A New York Times article from Saturday highlights some college students and graduates who have gone from academics to organics and agriculture. While the article brings up a good point - that American youth want to find a way to do their part, to contribute to society in a way that they find valued and sustainable – this trend is not a new one. Idealism and wanting social change have been a part of college student and twenty-somethings’ culture for generations.

I’d like to take us back to May 2000…

I am finishing up my junior year at Skidmore, and plan to live in Saratoga Springs with some friends for the summer. I am a vegan, I am an active member of the college’s environmental club, and I am president of the vegetarian club. During the warmer months, which are few and far between in an upstate New York school year, I shop at the Saratoga Farmers’ Market and pick up apples and other locally produced items at an apple farms nearby. My visions are deeply rooted in social change through agriculture and food choices. While I’ve planned to wait tables for the summer, one day as I wander through the farmers’ market, I decide to approach some farms about summer work. One organic farm agrees, and my newfound farming dreams emerge.

I spend the entire summer working on this farm, and once some of my girlfriends hear of my adventure, they ask if they can join too. Here we are, three ambitious college students, transplanting, weeding, and harvesting away all summer long.

It doesn’t end there. Two years later I spend one spring working on a vineyard in Vermont, learning how to harvest grapes and clip vines. Three years after graduating from college, I intern and work with other recent college grads on a biodynamic, organic farm, teaching children how to bake bread, make compost, feed farm animals, and muck out stalls. I work on this farm, digging the dirt, rising early each day to pick vegetables to send to the NYC Greenmarket. I learn how to use a wood-fired bread oven. I make butter from scratch. I sell pickles and sauerkraut at the farmers’ market. I yearn for a more sustainable life.

While my last farming venture ended four years ago, and my longing for rooting in the soil has subsided, my interest in organic farming and social change has not. I encourage anyone, young or old, who has the want to work on a farm, to do it. Waking up before the sun rises, hearing the roosters crow, feeling the cool mist of morning, getting your hands in the soil, is like nothing else. It can fill a deep need to grow food and make sustainable change.