Edible Campus: Organic Farming and Community Gardening

Evergreen is well known for its farm and community gardens, and there is demand for more socially inviting edible landscapes and planning for healthy food options across campus. This program is designed to introduce students to the national movement to create edible campuses through case studies, applied science, and management of small farms, community gardens, and edible landscapes while putting our learning to practice on the Evergreen Olympia campus farm and campus. Students will be immersed in participatory management structures which will require students to work collaboratively and professionally across the class and beyond. Applied quantitative reasoning, statistics and systems theory will aid our understanding of this complex system. Topics will include ratios, unit conversions, basic geometry, survey design, data collection, descriptive analysis, and data visualization, which will come to life through various applications to our agricultural practices. 

Fall quarter is the harvest season and there is much to be done — from harvest and crop preservation, season extension activities, planting cover crops, soil testing, composting, analyzing harvest and financial data, planning for the next growing season, maintenance and repair of physical infrastructure and tools, and more. Successful planning and growing organically also requires learning agroecology, horticulture, and applied quantitative skills; this program will introduce all students to these fundamentals, while each student will choose the primary context of their practicum work between market farming or community gardens. 

There will be a significant field component to this class, regardless of the weather. We will have 2-3 weekly practicum sessions outdoors, plus day field trips. Students will need sufficient and appropriate clothing and rain gear to be comfortable outdoors in the highly variable Pacific Northwest weather conditions. Quarter-by-quarter emphases and anticipated credit equivalencies are described below.

This program is coordinated with Greener Foundations for first-year students. Greener Foundations is Evergreen’s in-person introductory student success course, which provides first-year students with the skills and knowledge they need to thrive at Evergreen. 

Anticipated Credit Equivalencies: