Ending ASI

The final week of the summer intensive has arrived! We were grateful for a quarter inch of rain on the last day of July, Tuesday, a day that also saw the arrival of 15 day-old chicks destined for our chicken tractor. We installed them under a heat lamp in the barn for their first several weeks.

Our field trip was to Tillers International in Scotts, MI, an organization working “to preserve, study and exchange low-capital technologies that increase the sustainability and productivity of people in rural communities.” We were received and shown about by Dulcy Perkins, farm manager. For many of us it was the first time to be in close proximity to enormous but gentle draft oxen. Two Tillers interns worked with us as we set our hands to the single furrow moldboard plow. It was eye-opening to see the diversity of ingenious agricultural implements preserved in the Tillers museum. Some serve as models for modern, working versions for use in rural communities around the world.

Schoolwork was not to be forgotten as students prepared for their final exam and attended to the remaining details of their agroecology term papers. But they are forward-looking, and continued to add material to the compost pile and transplanted a late batch of zucchini even though they would not see the fruits of these labors.

On our final day together students gave their personal reflections on the ASI experience. The different perspectives and varied media reflected the diversity that had come together for nine weeks to learn more about areas of common interest: healthy food and its role in building healthy bodies, families, communities and societies. It was hard to imagine that in coming days and weeks we would not see each other, but Merry Lea remains a welcoming place “where earth and people meet.” Won’t you consider joining us next year?

– Posted by Dale Hess, Ecological Field Station Director and Associate Professor of Agroecology