The phrase “urban agriculture” might seem like an oxymoron. But this burgeoning social and economic movement is revolutionizing food production, land use, K-12 education, and community development in big cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Oakland. But smaller cities like my hometown of Joliet have an opportunity to vault to the vanguard of urban agricultural innovation, if they just seize the day.
This spring some of my Roosevelt University students and I work Wednesday afternoons at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm, a small but incredibly productive operation in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood on Chicago’s Near-North Side.
Chicago Lights Urban Farm (M. Bryson)
This half-acre oasis of green built atop an abandoned basketball court started as a community garden back in 2002. Now, the Chicago Lights staff, volunteers, and local youth interns produce over 100 kinds of vegetables each growing season from this hitherto derelict property.
The Cabrini-Green farm is thus a vital source of freshly grown, organic produce in a place where walking to the nearest supermarket can entail crossing a dangerous gang boundary. It’s also a training ground for local youth in need of practical job skills; a demonstration site for sustainable agricultural techniques; a place of peace in an area pockmarked by poverty and violence; and a means of reconnecting urban folk to the natural world.
The community garden created by Cool Joliet and the University of Saint Francis (M. Bryson)
One remarkable opportunity waiting to bloom sits smack dab in the city’s center: the huge vacant lot located just west of Joliet Township High School’s Central campus and east of Silver Cross Field. Formerly the site of Rendel’s auto-body repair shop, this expansive grassy parcel is now owned by the high school district and has a yet-to-be-determined destiny.
View of the vacant lot owned by JT Central, looking east from the western boundary of the lot toward the high school (M. Bryson)
The school district should think big about what this property could be. One ambitious but exciting option is to create an education-focused urban agriculture enterprise for JT Central students that could start small, but eventually scale up and diversify to achieve educational and social impacts that would be unprecedented within the greater Chicago region.
Imagine students, teachers, and staff just walking outside to the farm next door and doing meaningful physical work growing and harvesting organically produced food. Such projects could be fully integrated with the school’s science, social studies, phys ed, business and health curricula, so that students learn from the ground up the ecological, economic, and social benefits of urban agriculture. Imagine their fresh local produce being donated to local food pantries, sold by student entrepreneurs at the Joliet farmers market, and eaten by students in Central’s cafeteria.
I know — it sounds pretty far-fetched. But then again, is it any crazier than believing you can grow food on top of an old basketball court in Cabrini-Green?
This semester my SUST 210 honors class is working on a community-based research project in collaboration with the Chicago non-profit organization, The Institute for Cultural Affairs, based in Uptown. Along with students from several other Chicago colleges and universities, we are researching and mapping sustainability initiatives throughout each of the city’s 77 community areas. The work continues this summer, so the ICA is seeking motivated and interested students for 40 unpaid internships on this tremendous and valuable city-wide project. Here are the details! — Mike Bryson
Application deadline now extended to Monday, April 16, 2012
The ICA Summer Internship Program, “Accelerate 77” is an opportunity for undergrad and graduate students to participate in preparations for the September 15, 2012 Share Fair event that will highlight, connect and accelerate local sustainability initiatives at the community level throughout Chicago neighborhoods. During the 2011-2012 academic school year, 180 students from six Chicago-based universities have participated in the first phase of the Accelerate 77 project by doing fieldwork in 54 of the 77 Chicago community areas. This summer, students will have the opportunity to take the Accelerate 77 project to the next level developing their skill-set through hands-on community based projects and acquiring skill in facilitation and enabling participatory group processes.
This spring ICA will be interviewing for 40 intern positions – flexing the program timetable between June and August. The positions range from:
* community documentation and engagement of sustainable initiatives,
* designing and planning the September 15th event celebrating the 231 initiatives (three initiatives from each of the 77 communities),
* marketing and public relations for the Accelerate 77 project and share fair event, and
* website support for the community documentation, interchange and post-event collaboration.
Out of the 40 intern positions, the program will offer eight students an intensive leadership development course that will provide hands-on experience of co-leading teams in collaboration with eight ICA resource guides.
More information on leadership development opportunities and the Accelerate 77 project can be found at this page on the ICA website.
Roosevelt has just launched a new media campaign called “Speak Your Mind” that features a highly interactive “microsite” that’s really more like an online discussion course than a typical media ad. In fact, it’s better than a regular course, because it’s designed so that viewers can post comments and engage in dialogue with several RU professors on a range of critical topics of the day, from housing to education to media to biotechnology to the environment to the state of the US economy.
