Being at Sterling for a month can’t help but make me start to appreciate certain smells, especially B.O. and manure. It seems like B.O. is a smell that is really hard to escape from in the summer here. But then again, I’m sure it doesn’t go away in the fall either…or the winter …or spring. Some simple questions and comments provide great reasons for why a lot of people might smell like B.O. at this school:
“Why would I shower if I’m just going to end up hiking through the woods, working on the farm, or simply just sweating my ass off right after I get out of the shower?”
“If you care about limiting the use of water in daily life, just cut down on your shower intake and join the Sweaty Body Odor Club (SBOC)!”
“B.O. is a natural smell and is a pheromone that promotes sexual attraction. Now why wouldn’t you want that!? Haven’t you heard? B.O. is the new Axe!”
To put it simply, you might be noticed more or even looked at weirdly if you’re wearing the slightest amount of cologne or perfume than if you have the strongest B.O.
This brings me to the subject of manure. After I had done my week of farm chores I started to miss the smells of the farm animals, hay, fresh grass, and manure especially. Manure was definitely the main smell that stuck in my head. I was never a huge complainer about the smell of manure, but now I can proudly say that I enjoy it. It brings me happy memories of cute farm animals—goats, pigs, cows, horses, you name it (just not chickens). Whenever I’m in the car passing by a farm now, I flare my nostrils to try and take a big whiff of the manure.
“Hmmmmmmm… now that’s what I call high quality shit!”
Don’t worry though; I’m sure it’ll take decades for me to appreciate the smell of humanure…
Well, enough crap! Let me introduce you to the courses I’ve been taking:
Summer Session Schedule (May 30-July 1):
Monday: Whole Farm Thinking 8:30-11:45AM, Food Entrepreneurship 6:30-9PM
Tuesday: no classes!
Wednesday: Livestock Systems Management 8:30-11:45AM, Organic Crop Production 2:45-4:15PM
Thursday: Value Added Products 8:30AM- 4:15PM
Friday: Organic Crop Production 8:30-10:15AM, Livestock Systems Management 1:00-4:15PM
Whole Farm Thinking
Whole Farm Thinking is a requirement for all Sustainable Agriculture students as well as people in Vermont’s Table program, therefore it is the biggest class this semester with around twenty students. Activities and topics taught in the class cover everything from creating our ideal farm, studying Amish crop rotations, and learning about cover crop weed and pest management methods, to examining Joel Salatin’s grass-based farm, analyzing current trends in sustainable agriculture, and learning about what healthy food means. The class is taught by two professors, Rick, who mainly teaches the draft horse classes (yet has a very broad spectrum of knowledge on agriculture), and my advisor, Brinkley, a very nice and knowledgeable man from Virginia who started teaching and being in charge of the Sterling garden last semester.
On the first day each person in the class created a picture of their ideal farm on a very large post-it that we stuck to the wall around the classroom. On the piece of paper we were all told to choose a name for our farm and to draw a house, a barn or other infrastructure, a pond, and the direction of where north would be on the big post-it. I chose to name my farm “Bella Vita Farm” (which translates to Beautiful Life) after a marketing project I did at Paul Smiths with two other students who I studied abroad in Italy with. After that we added smaller post-it notes to the bigger one: blue post-its represented aspects we were absolutely sure we wanted to add to our farm and pink post-its represented loose ideas we weren’t sure about. Since I wanted to focus on value-added products for my hypothetical farm, such as sausage, salami, bacon, cheeses, meat pies, etc., I knew I wanted to have pigs for meat and goats for dairy, meat, and fiber. Other things I was considering but wasn’t sure about were bees, exotic poultry, a vineyard, and a small forest garden with unique plants. Although this was all theoretical and was only supposed to get us to start pondering of about a whole farm, it was fun to think about it. Even though these exercises help make the aspect of running my desired farm seem pretty easy and realistic, I know the road is long ways away for me (In fact, I don’t even know if I want a farm; I simply want a homestead where I can raise and grow my own food, while keeping it very small-scale and perhaps off the grid). It was unbelievable to go around the room and examine the array of farms people came up with. An educational pig farm sending love to Haiti, a farm focused around compost, a dairy farm with horse-powered equipment, a large vegetable production with hoop houses and green houses, the list goes on.
After the first class and the whole process of discussing what our ideal farms were with different people in the room, I knew I was going to really enjoy the class and learn a lot from it. In the class we discussed different models of farming, envisioning alternative futures, weed control, history of organic farming, history of New England farming (mainly Vermont and New Hampshire), traditional farming practices and Amish methods of farming, ideas of fixing big problem with numerous small solutions, surviving a skewed marketplace, and articles by Joel Salatin and Wendell Berry. Even though the class involved a lot of reading assignments and prohibited me from focusing on this blog, along with most of my other classes, I learned a lot in a short amount of time and couldn’t ask for anything else at this point in my life. To put it simply, I’m swan-diving quickly into a pool of knowledge.
Food Entrepreneurship
Although this class is two and a half hours long, only once a week, and at a dredging time from 6:30-9:00 PM on Mondays, it has inspired and motivated me to lean more towards becoming an entrepreneur or small business owner, rather than my past thoughts and dreams of being an ice cream man, managing a Subway (eat fresh!), being the weather man who records his voice on the weather hotline, opening a restaurant, or owning a farm. Perhaps I would enjoy running an agriturismo like the ones I visited in Italy—land with a farm sustaining the products that go into a restaurant —but that seems like something that I would jump into way down the road if anything.
The class is taught by a young woman named Taylor who is an entrepreneur herself. She graduated with a Bachelor’s in Hospitality at Cornell and a Master’s in Food Culture in Parma, Italy, which led her to eventually co-own a focused job search website, called Good Food Jobs, designed to link people with meaningful food work. The combination of her teaching, the readings we are assigned, our discussions and activities in class, and the unique speakers we get every week, provides a very enriching, stirring, and educational experience on the world of entrepreneurism. After two weeks of guest speakers, I became exceptionally interested in the whole aspect of working for myself and coming up with a great business to fit into some niche market. One topic we touched on during class that I expanded on in my head was the idea of connecting small farmers to consumers through means of transportation. A unique idea I had for this was a business that transported ingredients and products from farms to restaurants, farmer’s markets, and other places by means of vehicles solely running on bio-diesel fuel. In exchange for delivering food to a restaurant, I could barter for the restaurant’s vegetable oil to use as the fuel for my vehicles. Another business I can picture myself running is something having to do with value-added animal products, similar to what my farm in Whole Farm Thinking is based on: a business utilizing sausage, salami, cheese, other dairy products, savory pies, and other baked products. Overall, this class has really lifted up my spirit and has given me a great direction for where I want to go in the future when it comes to entrepreneurism and running a business.
Livestock Systems Management
The combination of doing farm chores and taking the Livestock Systems Management class has greatly increased my interest in livestock. Basically, this class prepares you to be able to take care of livestock using basic principles of sustainable management. Through readings, teachings, discussions, and field trips, we cover topics having to do with the effects of grazing animals, getting livestock to the right place at the right time, animal behavior, soil identification, fencing, livestock water systems, alternative crops for grazing, pasture plant identification, herding animals, livestock infrastructure, and managing compost. Our professor, Gwen, who was the farm manager at Sterling many years ago, knows a great amount about livestock and has taught me more than I’ve learned in any other class at Sterling.
One day we went to Vermont Compost to get a tour of the place and to learn about how a large compost operation runs. The business owner, Karl, took us around the place and proved to be one of the most interesting guys I had ever met. The amount of knowledge he knew was unbelievable, but when it came to answering a simple question about his business his thoughts would wander into a completely different direction. When Gwen asked questions about how Karl’s animals played a role in the process of his whole composting system, he would start a rant about the history of mules for fifteen minutes and then explain his life story. Eventually he would come back to ponder the original question and sometimes ask what the whole conversation was supposed to be about.
While I glanced around me to see my fellow classmates’ reactions to his long tantrums on jackasses and horses, I realized I was the only one smiling at the silliness. Don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot and really enjoyed the field trip, but it really amused me how much Karl couldn’t keep one story going without letting another thought jump in front of him. Luckily, there were three friendly German shepherds to pet while I lost track of the compost man’s stories.
