The air feels fresher, the soil softer, and everywhere you look, something new is sprouting or blooming. It’s the kind of season that makes you slow down and notice the small things—like the bees hovering over cilantro flowers, or a butterfly weaving through the garden rows. These aren’t just pretty signs of spring. They’re pollinators, and they’re essential to everything we do out here.
Fall 2024 brought with it lots of new faces to the Fresh Focus team, including a new Lead Student Farmer, three new College Core Fellows, and many new interns!
Fall was also a busy quarter for the Fresh Focus team, as we established a new seed saving bed to grow and collect seed from indigenous heirloom plants. Students also stretched their event planning muscles and collaborated with a seed saving library to host a dinner utilizing the crops we grew from heirloom indigenous seeds.
The Fresh Focus team had an exciting and abundant summer, full of new community connections, friendship, delicious food, and an almost never ending supply of cucumber and squash!
A year of work together toward ecologically, socially and economically sustainable food systemsThe photos below capture a few highlights from a year on the Student Farm, sharing a very incomplete (but nonetheless astounding) picture of what the team of students and staff were able to accomplish. Alongside these stories, we'll soon compile numbers - interns, courses, pounds of food distributed, events and visitors, field trips, vegetable varieties, tons of compost, ground squirrel burrows - that convey a little of what goes on.
A busy fall! The Fresh Focus team said goodbye and THANK YOU to coordinator Judy Jun, welcomed a new team of Lead Student Farmers and interns, and got on with the business of increasing food access and promoting food justice and sovereignty at UC Davis. Read highlights from Fall Quarter activities and learn more about the dedicated team of Lead Student Farmers, Student Farm interns, and staff.
Campus is quieter in summer, but with two Lead Student Farmers, Fresh Focus's team kept summer students supplied with fresh produce, grown by summer students. In the impact report linked below, read highlights from the quarter, including distribution to partners in Knights Landing and Davis Night Market, and learn more about the dedicated team of Lead Student Farmers, Student Farm interns, and staff.
The Student Farm is looking for someone passionate about food justice to lead our Fresh Focus program. The Fresh Focus program supports food access and food sovereignty efforts on campus and in the community, through gleaning and program-specific production at the Student Farm, collaboration with Aggie Compass, Basic Needs, and student support centers around centers, and convening of conversation about food justice and food culture at UC Davis.
UC Davis’ student-led program in organic farming will expand to include new crops and new partners, with the aim of exporting its educational the model to other institutions. The expansion is being funded with a $2-million grant from the Organic Research and Extension Initiative, part of the United States Department of Agriculture.
We are hiring two Lead Student Farmers in Fresh Focus, our food access, food justice, and food sovereignty program. To apply, find the position on Handshake.
Working with UCD's talented Kelly Nishimura and the entire Student Farm community, Ecological Garden Lead Julia Schreiber has been talking to staff, students and community members to update the map that welcomes people. Sitting near the corner of Extension Center Drive and Orchard Park Drive, the current map started out beautiful and has gotten more beautiful, but less readable, with age.
Led by Emmanuel Momoh (PhD Student, Geography) and funded by an SLLC Green Fellowship, the African Food Basket project began in summer 2023. To participate in the project or learn more, contact Emmanuel by email or LinkedIn.
The team got summer crops in the ground, helped convene food security partners from across campus, and expanded our impact through activities like the Whole Earth Festival and harvesting fruit from Plant Sciences teaching orchards. Read highlights from Spring Quarter activities and learn more about the dedicated team of Lead Student Farmers, Student Farm interns, and staff, as well as a Partner Spotlight on the Ecological Garden.
Flowers, like all of our more than human kin, remind us that there are so many gorgeous ways to exist in nature." - Kait Murray
In this video documentary produced by Jael Mackendorf and the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, learn about the significance of a beautiful flower bed that students created at the UC Davis Ecological Garden. Flowers showcase the beauty of nature, the community’s vibrant diversity and is a testament to the power of unity, love and acceptance.
The Student Farm's historic Field House has seen many things. It stores binders of activities and signup sheets for our Kids in the Garden program, hosts hundreds of conversations between students and staff, and is home to tools, farm materials, sign boards, silk screen supplies, a freedge, and much more.
