New OA trips visit organic farms

On one of the two inaugural trips of its kind, the Outdoor Action group had the opportunity to work on Gravity Hill Farm, an organic farm in Titusville, N.J. Led by Henry Barmeier ’10, Christina Badaracco ’12 and Elizabeth Cooper ’12, the members of OF121 camped in woods near the farm and helped weed, harvest and prepare organic produce to be sold at farmers’ markets. A second group, OF120, traveled to Snipes Farm in Morrisville, Penn.

Though unconventional among OA groups, which typically travel to wilderness areas on hiking, canoeing or rock climbing expeditions, the farming trip still accomplished OA’s goal of helping freshmen orient to Princeton and get to know each other, Snipes Farm trip leader Colleen McCullough ’12 said.

Allison Hume ’13 explained that the trip appealed to her because it offered a chance to understand organic food beyond the level of her taste buds.

“I’m really into organic food, and I wanted to see the process behind it,” Hume said.

Hume certainly got her wish. Barmeier explained that during the course of a week, group members helped with almost all facets of production, including weeding, digging up potatoes by hand, harvesting various plants and gathering giant garbage bags of rotten tomatoes for an annual tomato-throwing fight.

McCullough said OF120 was engaged in similar activities, including weeding, constructing a corn maze, and harvesting apples, basil and sage.

The idea to have a pre-orientation farming trip was born when Barmeier and OA director Rick Curtis ’79 spoke with Joshua Viertel, the President of Slow Food USA and former director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, Barmeier explained in an e-mail. Viertel had come to the University in March to talk about sustainable eating.

“As the University and Outdoor Action mobilize to become more sustainable and increase campus awareness of environmental issues, we thought it was important to highlight the role of local, organic agriculture in achieving a sustainable future,” Barmeier explained.

The amount of time and work necessary to produce organic foods was surprising, several members of OF121 said.

“Things that take a lot of time are things like weeding [and] picking out the infected crops, the whole harvesting process without machines and doing everything by hand,” Tom Irby ’13 noted.

It therefore may not be practical to apply organic farming methods to all agricultural production, Raphael Frankfurter ’13 said.

“It’s not clear that it’s a realistic system on a massive scale because of the amount of manual work that is involved,” he said. “I’m someone who generally considers myself very supportive of the organic food movement. This is sort of a wake-up call that this is a more complicated issue.”

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Barmeier said that he savored the opportunity to do some manual labor before the school year began.

“Working long days on the farm actually energized me to jump into the fall semester,” Barmeier said. “Now, my hope now is that they and future OA organic farming groups can share their knowledge and help build a culture of conscientious eating at Princeton.”