The Sustainable Student Farm (SSF) is back and here for the long haul! Thanks to a joint venture between the Student Sustainability Committee (SSC), the Department of Crop Sciences, and Dining Services we now have secured funding for an additional three years! Also thanks needs to given to YOU, the students! This is YOUR farm! This is YOUR project!
This renewed partnership gives the SSF more time to develop its production practices and educational/outreach potential. By theend of this next three years we hope to be closer than ever to being a self-sustaining (economically and resource-wise) project that engages the university and community at large in small scale/regional food production. We hope to get students even more intimately involved with this project over the next three years. There are plans to develop a course and curriculum associated with the farm, continue collaborations as a client with many courses on campus, provide even more produce to the dining halls, and maybe even go to two days a week with the farm stand on the quad this summer!
We want YOU to be involved in any way possible. There are opportunities in day-to-day field and high tunnel work, help with our website/media, construction projects, working the farm stand this summer, harvesting fresh produce (even taking some home with you), and many other potential intersections between
YOUR ideas and YOUR farm! We are now planting in our high tunnels (year-round passive solar greenhouses), beginning transplant production, and nearing outdoor fieldwork if our mild winter keeps up and the fields dry out a little. Please visit our website (thefarm.illinois.edu) for more information. Here, you can sign up for volunteering opportunities, learn more about volunteering in our volunteer manual, and see pictures/ videos of what we are all about. You can also e-mail us directly in our contact section if you have further questions. Thanks again for all your on going support in making the SSF a progressive, cutting edge student farm project in one of the best agricultural regions in the world. We can make a difference!
-Farmer Zack
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