Each of the topics within the site features one of several RU academic departments. The Sustainability Studies program here at RU is, I’m happy to report, one of those featured programs — and yours truly is the discussion monitor on the topic of Green Jobs: the green economy’s present state and future prospects. I encourage folks to visit the site, look around, and post a comment if you are so moved. Those of you who are SUST majors or who have taken a SUST class at RU will likely have very valuable thoughts and questions to contribute! Your participation can help connect RU to the general public in this important social media outreach campaign.
Since I’m discussing transportation this week in my SUST 210 Sustainable Future online class at Roosevelt University, I thought it most appropriate to use my bike to commute to work. Some of our sources I’m analyzing with my students speak directly to the need for active/alternative transportation modes, and how such systems relate to urban design and community structure.
I am not a “hard core” cyclist who buys fancy gear and takes 100-mile rides through the countryside; nor am I an urban bike renegade who likes to blow through any intersection at as high a speed as possible. I consider myself very much an average-ability and safety-minded cyclist of modest endurance, someone who doesn’t mind putting on warm clothes and biking to the train station or to a local destination in cold weather or a drizzle. In the Netherlands, I would be in good company; here in the US, that probably puts me within 0.5% of Americans.
My first decision yesterday: should I really take my bike, or should I drive? I had to go to Joliet’s Barnes and Noble bookstore way out by the Louis Joliet Westfield Mall, a destination located about 6 miles from my house and on a very busy road (US Route 30). Then I had to go to the public library to work, then back home. It would be a long trip, and I had a lot to do that day. Did I really have time for all that? And what about carrying my notes and computer on my back, plus the presents I would be purchasing at the bookstore?
It was cold, 28 degrees F, but sunny and not too windy — and I decided to try it. After all, biking would keep my GHG emissions down to zero, plus I’d get some much-needed February exercise. The extra time from biking would be more than repaid by the free workout I’d be getting! My rationalization complete, I tapped into my somewhat extensive personal knowledge of safe Joliet street/trail routes, and headed off. Here is a map of the route I took.
Note the out-of-the-way path I took to get to the bookstore, a 6.1 mile trip that could’ve been much shorter had I traveled directly. But Route 30 is a busy and dangerous road, and I prefer to avoid hi-traffic streets. There are no bike lanes on Rt. 30. In fact, there are no bike lanes anywhere in Joliet. So I took a quiet E-W residential route to a N-S rails-to-trails path on Joliet’s West Side, then headed north along the trail. That linked up with another trail, one within the Will County Forest Preserve’s Rock Run Marsh. Consequently, even though I was in a highly developed part of Joliet’s West Side, much of my ride was bucolic, and all of it was safe and quiet, except for crossing busy arterial streets. This is a route I’ve ridden with my kids many times. You can see water, trees, cattails, and prairie grasses; you can hear and see a lot of birds. It’s a nice way to travel.
That left me with a short job on Route 30 to get to the bookstore, which actually was OK. Once there, I was able to relax while listening to Miles Davis on the store radio, surrounded by books (itself a delight), and with good access to a bathroom and the BN cafe, which has free wi-fi. Life was good!
My ride to the public library was shorter, but on a busy N-S road on Joliet’s West Side. Lots of room for cars, but no dedicated bike lane here. As noted above, there no bike lanes in the city of Joliet, a real flaw in the town’s transportation infrastructure. Despite this deficiency, parts of town are very bike-able because of a plethora of quiet residential streets, some of which cut through town in helpful ways. However, this network is very limited, and known only to people who seek out such knowledge.
Back to my journey to the library: Essington Road had a good sidewalk, so I used that as well as the street to head south to my destination. Upon reading the Rock Run Forest Preserve trailhead, I left the street and rode a paved trail the rest of the way to the library, which sits on the eastern edge of the preserve and has beautiful views of its woods and marshlands. It is always uplifting to my spirits to come here, and sometimes I take a short break from working at the library to take a stroll in the woods or along the marsh’s edge.
So, my commute to work was about 9.5 miles, according to Google maps (which lets you map out bike routes, by the way), plus the 3.5 miles home after my library session (13 miles total). My total commuting time for this workday was 30min + 18min + 20min for the three legs of the commute, or 68min total. This compares most favorably with my door-to-door commute to the Schaumburg Campus (120min in the car) or my train commute to downtown Chicago (1hr 45min each way, door-to-door, or 3.5 hours total).
