After Taylor and Dorothy finished, the YSFP’s own Jacquie Lewin and a few other students shared their experiences with WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), through which travelers are given room and board on a farm in exchange for work. Zan Romanoff was also on hand to discuss the YSFP’s Summer Farm Internship and leading Harvest pre-orientation trips, both of which are now accepting applications.

Terra Madre, a meeting of farmers and food activists from around the globe that takes place biennially in Turin, Italy, is Slow Food’s answer to that mundane grind that is the modern conference. Instead of days packed with Powerpoints and buzzwords and long lines for bad food, Terra Madre is a four day feast of conversations, presentations, and artisanal edibles that aims to engage the senses as well as the intellect. Combined with its sister event, a market cum fairground called the Salone del Gutso, it does Slow Food’s emphasis on ethical pleasure proud, providing a forum in which one daily gets to learn by tasting.

Panels and speeches take place in the Oval, an enormous domed structure divided into makeshift rooms for the occasion. Because the conference is so resolutely global, small portable radios and headphones are handed out as you enter each talk, allowing attendees to tune into simultaneous translation of the proceedings in their native languages. This year, Vandana Shiva spoke on scarcity and hunger in a wealthy, productive world; Raj Patel called on American delegates to consider the population that grows and harvests most of the food consumed in our country, joking that the national meeting in 2012 might well be held in Spanish. I heard stories from small farmers scattered across South America in the Q&A that followed a session on Indigenous Peoples in Agriculture and listened in on a reindeer herder being interviewed by the local press.

It is, however, difficult to cultivate conversation with headphones on, waving around a tiny radio and searching for reception, and so perhaps the most vibrant part of the Terra Madre experience happens just outside these rooms, in waiting lines and workshops. The redheaded young man sitting next to me in a Salone-run tasting of port and Parmigiano Reggiano turned out to be a Canadian chef celebrating his birthday; the German brewer drawing us drafts when we went out afterwards insisted that they be gratis. I met a friend of a friend, a girl whose name I knew but who I’d never met, who was there with a project that brings gardens to AIDs patients in Rwanda. The sense of community is raucous, vibrant, deeply joyful. Despite language barriers, everyone is eager to talk.

And also, of course, to eat. The Oval is the schoolroom to the Salone del Gusto’s insane cafeteria, a series of enormous warehouse-style spaces fitted out with rows upon rows upon rows of booths offering samples of traditional, native products. Most present are Italian producers, organized by region, but there is also an international section replete with French pastries, Guatemalan coffee and Mexican vanilla, as well as lesser known fare. Many are products championed by Slow Food’s Presidia program, which helps those who make “unique, traditional or rare” foods market their product and preserve their cultural heritage.

The Salone, though modeled after a market, calls itself a fair, which is perhaps a better name—“market” doesn’t quite capture the bustling conviviality of the place, the sense that everyone has come on holiday and doesn’t mind a bit if it is occasionally too crowded to walk. You can just stand still and spear another sample of prosciutto, lardo, shepherd’s cheese and dense, delicious traditional breads.

It’s easy to imagine Terra Madre as a festival of self-indulgence, foodies from around the world gathering to gobble up rare bites from exotic lands. What makes the consumption aspect interesting is Slow Food’s insistence on the cultural value of food; stories, both historical and personal accompany the tastes. To wander through the Salone silently is to miss its essential convivial purpose; the marketplace has long been a nexus for cross-cultural human connection, and this aims to reestablish that vibrancy. Going to the supermarket is a basically mute task, an opportunity to make and then burn through a to-do list efficiently, certain of what you need and what will be available. It is a chore to perform, rote. You cannot shop the Salone in the same way; you never know what will be offered at the next table or around the corner, or what connection you will make with the person offering it.

“Responsibility without pleasure is drudgery; pleasure without responsibility is gluttony,” Slow Food USA president Josh Viertel noted in a speech to the assembled US delegates. Terra Madre and the Salone del Gusto support and inform one another, the one providing a tangible reminder of the results of the conversations taking place in the other. After a long day of simultrans, nothing is more welcome than a chat with vendors, a couple of samples, and the universal language of mmhmms that accompany good food. Inevitably, you walk home at night stunned and dizzy, far too full. In this, Terra Madre perhaps does resemble its corporate counterparts: no matter how early the next morning is coming, you always end up stretching out the day, waking exhausted and somehow still enthusiastic; yesterday has passed, and now you are hungry for more.

Today, my skills as an Events Intern (read: maker of delectable brick-oven farm pizza) needed to shine. While I was certain that we interns possessed the skills to make a labor-intensive farm festival look like a simple walk in the park (or a stroll through the plant beds, as it were), the public need not be fooled by our cool, collected demeanor. But perhaps they could not ever be so duped. One look at our pizza makers’ flour-dusted jeans, ash-streaked forearms, if not faces, and beet-stained “Murderer hands”—as Zan likes to call them—and anyone could see through our benevolent deceit.

As Jasmine and I got down to stretching and forming pizza-dough, Jacque got the fire started in the brick oven. The smell of wood roasting in a fire (what I like to call “The Christmas Smell”) filled the air and my mind began to wander, conjuring up romantic images of an activity we really didn’t get the chance to do much during the Texas “winters” of my childhood, when a drop in temperature to, say, 50 to 60 degrees on Christmas Eve gave us enough excuse to break out the Yule logs. The addition of birch bark made the fire just as pleasant to hear as it was to smell. We chatted casually about the beauty of the bright oranges and vibrant yellows that had begun to break forth from New Haven’s trees, especially when set against the gray that was the typical fall New Haven sky.

Ah, fall. Despite what your lack of heat did to the elasticity and rising power of my pizza dough, I will inevitably find myself waxing poetic about your finer qualities. A smile spread across my face as I realized that this Year’s Harvest Festival was providing me the perfect opportunity to do so.

In our pizza making world, fall had brought about an exciting array of new ingredients—Pesto prepared earlier in the summer and saved for such sparser produce seasons, Asian eggplants, leeks, green tomatoes, candy-stripe beets, and best of all, an abundance of butternut squash, which we sprinkled with olive-oil and coarse salt before roasting to coax out its autumnal sweetness. In addition to making pizzas, we also roasted whole cashews, hazelnuts, and almonds (to which Josh ingeniously added olive oil and rosemary) and set up a makeshift stove to heat fresh apple cider.

The crowds began to arrive around 3pm, and after 5 hours of pizza prep, we were ready to celebrate. We baked a few potato-leek-ricotta and tomato-parmesan-pesto pies, and continued to invite our visitors to take a stab at their own delicious fall creations. The apple cider warmed hands while the pizza warmed bellies, and the music of Plume Giant and other Yale student acoustic bands filled the air with a certain lightness and gaiety. The Harvest Festival successfully brought the Yale Community and many volunteers from the New Haven community together in celebration of the flavors of fall. Feelings of satiety were all around—not just of appetite, but also of spirit. -Jordan Zimmerman, ’12

Galettes, in particular, strengthen this link. They are prepared and eaten together. John described watching the people of Auriac, France toting their dough to a communal oven, where a woman baked it. With that romantic image in mind, I jumped into learning how these pies were made.

Galettes, French in origin, are broad, thin cakes of bread or pastry. The dough is pâte brisée (“the mother dough,” to use John’s words)⎯which bakers will recognize as basic pie dough: 3 parts flour, 2 parts butter, and 1 part water, by weight, with about ½ teaspoon of salt and ½ of sugar per pound of butter. The ingredients should be cold, the butter and flour thoroughly mixed and then the water added gradually. When the right consistency is achieved, the dough is rolled out until quite thin and cut into circles of 4-5 inches in diameter. The dough is spiked with a fork to allow for airflow in the oven, and if necessary, chilled for 5 or 10 minutes in the freezer. Then each circle is placed on the oven tray because unbaked galettes are difficult to move.

Meanwhile, the apples are peeled and sliced into thin semicircles with a mandoline, and then laid on top of the dough in spiral patterns. For a true galette, leave a half-inch of dough and fold that over to create the edge. Brush melted butter over the top, and sprinkle confectioner’s sugar and cinnamon over that. This keeps moisture in, aids in caramelization, and makes the pie taste and look great. Bring the oven to 375 degrees and bake the galettes until golden. John made whipped cream from heavy cream, vanilla, and sugar, which he served on top of the little pastries. As we devoured them, the brilliance of the autumn afternoon sunk into sunset over the Yale Farm.

The wood for the tables is local…very local: two red oak trees across the street from the Farm, which were sick and endangering the building they stood next to, were harvested for the new picnic tables. Ted milled the trees with the YSFP’s help, and created beautiful and functional furniture out of what would have just become another pile of mulch.

Check out the slideshow from tree to table — it’s a great reminder of how great it can be when we go local not just for food, but for other services as well.

Sam Huber, Morse ’13

Last night, I made a salad out of Lacinato kale, Chioggia beets, Hakurei turnips, kohlrabi, and zucchini.  Two months ago, I could have identified exactly one of these vegetables (zucchini), and the only salads I’d ever made involved tearing some iceberg lettuce, maybe (just maybe) cutting up a tomato, and pouring on a bottled dressing.  The questions of what we eat and how we eat it have been nagging at me for a while now, but until this internship my answers were mostly dependent on the microwave and a few select aisles of the supermarket.  Kohlrabi rarely shows up in Whole Foods, much less the local Stop & Shop, which makes me doubt whether I would have ever discovered it on my own.  The supermarket seems to function as a closed loop:  its patrons might easily be convinced to visit a farmers’ market if someone showed them a Kohlrabi, let them taste and hold it and made them curious enough to seek one out, but the only produce you know when you shop at a supermarket is supermarket produce.  It took me six weeks of actual farm work, of learning enough about a vegetable to nurse it to harvest and sell it at market, to get me to last night’s salad. But now that I’m here, that supermarket produce is going to be a much harder sell.

Ian Sprague, Jonathan Edwards ’12

How will we eat? This question often loses out to its competitor, “what will we eat?”. After all, ‘what’ seems like the most loaded term — it implies a whole range of possible foods that one could ingest, and suggests the danger that the modern consumer faces when trying to sate his or her appetite. Ask this question of a food-lover and they will thank you profusely before starting out on their personal rant about “good food”. But now that I think about it, “what” delimits the issue to a simple matter of substitution; for example, will we eat processed meats that are injected with antibiotics, or will we buy from the local cattle rancher who lets his steer out to pasture? A question of preference and economics. However, there is more at stake here than a simple change in consumer preference. “How” encapsulates everything that goes into eating and living well. “How” allows us to consider the pleasure of cooking one’s own food, and the passive stagnation of waiting in line to receive food being cooked without care, for a cheap price. “How” allows to think about the speed with which we expect to be fed, and after-affects of food after we swallow it down into our stomachs. Let’s face it here, eating is one of the number one activities we humans engage in, and considering how we go about the act maybe a fruitful contemplation. Just as how there is a right way to harvest wash lettuce on the way to market, there is a right way to feed oneself and one’s loved ones every day. How, then, shall we eat?

Patrick Vergara, Silliman 2011
If the executives at Monsanto have their way there will come a day, not terribly far in the future, when their ultimate vision is fulfilled. Their business plan complete, and the world saved from all unsavory plant species, they will sit back and cross their pinstriped arms. They’ll look at each other and know that because of their hard work their sons and daughters will only ever have to eat one type of soybean. That because of them their apples will only be fire-engine red and perfectly shaped. Their corn will be fat and tall and as yellow as the butter no doubt destined for its surface. Their melons a perfect sphere grown on vines progammed to arrange themselves in parallel lines. Their potatoes precisely porous enough to absorb as much french-fry oil as possible. Their tomatoes as round as a hamburger would want. That’s what they will get to eat.

Yasha Magarik, Calhoun ’12

“How will we eat?” implies another important question: “How will we grow?” My answer, after reading Bill Duesing’s 1995 book review of Ishmael and two competing reports on the future of agriculture, involves not just abolition of the fashionably vilified corn subsidies or GMO patent laws, but also comprehensive land reform. Duesing quotes Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney, the co-authors of one of the two reports: “The green revolution answered the problem of hunger and rural unrest with increased production, not with land reform or employment projects; essentially it offered a technological solution to a social and political problem.” What is needed is the redistribution of 10,000- and 100,000-acre farms to many small, organic growers, each managing no more than 20 or 40 acres apiece. Whether through eminent domain or the more gradual route of subsidies for small organic farmers (especially those who replace synthetic fertilizers and pesticides/herbicides with more intense labor—thus employing many more people), we need to solve the sociopolitical problem that Malcolm X saw as “the root of every revolution.” Only then will small farmers have the power necessary to properly implement crop diversity, rotation, and care.

Patrick Vergara, Silliman 2011
Pruittiporn Kerdchoochuen, Davenport 2011
Sam Huber, Morse 2013
Ali Abarca, Davenport 2013
Ian Sprague, Jonathan Edwards 2012
Yasha Magarik, Calhoun 2012

Or read them all:

Patrick Vergara, Silliman 2011

I spent last summer as an intern at a major multinational corporation. Turns out I’m pretty good at making spreadsheets, reading legislation and performing other tasks that help companies improve their bottom line. At the end of my time there I was rewarded with a cash bonus. Admittedly, that felt pretty cool. Now I’m working on the Yale Farm. Here, though, there are no cash bonuses, and our goal isn’t to make money zip around faster than the other guys. We have different things in mind. Today at check-in, for example, Daniel remarked that I make a mean soil block and said that I should show others my technique. The little squares of earth might evoke an Excel workbook, but the similarities end there. Instead, they are filled with seeds which will hopefully germinate and eventually produce food. As I thought about his remark later in the day, I realized that it meant more than any cash bonus possibly could. I don’t know what happened to my database entries or memos at my old job. I do know, however, that my soil blocks- fashioned tightly and crafted with care- will be a nice home for a baby plant one day soon. That’s a bottom line I can get behind.

