{"id":8358,"date":"2023-12-22T02:07:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T19:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/?p=8358"},"modified":"2024-03-30T05:23:36","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T22:23:36","slug":"a-growing-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/a-growing-program\/","title":{"rendered":"A Growing Program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Nathan Adam Spear<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was featured in the Fall 2023 issue of ACCENT Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was 2021, Matthew Olson was selling fresh produce at a farmer\u2019s market in Elgin when another local job opportunity was brought to his attention by a couple of other regulars at the weekly market. The job? Farm Manager for the 17-acres of land outside Austin Community College\u2019s campus in Elgin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Olson had previously held a salary position in student services at the University of Texas but left after choosing to pursue his true dreams of full-time small-scale farming. Working since for a couple of Elgin\u2019s local growers, but without having a preferred master\u2019s degree in education or agriculture, he wasn\u2019t hopeful after submitting his application for the ACC position. However, fast forward to a little over two years later; Olson is now giving tasks to over a dozen ACC students for the college\u2019s first volunteer Friday, and the student farm itself is looking better than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Located directly off Highway 290 is the Elgin campus\u2019 main building and further in is the wide stretch of green being used for ACC\u2019s Sustainable Agriculture Entrepreneurship Program. Here, students in the program can work with a fully functioning greenhouse and market garden, as well as learn about raising livestock and beekeeping with the farm\u2019s specialized instructors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since arriving as manager, Olson has been working with Senior Lab Assistant Miranda Maldanado to keep the student farm running and improving in between classes. Recently — with the help of several interns and other members of their department — the two have been working on some new developments for the educational space as well. Most notably, they have started adding several new rows of produce on the land outside of the market garden, in a project referred to as \u201cexpansion\u201d. Most exciting, Olson emphasizes, is the new chicken coup being welded by Professor Hunter Eichman and the farm\u2019s interns for the addition of laying hens on the farm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really feel grateful to be here, to be able to share my passion and try to really grow this program with the really cool people here,\u201d said Olson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Olson (left) leads the farming interns in setting up a new fence for their expansion project. Photo taken by Nathan Adam Spear on October 23, 2023.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I had first met the student farm\u2019s manager with Maldanado outside of their typical grassy environment and selling fresh produce from a stall outside of the Highland campus. Appearing weekly on Mondays in Elgin and Wednesdays at Highland, the two farmer\u2019s had started the small stands last year to distribute the market garden\u2019s fresh produce and raise awareness for the program. The money that they make from the stands comes back directly to the farm\u2019s operating budget, and Olson adds that the financial records provide an additional lesson for students to, \u201cunderstand that farming is a business too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maldanado agrees, emphasizing, \u201cyou need to know your accounting, you need to know your math, have records and keep your receipts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consistently selling out weekly, the farm stand\u2019s success in reaching students has also helped them address the growing need for more hands around the farm. In October, to celebrate Campus Sustainability Month, ACC\u2019s agricultural science course began opening their doors \u2013 or perhaps, fences \u2013 every Friday for students outside of the course to check out and help around the school\u2019s 17-acre farm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Olson says, \u201cwe\u2019re trying to serve as an example for the ACC community that [sustainable farming] is doable, it\u2019s important, and it\u2019s here for them.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the first Friday, volunteers enjoyed a welcome morning breeze while removing weeds from the farm\u2019s large market garden. Olson, in the suggested dress code of working boots and floppy hat, was joined by the similarly styled Senior Lab Assistant Miranda Maldanado in delegating tasks; her high energy complimented the farm manager\u2019s mellower tone. Beyond pulling weeds, the first volunteers \u2013 including Sustainability Manager Amber Orr, several members of ACC\u2019s Green Team and myself \u2013 also replanted several trays of seedlings that came from the farm\u2019s greenhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tucked in the corner of the garden, the greenhouse is a translucent structure that looks much more industrial than its surrounding area; largely due to the two protruding vents in the front that help regulate the environment inside. Maldonado explains that nearly all of the farm\u2019s various melons, peppers, leafy greens, and other plants start as seeds grown inside of the greenhouse;  the classroom-sized lab has a controlled climate that gives the seedlings a better chance of surviving their early stages. After retrieving the young plants, volunteers began moving them into the pasture\u2019s high tunnel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Miranda Maldanado shows the progress on the young plants in the greenhouse, sectioned off like brownies in a pan before being replanted outside. Photo taken by Nathan Adam Spear on October 23, 2023.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The high tunnel is a skeleton of metal poles covered with a large translucent tarp — standing tall outside of the market garden, it looks like a cross between the greenhouse and a very large tent. The structure\u2019s tunnel shape regulates the internal climate by using the clear tarp walls and roof like a magnifying glass for the light coming in on the plants, effectively lengthening their warm season inside. Unfortunately, for some time and on that first Friday, the high tunnel\u2019s tarp was tattered from damage sustained by strong winds, but Maldanado assured us that a replacement covering was on its way. Working with, or around, the weather has been an obstacle lately, according to Maldanado who is thankful for the departure of the previous Summer\u2019s record-breaking heat \u2013 which required the farm crew to rework hours and hold off on the stand for the whole month of August. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With planting soon finished and noon arriving, the volunteers were dismissed after being offered some extra produce to take home from the market garden. Besides attracting new students to the program, Maldanado says the goal of the farm\u2019s new volunteer Fridays is, \u201cto show where your food comes from, how it’s prepared, how it’s grown, and all the work and labor that goes into it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several years ago \u2013 before Olson\u2019s arrival \u2013 Maldanado was the department\u2019s first intern, and she remembers that not-so-distant time when the farm and market garden wasn\u2019t as populated nor as impressive. When she started her internship in 2020, the farm was in its beginning stages and so was COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the farm being an outside space, Maldanado and the department\u2019s previous Lab Assistant were still able to work during lockdown, but this work was slow with just the two of them and no farm manager or community engagement. At that point, the high tunnel was just metal frames surrounding overgrown grass and the market garden was reduced to only a few rows of tomatoes and beets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The farm] was very much just kind of for learning purposes,\u201d says Maldanado, \u201cso it\u2019s really cool to compare to now when every row has something planted and we have a plan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Senior Lab Assistant Miranda Maldonado enters through the hand painted doors of her “favorite part” of the student farm: the greenhouse. Photo taken by Nathan Adam Spear on October 23, 2023.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The development of the student farm has been a long-time project for ACC \u2013 ever since the school\u2019s Elgin campus opened in 2010 with the intention of adding courses in agricultural science. The arrival of ACC\u2019s voter-elected bond in 2014 is what started making those plans a reality, by starting a continuing education course in sustainable agriculture and beginning two phases of construction at the Elgin campus for the facilities needed to offer related associate degrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When phase two of construction finished in 2018, the associate degree courses were set to start in 2020 and agricultural science was finally recognized as its own department by ACC. Prior to this recognition, the student farm was under the direction of Program Coordinator Evelyn Rosas and ACC\u2019s Continuing Education Division, who had been sustaining the farm\u2019s new greenhouse, orchard, and market garden at the time with their non-credit classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the new degree courses were offered, however, Rosas and the CED were taken out of the program and Savannah Rugg was soon brought in as the inaugural department chair. Rugg, who was 26 years old at the time and the program\u2019s only full-time faculty member, had a slow start in getting the new department fully realized and maintained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had some experience in higher education,\u201d she says, referring to the several years she spent as a teaching and lab assistant at the University of Texas Rio Grande, \u201cbut there was definitely a learning curve [when coming to the ACC position].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Navigating ACC\u2019s bureaucracy was, and is, its own challenge \u2013  plus the pandemic\u2019s arrival with the new courses didn\u2019t help speed things up much either; but Rugg was able to keep things moving with online and hybrid classes. In 2021, as things were getting safer, Rugg says she \u201chit the jackpot\u201d after bringing on Olson as the new farm manager, whose first project was fully revitalizing the market garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, after seeing the student farm\u2019s continued growth \u2013 literally \u2013 and the successful transfer of students in the program to nearby universities, Rugg has found herself successful in pushing the program further than it has ever been previously. But that doesn\u2019t mean she is slowing down now either; a few days before I spoke to her, Rugg returned from a conference about \u201cincubator farms\u201d which she plans to implement in Spring at the Elgin campus. The incubator farms would be small plots of land on the student farm\u2019s acres for growers to use and manage independently from the land used by the Agricultural Sciences Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The farm continues to struggle with student engagement despite its rapid improvements. \u201cNot a lot of people even know that we are out here,\u201d says Rugg, who is hoping that collaboration with other campuses and departments will help change that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Passion for sustainable farming and getting the community engaged with it appears to be shared by all the members of the department that I spoke with. After listening to the several educational farmers\u2019 passionate beliefs about the vital significance of small farms and practicing mindful consumption, I experienced an almost cult-like persuasion as I began to have life-altering thoughts about off-the-grid sustainability \u2013 but ultimately ceased when I started to question whether I look good enough in overalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specifically, Olson says that, \u201cdisengaging from oppressive [food] systems by growing your own food, engaging in your local economy, and treating yourself well by not putting chemicals into your body are very important things for every individual to do on some level, not that everyone has to farm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is right that not everyone has to farm to live sustainably, but with the farm gates now open every Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. for the entire ACC community, it has never been easier for you to, as Olson puts it, \u201cget your hands dirty\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ACC\u2019s Sustainable Agriculture department has implemented new Volunteer Fridays at their 17-acre
\nstudent farm in Elgin, and that’s only one example of their recent and ambitious growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4103,"featured_media":8360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}