Guess how many bikes I saw on my cycling route yesterday? None. I did see several people walking or working in their yards, and all of us greeted each other with a pleasant hello. (I don’t do that while driving; do you?) I also saw hundreds of cars. I can’t recall if I saw a PACE bus, which probably means I didn’t.
Looking for a cool sustainability-themed internship opportunity here in downtown Chicago? Want to hone your research and writing skills in a professional context, while furthering the progressive goals of a local environmental organization? The Alliance for a Greener South Loop (AGSL), an environmental advocacy non-profit dedicated to improving and encouraging green practices in the South Loop neighborhood of Chicago, is seeking an intern this winter/spring to work on the following:
Research/document local resources to support green efforts (e.g., buying electricity in Illinois’s open market)
Writing up best practices locally (business, residential, and/or institutional) using input from AGSL award applications and further research as needed
Answering questions received by residents, organizations, and companies about green practices such as green roof planning/installation, wind turbines, and composting
Generating community engagement through developing online surveys about, for example, green purchasing attitudes and patterns about paper, electricity, etc.
Developing ideas to support individual and collective behavioral change and creating a voice to influence local policy decisions related to sustainability
Application Deadline: 1 February 2012
Internship Requirements:
The application process for this internship is competitive, as strong writing, research, time management, and deadline-meeting skills are a must. Knowledge about current environmental issues and sustainability practices (such as those covered in RU’s SUST curriculum) is important, as well. Experience analyzing data and/or developing information for websites is desirable, though not required. Current RU undergraduates may apply; preference is given to Sustainability Studies majors. Applicants should have sophomore standing, at least one SUST course with a grade of B or better, and a minimum cumulative 3.0 GPA.
Workload / Hours / Academic Requirements:
The selected intern will be supervised by Ms. Gail Merritt of the AGSL, with academic support/direction by Professor Mike Bryson in the Sustainability Studies program. The basic work requirement is a minimum of 10 hours per week for twelve weeks (120 hours total) of on-task work at the AGSL, some of which may be completed off-site (depending upon the intern’s school/work schedule). Other requirements include submitting weekly timesheets to the on-site supervisor and faculty instructor; holding 2-3 meetings with the instructor to discuss the progress of the internship; keeping an informal weekly journal of notes and reflections summarizing that week’s work; and submitting a final research paper (7-10pp) that synthesizes reflections on the internship experience within the context of a sustainability issue(s) of particular interest to the student.
This internship is unpaid but may be taken for SUST 350 course credit (Service & Sustainability, 3sh, pre-req ENG 102). SUST majors may use this class as a major requirement, relevant elective, or general elective; non-majors may use it as elective credit. The successful applicant may register for SUST 350 as a “course by arrangement” for the Spring, Summer, or Fall 2012 semesters. Regardless, the internship would begin in early February, 2012.
Application Deadline: 1 February 2012
To apply, send an email application to Professor Mike Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu) that includes the following:
Your name, contact information, student ID, RU major, and previously completed SUST courses (semester and grade noted)
Personal statement indicating your interest in the internship experience (500 words max)
Work availability (days/times), assuming a ten-hour/week commitment with flexible scheduling possible
A writing sample of two graded RU essays, with class/instructor/date noted (attached to your email as Word or PDF documents)
This past fall semester, students in my Sustainability Studies 220 Water seminar at Roosevelt University’s Schaumburg Campus collaborated on a semester-long research endeavor, the Water in Schaumburg Project. Small groups of students researched water resource issues related to water supply, wastewater treatment, wetlands, and the Salt Creek watershed — all within the context of the Village of Schaumburg and surrounding communities. They wrote essays, gathered images, and collected/annotated internet resources on their four key topics; and after synthesizing and editing their work, I uploaded it to the Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future website — a collaborative endeavor that originated in the spring of 2011 with my SUST 210 Sustainable Future class.
Congratulations to the members of SUST 220 for their hard work on this project! And coming up in spring 2012 — a transportation-focused project from my online SUST 210 class.
This coming spring semester I will be offering the inaugural section of SUST 350 Service and Sustainability at the Chicago Campus. The specific course theme is Urban Farming, Community Development, and Social Justice.