Here are some things I learned about his compost system and business:
There are 600 chickens wandering around, digging through large compost piles, and spreading manure on the compost to speed up breakdown process. Last year there were over 1,000 chickens. The whole “farm” is mule powered (there is a hoop house and a couple gardens that the mules tilled), and two of the mules are in their forties. The mule is the Vermont Compost Co. mascot because, according to Karl, it represents hope for the future. The business has twelve different compost products, and they are differentiated by weight. Examples of compost products: lawn mix, garden mix, container mix, transplanting mix, topping mix, manure mix. There are 750 businesses that the Vermont Compost Co. sells to. Karl uses a wine bottle to drink water out of to keep the water cold for longer periods of time (when getting pulled over, a police officer questioned him about the open bottle). In 1988 the business converted to bio-diesel and two of Karl’s cars have the license plate “SOIL”.
Overall, the trip was quite an experience; I had never seen anything like it before (pictures below).
Although the large amount of new information in the Livestock Systems Management class is a lot to swallow at once, I am definitely glad I am taking this class. The numerous field trips we had in the class helped expose me to how the different types of farms operate within the area. (Below are pictures of some parts of the farms)
Vermont Compost
Karl ranting and holding his wine/water bottle
Spud’s Dairy Farm:
Farm in East Hardwick
Portable Chicken Tractor Bus (Used to drive chickens to new paddock on farm)
Organic Crop Production
This is a class that sometimes hurts my brain. Brinkley, one of the teachers from Whole Farm Thinking, assigns us numerous readings and questions each week, most of which are scholarly articles or research papers with confusing and very descriptive words. As much as I love gaining all this new knowledge about organic crops, some of its hard to take in at once, especially when we don’t get to go out in the field for more of a hands-on experience. On very few occasions we have gone out into the garden to do weeding, seeding, planting, and other work to help speed up the process of production in the gardens. Although I may fall asleep in the class at least once a week, it’s not because I’m not interested in the subject, but is simply because I cannot keep up with all the information that is being thrown at me within this five week intensive semester.
For a final project each student in the class was to choose a plant to grow in the garden. Since I don’t have much experience growing anything, I asked Brinkley what seeds he needed to plant, and decided to go with arugula. We have to plant by the end summer session one and write a paper on the background information of the plant. One reason I chose arugula was because I ate it so much of it in Italy and became accustomed to seeing and eating it everywhere over my two and a half months abroad. Its unique, peppery taste had to grow on me, but eventually it became one of my favorite greens to put in a salad.
Don’t get me wrong, Organic Crop Production is a very informative class, but this is one I could’ve done without. (It probably would’ve cut down on a lot of the time I spend on doing homework, and would’ve increased the amount of time and effort I put into this blog…but hey, I can’t complain, I came here to learn, not to write a blog).
Value-Added Products
To put it simply, this is the most hands-on class in my schedule. The class is designed to inform students about edible value-added products, which is any raw ingredient that is changed in some way to add more value to it. Readings, lectures, and in-class production allows people taking the class to explore and develop the different ways of creating value-added products. I’m very glad I’m taking this class because it links me back to some of the culinary skills I learned at Paul Smith’s. If I don’t practice any of the knowledge I learned from all the chefs that taught me amazing things, I’m afraid I’ll become very rusty when it comes to my culinary knowledge.
During the first class, a master butcher, Cole Ward, came in to show us how to butcher a whole pig. This was the sort of experience I was missing from Paul Smith’s. During culinary labs at PSC we would have to break down chickens and filet fish, but there were no classes that expanded on the subject of butchering. It was pretty exciting when I found out we would be taking apart a pig in the first class. Learning about chicken slaughtering and pig butchering within the first week at Sterling College couldn’t help but make me realize how much I love this place.
Anne, the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) graduate who holds the extremely important job of organizing everything that goes on within the Sterling kitchen and instructing the value-added products class, bought a humanely-raised pig from a local farm for the class. Before Cole showed us how to butcher half the pig, he showed us and explained to us what the saw and different knives were utilized for. He started by sawing off the pig’s feet and cutting out the massive liver. Within thirty minutes the whole pig was cut into different parts (the ham, many sections of the loin, the Boston butt—part of the shoulder, the picnic, etc.). After a break we came back and the five of us in the class butchered the other half of the pig. Since none of us had butchered a pig before, Cole instructed us where and how to cut and quizzed us on what order the different parts were to be butchered.
