Building Strong Community Partnerships
Americorps VISTA Strengthens Partnership Between Sharing Our Roots
and Carleton’s Center for Community & Civic Engagement
Carleton students on farm tour before hazelnut harvest, September 2023
We at Sharing Our Roots are eager to highlight our ongoing partnership with Carleton’s Center for Community & Civic Engagement (CCCE), which brings Carleton students onto the Sharing Our Roots Farm for hands-on, experiential regenerative agriculture learning.
Since July 2023, Sharing Our Roots has been a host site for a Campus Compact Americorps VISTA position, co-hosted by the CCCE. Campus Compact Americorps VISTA is a national federal program that places a VISTA member at a college campus or with one of that campus’s community partners to work on building systems that support low-income college students and community members.
Margaret Anderson, collecting soil samples on the SOR Farm.
This position and its current holder, Margaret Anderson, have been an integral part of building capacity and engaging student learning at the farm. As part of her role, Margaret works collaboratively with Sharing Our Roots and CCCE staff to connect interested Carleton students and professors with volunteer opportunities and on-farm events. Margaret’s work helps to foster civic engagement by introducing more people, groups, and classes to the Sharing Our Roots’ work.
These partnerships from the last
year have included:
Wildlife Monitoring:
Female red-winged blackbird, enjoying tall prairie grass.
Carleton students have trained on citizen science data tracking and are helping to monitor the return of wildlife to the Sharing Our Roots Farm through our Wildlife Counts initiative.
Two students, Alyssa Alvarez and Annie Jay, have even created a website visually displaying the bird species data they’ve collected at the SOR Farm!
Invasive Species Removal:
Carleton students pose with pile
of removed buckthorn.
Carleton students spent two volunteer days this fall helping to remove invasive buckthorn from the Sharing Our Roots woods. Buckthorn matures extremely quickly, allowing it to outcompete most other low-growing plants and tree seedlings around it. To promote biodiversity and healthy habitat, we regularly clear buckthorn through goat foraging and human intervention.
Hazelnut Harvesting:
Carleton students gather with
their hazelnut harvest.
A group of 35 students spent a beautiful summer day in early September harvesting hazelnuts and learning about the ecosystem benefits of perennial crops.
This was our first large hazelnut harvest, after planting 5,000 hazelnut trees in 2019 to prevent soil erosion at the farm. Hazelnuts are a native plant with very deep roots that build healthy soil, prevent water pollution, and sequester carbon without requiring watering, pesticides, or fertilizer.
Hosting Farm Intern and Work Studies:
Work study Luisa harvests elderberry flowers for syrup.
Carleton students who are especially interested in sustainable agriculture have the opportunity to spend regular weekly time at the SOR Farm as a farm intern or work study, where they can gain hands-on experience and deepen their understanding of environmentally conscious farming practices. Students can work during the school year or summer and choose farm projects based on interest and desire to learn.
Looking to the 2024 growing season, Sharing Our Roots is gearing up to host more Carleton student engagement opportunities. In March, SOR staff will be hosting a group of 7-10 Carleton students for an alternative spring break and this summer, SOR will host three additional farm interns. Having students participate in land work is mutually beneficial - students learn about sustainable agriculture in the face of a changing climate and the farm’s ecosystem gets needed care.
We are grateful for our ongoing partnership with CCCE and for the Campus Compact Americorps VISTA model that makes this capacity-building possible!