[music playing] What we started with was actually a really passionate group of students and a similarly passionate group of faculty and staff who wanted to identify a piece of land that would be suitable for a student farm.

And we're advocating to the University to acquire that space.

So the students formed student farm club in 2014 or 2015 as a way to organize themselves and advocate for some land.

And so that was then how we got one acre of land that is part of our current site today to start the farm.

Currently we have six high tunnels which are covered indoor protected agriculture.

Six main outdoor fields.

We have a walk in cooler.

We have two small BCS, it's an Italian walk behind tractor that has two wheels.

We have a different style of farming here.

Some people would call this a market farm, and then we grow a lot of successions.

So we grow lettuce-- romaine lettuce as an example.

We grow four successions of that.

That means we plant from March all the way through June and we have a continuous supply of lettuce for our customer base.

So some of the students who work with us on the farm for the longest period of time are our interns.

We have a cohort of interns that we hire each year, and they make a year long commitment with us.

And they start with a training course every spring.

So they currently take a two credit training course that is focused on background and sustainable food systems, some food politics, and then a core deeper dive into farming based skill sets.

As interns, in addition to working in the field and gaining those experiences, they each get their own management role that they have as a unique, deeper, immersive experience for them.

I've always had a passion for plants.

I've always been curious to learn more about where our food comes from, how to be more sustainable.

And the student farm has really been a model for that.

As an intern, I was given a leadership position as greenhouse manager, so I learned a lot from planting crops and when certain seedlings would be needed to be taken out to the farm for hardening off and transplanting.

I just started as an intern this year on the student farm.

I've been involved with the club since the beginning of my freshman first semester and through experiences with the club, I decided that I wanted to intern.

As a student farm intern, I am a CSA manager, which is community supported agriculture.

We like to call it campus supported agriculture because we basically supply produce for members of the Penn State community.

In addition to that, I am the head IPM or integrated pest management manager.

I transferred up here from a community college last year and I just was looking for something to do, a club to get involved with.

And I found the hydroponics project team with the student farm club.

And so I signed up for the 2023 internship cohort and became a member of that.

And now a year later, I'm here serving as an americorps member with the farm.

So this year, as an americorps member, I'm responsible for a couple of projects that are on campus.

Three of the main ones are the rooftop garden, the schrier pocket garden, and the hydroponics greenhouse.

All of that produce, we try to donate to some of our community partners.

So we do practice a sustainable agriculture.

One of our main ways that we practice sustainable agriculture is through crop rotation.

We have a 12 year crop rotation schedule, so each production field, we have seven production fields blocked off into two blocks and we'll be rotating them regularly.

So fields that are not being used to produce produce, will have a cover crop to maintain nutrients that may have been taken out from the crop that was there previously.

A cover crop is essentially what you put down on land to maintain the soil health.

You want to make sure that the nutrients are there it's balanced.

If you use the same crop over and over again in the field, it'll end up depleting the nutrients.

We do not spray pesticides or herbicides here.

So instead, we use a lot of integrated pest management and that is a key piece of sustainable agriculture.

In that we use a lot of cultural practices to avoid pests.

Instead of using pesticides, we'll use row cover, we'll use fly traps.

It's basically trying every single thing you can so that you do not have to use pesticides on a farm.

One example of a newer initiative that we support is a new food recovery network chapter here on campus.

So this is a student led new campus organization with the mission to rescue or recover surplus food from the dining commons around campus.

The extra produce we have left over on the farm, we try to donate to our community partners, and the lions pantry is our biggest partner out of that group as it goes directly to the Penn State students.

So a lot of our seconds produce or any extra produce we have here, we end up sending to the lions pantry.

The gift that Dr. Keiko Miwa Ross made to the farm came at the perfect time, right as we were working on our expansion.

Enabling us to now have an endowment in place has really helped to stabilize the program and has enabled us to expand both physically with from one to four acres, but also expand in programming.

At this point in time, we are in process of building a building on the farm.

So the next phase of philanthropy that we are seeking is funding to help us build that building.

A main goal with the building coming out on the farm is to have a year round experience out here.

Now, we're trapped with the seasons out here in the winter, it's very cold.

We hold classes on the farm and having a specific classroom space instead of using one of our high tunnels as a classroom would be very beneficial.

It gives us more space in the high tunnel to grow crops, and it gives the students in these classes a designated area where they can leave materials, use materials.

Being able to work with a group of minded individuals and even individuals who come from different backgrounds, you're able to get to know what paths they're on and what their interests are and also share knowledge with each other.

There's a lot of student projects going on and there's a lot of students working out here.

And it's really-- it's an interesting dynamic that's going on.

As a student, I feel like I can express myself and do what I want out here, I feel like it's my space.

So it's that's a really important aspect of the farm out here.

But we all work so well together and we just gel and we can collaborate.

And whenever we have to tackle a new task or come up with an idea, it seems that everyone's voice is heard and that just helps us create better solutions.

I see a lot of their growth across time that perhaps they don't fully realize until after they're gone.

They build really strong social connections, which I'm really proud of them for.

Farming is inherently like a very social team bonding activity.

And then also taking care of each other.

As we take care of the land, they learn a deeper way of care.

I mean, I see that transitioning into their interpersonal relationships, so I'm certainly proud of them for that.

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