In the afternoon we split in two groups to start making products out of the parts we cut from the pig. My group made cranberry-sage sausage and started the curing process for the maple-cured smoked bacon, while the other group prepared Loukanika sausage and started the cure for smoke pork loin. At the end of the week our delicious sausages were served to the rest of the students and faculty at the weekly Friday barbeque dinner.
In the second class we finished the curing process for our maple bacon, made guanciale (cured pork jowl with thyme, garlic, salt, pepper, sugar, bay leaves, sage, and juniper berries), created spicy soppressata (a salami that is hung in a curing chamber to dry out and grow mold for months to years), and cured ham. That day we also hot-smoked the pork loin, maple bacon, and ham hocks in the smoker we had outside.
Salami: Week Four After Formation of Mold
The third and fourth classes were focused on making different types of cheese. Mozzarella curds, fromage blanc, crème fraiche, butter, ricotta, herbed yogurt cheese, queso fresco, brie, cultured butter, chevre, feta, and saint maure were some of the cheeses we made. These cheese-focused days were not a good time to be lactose intolerant. Taking lactose pills didn’t help much, but all the delicious cheese was worth the amount of gas I had those nights. What surprised me the most was how simple most of these cheeses were to create. Even though I probably won’t eat much of the cheese, I would love to make cheese at home for my family and friends just for the simplicity and being able to see smiles on other people’s faces.
By week five I easily declared value-added products my favorite course at Sterling so far. Anne didn’t have anything planned for us to do that final week, so she asked us what we wanted to make, so we threw some ideas at her. Marshmellows, truffles, meringues, sherbert, egg nog, ice cream, and caramel sauce are what ended up being in our recipe packet that week. The only egg nog I had ever made was lactose-free and involved using hemp milk and coconut milk instead of cow’s milk, therefore what we ended up creating was completely different from my experience. Unlike store bought egg nog, we made the traditional method with raw eggs. In the end, the egg nog came out thicker than a pancake batter. It was so rich and flavorful that I couldn’t even drink a full cup of it. Fortunately, it was made into some amazing ice cream with the gelato maker we had.
Besides product costing homework, our final project (which involved writing a six to eight page paper, doing a twenty minute presentation on your chosen interest, and creating the animal-based product), and a couple readings outside class, the course as a whole didn’t involve too much outside work. The idea of coming into class once a week to create a food product was pretty invigorating. It gave me hope that there are careers out there that can utilize the aspects of agriculture and culinary without involving cooking in a restaurant or working on a farm. Overall, along with the food entrepreneurism class, the value-added products class inspired me to look more into careers that can utilize all aspects of my main interests: culinary, agriculture, business, and even music.
The Hitchhiking Adventure to Bread & Puppet
The last thing I thought I would be doing on my first weekend at Sterling College was hitchhiking. When Hannah mentioned biking or hitchhiking to a puppet theater in Glover Vermont, the word “hitchhiking” caught my attention. I had never heard of Bread and Puppet and probably wasn’t physically fit to bike for thirty miles, but when the idea of sticking my thumb out to catch rides with strangers came to mind, I realized Vermont would be the perfect place to do this for the first time.
Hannah, Eliza, Anne (a lady from the Wildbranch Writing Workshop that was hosted at Sterling College during the first week of the summer session), and I started walking down the road to begin our hitchhiking adventure. Although Eliza had made signs with names of the roads and towns where we were headed to hold out to the cars passing by us, it took us a good fifteen minutes until one of the thirty cars that passed us picked us up. The lady who picked us up was an eighth generation Vermonter and had the perfect amount of seats in her car for us. She was able to drop us off in Hardwick, a town fifteen minutes from Sterling and about halfway to Glover.
We then started walking towards the next highway that we would need to take to get to Glover. Sticking out our thumbs and holding up the sign didn’t really make any of the fifty drivers who passed us within twenty minutes stop to pick us up. While most of the people driving by simply ignored us, others made random gestures or just nodded their head as if they disagreed with our energy-saving way of transportation. We then decided to split our group in half so cars that only had two open seats were more likely to stop and pick us up. As Hannah and Anne split up from Eliza and I, we waited for about ten minutes until a small truck stopped. A shirtless man in his mid-forties got out of the car holding a blunt in his hand, looked at Eliza and I, and asked us, “You guys goin’ to Glover to see Bread and Puppet?”
