Civil Eats

The U.C. Santa Cruz Farm & Garden Apprenticeship changed my life. In the winter of 2005, I was burning the candle at both ends and burning myself out. I was working too hard, moving too fast, and my doctor had warned me that I was at risk of chronic fatigue. Then, that spring, I found myself living on an organic farm perched above the waters of Monterey Bay.  Before I moved to the farm, my to-do list as an environmental campaigner had been packed with conference calls, protest organizing, and press conferences. After arriving at the farm, my biggest priorities became keeping the onions free of weeds, thinning the young fruits on the apple trees, and waking up early to cook for 35 other aspiring farmers.

The switch blew my mind. As I worked in the fields and the orchards I could suddenly see the myriad interconnections that knit together a farming ecosystem; ecology went from an abstraction to a visceral reality. Perhaps more important, living with a few dozen other industrial society dissidents gave me a new appreciation for the ideals of solidarity and the practice of community. The time I spent at the UCSC Farm & Garden deepened my hope that farming, done right, could help heal a battered environment and perhaps even remedy some of the world’s injustices.

So I was horrified when I learned last month that, due in part to state and federal budget cutbacks, the Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture (as it’s formally called) may be forced to double its tuition—a move that would put this invaluable program beyond the reach of many people and set back efforts to educate a new generation of organic farmers.

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I was born in raised in a city, “the city” if you live in the Bay Area. Growing up in San Francisco taught me to value diversity, to be creative, to care about saving the world. Somehow, living in the city, I also got interested in farming. This interest came about out of a realization that our fossil fuel-based economy couldn’t continue indefinitely, and that our most basic need—food—was also in jeopardy due to the tenuous situation wrought by peak oil.

Upon this realization I decided to learn how to grow my own food, and to teach other people these skills. This wasn’t just a prelude to an escapist fantasy wherein I would move to the country, get “off the grid”, and form my own self-sufficient farm (replete with shotguns and stockpiled wheat) to weather the collapse of the industrial economy. No, instead I sensed that food could be a tool to get city people interested in taking control of a key aspect of their lives, and by doing this hopefully challenge the soul-crushing dynamics of modern urban existence (wage slavery, alienation, pollution and ill health being a few aspects). With these goals, some friends and I began to cultivate a piece of land which became known as Alemany Farm. Read More