Title/number: SUST 350 Service and Sustainability (section L10)
Semester offered: Spring 2012 (initial offering)
Campus: Chicago
Day/time: Wed 3-5:30pm
Pre-req: UWR
Text: Lorraine Johnson, City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing (Greystone, 2010, paper, ISBN 9781554655190) — on order at the RU bookstore
SUST majors and minors may take this class to fulfill an upper-level SUST requirement, but 350 also is open to students at large who need a general education course or desire elective credit.
Introduction to the Course
SUST 350 focuses on one of sustainability’s “Three Es” — social Equity — within the broad context of Environmental stewardship and Economic development. Students will learn about one of the most important components of sustainability — food production and consumption — in the context of urban neighborhoods and ecosystems.
Chicago Lights Urban Farm (M. Bryson)
By doing hands-in-the-dirt labor at Chicago Lights Urban Farm on the city’s near-North Side, students will gain direct knowledge of contemporary organic/urban agricultural systems as well as learn about pressing urban social justice issues such as food deserts, gentrification, pollution, environmental racism, and persistent poverty. Initial class meetings through February will be at RU’s Chicago Campus, while subsequent class meetings will take place at the farm.
Once established at the farm site in mid-March, Roosevelt students will work side-by-side with Cabrini-Green neighborhood youth in a unique reciprocal learning opportunity. Participants in the Chicago Lights Youth Corps program (14-21 age range) work as job trainees at the farm 9 hours/week during the school year and 20 hours/week during the summer.
Compost Bins at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm (M. Bryson)
They acquire skills in urban agricultural production (composting, soil management, seedbed planning, hydroponics, organic pest management, harvesting, etc.) and economy (packaging, marketing, distribution, and sales). To the extent that Roosevelt students are newcomers to these activities, they will be learning skills from the Youth Corps kids as well as from the urban farming experts.
An urban farm is about food, but so much more besides. The Cabrini-Green community is an economically stressed neighborhood that has gone through dramatic and wrenching changes as high-rise public housing has been demolished, residents have been displaced within and without the community, and gentrification proceeds at a rapid pace — even as crime and poverty persist. Here, an urban farm is a source of freshly grown, organic produce; a training ground for local youth in need of practical job skills; a stop valve in the Cradle-to-Prison pipeline; a gathering place for people of all ages in the community for physical exercise, informal education, and social events (such as the annual Fall Harvest Festival held on-site); a demonstration site for sustainable agricultural techniques; a model of economic development on a local, sustainable scale; and a means of reconnecting urban folk to the natural world. More generally, in urban areas starved for jobs, green space, safe outdoor gathering places, and fresh quality food, these small-scale farms productively and powerfully address the need for social equity and progressive change.
Partner Organizations: Chicago Lights Urban Farm and Growing Power
The Chicago Lights Urban Farm is one wing of the Chicago Lights Community Outreach Organization on Chicago’s near-North Side, and is located at 444 W. Chicago Avenue, the south end of the Cabrini-Green neighborhood.
Cabrini-Green row houses as seen from the north edge of the Chicago Lights Urban Farm (M. Bryson)
Formerly known as the Chicago Avenue Community Garden, it began in 2003 as a modest collection of raised-bed planters covering the cracked blacktop of an abandoned basketball playground. Since then, the farm has expanded and diversified its operations with the help of Growing Power, a nationally-recognized urban farm initiative based in Milwaukee that has established satellite operations in several Chicago neighborhoods (including Cabrini-Green, Altgeld Gardens, Grant Park South, and Bridgeport). The mission of the farm is to “empower . . . youth and community residents in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood to have increased economic opportunities through access to organic produce, nutritional education, and work force training” (Chicago Lights “Urban Farm”).
Field Trips in Urban Ecology
SUST 350 Service and Sustainability provides an ideal context for field-based learning experiences that connect progressive social/environmental action to sustainable community development. While the Chicago Lights Urban Farm itself is a quintessential example of such a field experience, a selection of well-planned day trips to other sites will broaden that learning experience for RU students as well as provide a rare opportunity for the farm’s Youth Corps participants to leave the confines of their home neighborhood, see other parts of the region they have little to no familiarity with, deepen their understanding of urban ecology, and personally connect with the varied and surprisingly engaging forms of the region’s urban nature. In this expression of reciprocal learning, RU undergrads and Youth Corps students will be learning together in the context of adventurous new experiences, a process necessitating team-work and producing a profound sense of personal accomplishment.