Pruittiporn Kerdchoochuen, Davenport 2011

The best part about being a farm intern so far is watching things grow; seeing your first seedlings poke through the soil can make you feel somewhat like a proud first-time parent. It never ceases to amaze me how one tiny, unassuming seed can become a head of lettuce or a tomato plant that can reach from the ground up to the very top of the hoop house (and would probably keep on going if there was room). Even more amazing, though, is the fact that this process requires no magic trick, no special touch, and that anyone – even me – can set the wheels in motion (well, more or less anyway) with a little training.

Sam Huber, Morse 2013

It became clear within minutes of stepping off the bus at Massaro Farm for our first field trip that Steve, the farm’s manager, is a born teacher. He is also a born farmer. Disarmingly friendly and reassuringly collected, Steve succeeded in breaking down Massaro’s initially overwhelming sixty acres of farmland for us into the manageable units through which he approached the land himself (it also helped that only 4 of these acres were being planted this season). One thing that struck me as we set to work hoeing weeds in Massaro’s massive forty-inch beds was that despite the obvious differences in scale between Massaro and the Yale Farm, most of the obstacles faced and the techniques used to solve them were easily transferrable. Steve still has to churn up his soil before replanting, but the size of his operation demands that he use a tractor instead of a broadfork. Steve, like Daniel, had a well thought-out crop plan and was ready with a justification for each vegetable’s placement, and Steve intends to implement the same kind of crop rotation we rely on at the Yale Farm to keep his soil healthy and catch pests off guard. It was comforting to learn that though our single acre at the Yale Farm can often feel like too much to keep track of, the skills we’ve picked up in the last few weeks would prove just as useful on a farm two, four, or even sixty times our size.

Ali Abarca, Davenport 2013

I confess: I am obsessed with food to a ridiculous degree. I spend my free time pouring through cookbooks and food blogs to find new dishes to try. One point on a longs list of things I love about the farm is that it is a constant source of inspiration for new recipes and menu planning. For example, while planting those tomatoes and cucumbers, all I could think was GAZPACHO. Also, after harvesting the fava beans I contemplated making an awesome Fabada Asturiana. I love challenging myself to plan my dinner around what is available on the farm each day. So, let’s say I come into work and learn we have bolting bok choy.
It’s no longer marketable, but it is still not only edible, but delicious. I decide to take some home for dinner. And here is where the fun begins. As I work through the garden, part of me is hunting for the best ingredients to complement the bok choy. While cultivating the Alliums, I see the garlic scapes are mature. They will go perfectly. As I’m prepping a bed by the snap peas, I pick one off the vine. It’s quite possibly the most delicious pea I have ever tasted, and it must be part of my dinner. And as I’m on my way to transplant lettuce… Oh, hello there, cilantro. You’re coming home with me. This is my favorite way to cook. The produce I use is in its freshest, sweetest, most flavorful state. It’s a little embarrassing how excited I get about these vegetables. They are so EXCELLENT, and I’m pumped to cook with them all.

Ian Sprague, Jonathan Edwards 2012

Here at the Yale Farm we’re prepared for anything. Snow, rain, sun, pests and pernicious purslane. Pictured is an example of a Yale Farm Intern (Yasha) who knows better than anyone else the importance of a flexible and alert approach to mother nature’s vicissitudes. Sustainable agriculture in New England, we have learned, must account for and continue in spite of freezing cold or stifling humidity. Tools like the flame weeder confidently hoisted on Yasha’s back help us maintain flexibility in the face of such contingencies. Other examples of ways in which we cope with the difficulties presented by the New England climate and environment include our plastic-covered hoop-house (which protects the tomatoes from rain in the summer, and doubles as a zero-input greenhouse in the winter) and our crop-rotation system, designed to confuse pests by moving around the crop plantings each year. Whatever nature decides to throw our way, we’ll be sure to find some solution that does not include unsustainable inputs like fertilizers and pesticides.

Yasha Magarik, Calhoun 2012

5 Reasons Why Kohl Rabi Is The Best Vegetable At The Yale Farm:
1)The main part of it can be used as a turnip or cabbage when cooked (as in borscht), as a salad turnip or radish when sliced onto a salad, or as an apple when eaten raw in the field.
2)Like a radish or salad turnip, the leaves can be cooked, but unlike both those vegetables, its leaves are not prickly.
3)Because it grows above the ground, as opposed to beets, radishes, or turnips, it requires little cleaning before eating. This also makes it easy to tell when it is ripe.
4)As opposed to some other vegetables I could mention (without naming spinach, for instance), kohl rabi fills you up.
5)It looks like an alien spaceship, and its name is derived from the phrase “Cool Rabbi”. Enough said.