“Yup,” Eliza replied.
“So are we,” the shirtless man said. “You can hop in the cab. I got a lot of shit back there, but we should be able to make room.” He opened the back of his truck, moved around the mess and random tools in the cab, and let us climb in. We thanked him, smiled at the lady in the passenger seat, and relaxed as we listened to the truck’s engine rumble and the man and woman smoke their blunt. Five minutes down the road we saw Hannah and Anne walking in the same direction we were traveling. We both looked back at them as we passed, smiled, and waved as we speeded by. At first I thought we should have told the driver to stop to pick up our friends, but by that time it was too late and I figured they would catch a ride soon enough. Within twenty minutes we had reached the puppet theater.
The way Hannah explained the puppet theater made it sound like the people at Bread & Puppet made human-sized puppets and used them in all sorts of skits. Little did I know, all the acts involved people inside these puppets. The museum inside the big, rustic-looking building displayed a bunch of random puppets and statues of amazingly unique, yet strange creatures and human figures. After the first skit, Eliza and I met up with Hannah and Anne, who had caught a ride with a couple who was going the complete opposite direction by convincing the couple how amazing Bread & Puppet is, and began checking out the clever, humorous, well-though-out acts in the different areas inside and outside of the big rustic building. Eventually, we made our way to the “Decapitalization Circus” inside an old church. By this time I had realized how radical, liberal, and hilarious Bread & Puppet Theater was and knew what to expect. With a full circus band, the actors made extreme puns on topics about healthcare, freedom, and rights as Americans in general. The circus ended with a satirical Uncle Sam on stilts dancing to When The Saints Go Marching In. Bread & Puppet is such an extraordinary and unique experience to explain that the only thing I can say is to check out their site and look at the pictures below if you don’t really understand what they’re all about: http://breadandpuppet.org/ Since I had to get back to Sterling for my last farm chore, Hannah’s boyfriend met us there and gave us all a ride back to Craftsbury Common.
(Random fact: Bread & Puppet did many costumes and characters for the movie Across The Universe, and did the circus part during Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!)
The Trip to Montpelier
On the second Saturday I decided to make a road trip to Montpelier for two reasons: 1) I desperately needed a G string for my guitar, and 2) I had never been to Vermont’s capital and figured it would be a great opportunity to do so. Eliza and Matt came along for the beautiful and scenic hour-long drive to the town. After we messed around with the many instruments in the music store, I bought the G string, a jaw-harp, and a tuner that detects notes based on vibrations. Soon enough, the three of us agreed on eating at a little café down the street called The Skinny Pancake. Since many people had recommended it to Eliza and we were pretty starving at the time, it wasn’t a very hard decision to agree on eating there. Feeling very Vermont-like at the time, I ordered an Italian sausage crepe with vegies, local maple syrup, and maple sweetwater. Although it was pretty light and couldn’t compare to the amount of food I had been eating each meal in the dining room at Sterling, it hit the spot and tasted great.
After we finished eating, we decided to visit the Capitol building before we departed. We walked down the main street, strolled past a small, rustic-looking movie theater, and stopped in front of the Capitol building to gaze at and take pictures. Although the roof of the building was an appealing shiny-gold color, the construction in the front of it kind of ruined the sight. It was at that time when I realized how un-exciting Montpelier was. The main street was small and didn’t have much to offer, the city was pretty dull in general, and there were huge ladders and platforms sitting in front of the Capitol building. Honestly, I think Vermont should change its capital to Burlington, a much more “happening” town with lots of live music, touristy sites, and a great local food scene. The best part of Montpelier is the fact that it’s the only capital in the United States without a McDonald’s. In fact, the residents around Montpelier made sure there was no McDonald’s put in the city by protesting and signing petitions. Now if that’s not what a city looks like that cares about their food system and their health, then I don’t know what is.
After our visit to the Capitol building, we went back to the car and journeyed our way through the beautiful, green, fresh valleys and hills of Northern Vermont.
(It’s hard to see the construction in this picture, but it’s very noticeable in person)
(What to look forward to in the next post: conclusion of the month at Sterling, journeys into the woods, and adventures from Craftsbury Common to Burlington to the Adirondacks)
