to welcome them into a new season of life at Duke.

Change is thrilling and energy-giving, but it can also be exhausting. We are grateful for the community members, work traders, and workday volunteers who have given extra time and energy to the farm as it sustains all this change at once. It is a gift to receive their constancy in the midst of so many shifting pieces, and we eagerly anticipate the upcoming season of growth and deepening as we settle into fall!

Students celebrated the end of orientation week by making move-in farm bouquets to gift to their roommates.

With the launch of the academic year, our course collaborations pick back up, and we’re especially excited to be connecting with more first year students through new partnerships with International Comparative Studies 145, Duke’s Focus cluster on Science and the Public, and Engineering 101, while honing our partnerships with “Environment in Literature, Law and Science,” French 308/“Manger,” and University 102/“Let’s Talk About Climate Change.”

We’re also really grateful to be taking last year’s strategic planning “on the road” through a participatory design process with staff and faculty stakeholders. We’re currently forming another faculty cohort for this process. Please reach out to saskia.cornes@duke.edu if you’re a professor at any school at Duke interested in participating – we would love to hear from you about ways in which the farm can be a resource to you and your students!

We miss our summer crew!

'Til next time....

The DCF Team