Planned field trips tentatively include a tour of urban farms sites in Chicago, the Growing Power flagship farm in Milwaukee, the South Branch of the Chicago River, and/or the Indiana Dunes. See this page for accounts of recent student field trips in my SUST courses.
On Thursday, Oct. 13th, I took some time away from my normal professorial duties to attend a lunchtime forum entitled “Chicago’s Water: Protecting Our Precious Resource,” sponsored by the Chicago Council on Science and Technology. The event was held in the 18th floor “Wolf Point Ballroom” in the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza, literally right off that parking lot that sits on Wolf Point. Floor to ceiling views of the Chicago River and the skyline made for a dramatic setting for the event and the ensuing conversation about the history and future of water management in Chicago.
Combined Sewage Outfall on the Chicago River, in the Loop (M. Bryson)
I couldn’t help but notice the remarkably clear view of the Combined Sewage Outfall (CSO) location where my students and I rafted up our canoes the previous weekend in the Loop and discussed the impact of stormwater overflows of untreated wastewater on the ecology of the Chicago River. It was both odd and inspiring to view that location from up high, only a few days later.
This exceptionally interesting forum featured a keynote address by Debra Shore, an Metropolitan Water Reclamation District commissioner who, unlike most commissioners past and present, actually has a long track record in environmental conservation and advocacy. She is one of the drivers of the recent turnaround in MWRD policy with respect to the disinfection of wastwater. Shore’s presentation highlighted the history of Chicago’s development and its relation to the river, the technological changes that have been wrought upon the latter, the key issues facing us in the 21st century (water quality, Asian Carp, hydrological separation, etc.), and a broad question at the end: “Can Chicago become Nature’s Metropolis for the 21st Century?” In the latter, she implied that how we manage the river will be a large part of the answer to that question.
One key theme that repeatedly came up during the forum’s dialogue was the notion of separating the watersheds as a way to improve water conservation and prevent invasive species (notably the carp) from entering the GLs. Surprisingly, none of the engineers on the panel or in the audience claimed that such a separation was technically impossible, or even too costly to attempt. What they repeatedly cited was the need for the political will and creation of effective avenues of communication and collaboration to do it. If that happened, then the technology could be brought to bear productively. This view was even espoused by Dick Lanyon, the longtime engineer for and then manager of the MWRD who retired in 2010 and who was at this meeting (coincidentally, I sat next to him and got to bend his ear for several minutes after the program). Lanyon is a key source about water management in the Chicago region in Peter Annin’s 2006 book, The Great Lakes Water Wars .
Another issue that was discussed was the status of the current studies underway to assess the feasibility and impacts of hydrological separation. The Army Corps of Engineers’ study was cited several times, favorably, despite it’s rather slow projected timeline that has raised the pique of neighboring Great Lakes states; and Tinka Hyde, the EPA rep, noted that USEPA was collaborating with the Corps on this process.
One vision of how the hydrology of the Chicago Region might be transformed by re-separating the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds (Milwaukee Journal-Star)
Those interested in following up on the status of the GLC’s planning process, as well as learning more about the environmental and ecological prospects of hydrologically separating the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds can read more about it here and/or attend a public webinar on Oct. 24th for the GLC’s Chicago Area Waterway Study.
Angelic Organics Farm, Caledonia, IL (photo by L. Bryson)
This past Sunday, July 10th, students in my PLS 392 Seminar in Humanities online summer course at Roosevelt University took an “agricultural landscapes” field trip to north-central Illinois, near the city of Rockford and just south of the Illinois-Wisconsin border. Such an adventure might seem an odd outing for a class like ours, which focuses on “representations of the urban landscape.” However, as the environmental historian William Cronon argues in his prologue to Nature’s Metropolis (1991), the city and country exist in a symbiotic relation, one defining the other in a dance of mutual dependence. And given the continued importance of farming in the otherwise heavily urbanized six-county Chicago region, we found it appropriate to explore northeastern Illinois’ remaining agricultural lands and to think about the shape and character of these lands and their relation to the city.
Enter Angelic Organics Farm, an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) operation based in Caledonia, IL. Angelic Organics was founded in the early 1990s by John Peterson, whose family had farmed this land since purchasing it in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The Learning Center's pavilion (photo by L. Bryson)
Peterson’s colorful history as a soul-searching farmer, writer, performance artist, and philosopher is the subject of the fascinating 2006 documentary film, The Real Dirt on Farmer John. The Angelic Organics Learning Center provides public tours and a wide variety of educational programs to teach visitors the craft of sustainable agricultural and its vital connection to the stewardship of nature. This farm is a living classroom where visitors observe how local diverse agricultural traditions thrive in our age of mega-industrial monocultural croplands and large-scale animal confinement operations.
Our tour guide on Sunday was April, an instructor at the Learning Center with a background in outdoor education and natural history. She led us on a two-hour walk around the grounds of the 180+ acre site and introduced us to the methods of vegetable production as well as animal husbandry employed on this diversified farm. Along the way, her narrative gave us a sense of how the ideas and philosophy behind such a farm are as important as the technical knowledge and hard physical labor that keep it going.
The farm has 30 acres under cultivation at any one time (photo by L. Bryson)
While there was only minimal active work being done on the farm that day (mostly the daily tending of animals), we did get a chance to inspect the many acres of vegetable fields up close and personal; pick some beets and basil; take home a broccoli flat or two; see the newborn baby bull frolic with his mother in a bucolic pasture; and hang out with the goats and chickens in their pens.
What one takes away from such an extraordinary opportunity to tour a working organic farm depends upon, in part, one’s background and connection to agriculture. Those in our group ranged from city folk like me with little to no experience working or living on farms, to those who grew up on farms or visited them frequently as children. For several people in our class, this represented their first time ever setting foot on a working farm. In that context, the opportunity to see where food comes from — what it looks like and how it’s grown in the fields — is a remarkably eye-opening experience.
Good Illinois soil is mighty productive (photo by L. Bryson)
For those familiar with conventional agriculture in the Midwest, the seemingly unending fields of corn and soybeans destined to be processed into a myriad of industrial agricultural products (from corn syrup to ethanol to animal feed), Angelic Organics is a throw-back to an earlier age when farms were diverse. And for those who garden small plots in their yards, the long orderly rows of perfectly cultivated vegetables — kale, lettuce, fennel, garlic, onions, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet corn, beets, and much more –represent a staggering achievement of scale using labor-intensive growing methods.
In such a neo-traditional model, dozens of different vegetables are grown in a well-orchestrated crop rotation in which fields are rested two out of every four years so that the soil is replenished; different types of crops are planted on a given plot of land, so as to avoid excessive nutrient depletion; animal waste is composted and used to fertilize the soil; hand labor and the intelligent use of technology is used to mitigate against pests and avoid the use of chemicals in protecting plants.
A recently born calf and its mother (photo by L. Bryson)
I say “neo-traditional” because while Angelic Organics, as the largest CSA farm in the Midwest, is at the cutting edge of contemporary farming, it also is a throwback to the time before World War Two when most American farms were family-run, highly diversified operations that used animals to produce eggs, cheese, milk, and meat; rotated crops and pastureland to maintain soil fertility; and recycled key elements of the farm — grass and manure — in a closed-loop ecosystem.
Lily, age 9, crossing a field (photo by L. Bryson)
This sort of social contract is a strong element of Angelic Organics’ method and identity, and it connects this part of rural Illinois to urban residents in Rockford, Chicago, Schaumburg, and several other urban and suburban communities where the farm delivers its CSA share boxes to customers.
Another means of connection is the farm itself, which has developed its own education and public outreach programs through the Angelic Organics Learning Center. Here people can travel from cities, suburbs, and small towns to see a working Illinois organic farm in action, where all its operations are visible to the public and various kinds of skills and traditions (making soap, baking bread, tending animals) are taught in family-oriented programs. CSA members can also come to the farm and pick their own produce, a privilege that encourages them to think of the place as “their farm” — something they have ownership of in a very literal way.
The two Esmés (photo by L. Bryson)
This kind of welcoming attitude which defines many small-scale CSA farms stands in stark contrast to the industrial mega-farms and confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that bar visitors, reporters, and cameras from their premises — a common practice depicted in recent agricultural documentaries such as Food, Inc.
For our group from Roosevelt University, the visit to the Angelic Organics Learning Center was a transformative experience. Students gained a much deeper appreciation of the work, planning, and creativity that go into a sustainable farm operation; and we were impressed by the aesthetics of the farmland and the sense of place it engenders within the rural landscape. A few students brought their children, as I did, and they were excited to learn about the crops and animals. Future Roosevelt field trips to this agricultural haven are definitely in the works!
