The Farm is Ours!
Growing Natural Buildings
WCS Visits WOF
Ode to Vegetables
Work and Play in a Small Community
Greens-n-Beans
The Farm is Ours!
By Stacey Denton
In March of this year, White Oak Farm & Education Center, The Equity
Trust Inc., and Southern Oregon Land Conservancy (SOLC) finalized a
landmark conservation/agriculture easement to protect the farm and forest
land of White Oak Farm. The key components of this easement document
require White Oak Farm to be managed as a working farm and education
center where at least 25% of the income of the property’s owners is
derived from farming and/or sustainability education, to be organic,
and to prioritize that the forest be managed such that old-growth or
late successional characteristics are constantly being developed. All
of the easement’s stipulations will be monitored and upheld by SOLC
in perpetuity.
Another exciting result of the creation of this easement for White Oak
Farm is that The Equity Trust, Inc., the non-profit organization which
held the title to the farm, donated the title to our non-profit organization,
White Oak Farm & Education Center. The farm is ours! On behalf of
the Board of Directors, the staff, the residents, and the community
of supporters of White Oak Farm, I want to appreciate the generosity
of The Equity Trust, Inc. and their faith in and commitment to the mission
of White Oak Farm & Education Center. The work of The Equity Trust,
Inc. is inspiring and essential to preserving the livelihood of family
farming in the United States. Their easy partnership with SOLC on this
project will ensure that this small acreage in the Williams Valley will
serve as an alternative model of land stewardship for many years to
come.
Growing Natural
Buildings
By Taylor Starr
Building with natural materials is an experience in getting closer to
the Earth. When creating natural buildings we look to our surroundings
for raw materials, not to distant suppliers and stores. This closeness
to our materials helps our homes feel rooted and connected to the place
in which they are built, keeps costs down, and reduces environmental
impact. Natural Buildings fit aesthetically, intuitively, and intellectually
in the landscape around them.
At White Oak Farm we have been experimenting with natural building for
several years and look forward to continuing to explore the many ways
to build with local materials. The Common House is constructed with
Douglas Fir poles from several spots in the Williams Valley, soil, water,
and wood from the Farm, straw from farms in Williams and Ashland, rocks
from an abandoned quarry up the road, and gravel from an old horse arena
on the Farm. We combined these materials in many ways - for example
using straw to build thick exterior bale walls and thin interior light-straw-clay
walls, mixing chopped straw with clay to create plasters and earthen
floors, and filling dead spaces with loose straw for extra insulation.
We are now experimenting with a new project - a straw bale sauna. This
small building will be built of local straw, clay, soil, rocks, and
small diameter poles. The walls will be load-bearing straw bale, the
roof cob, the floor round rock, the interior and exterior plasters will
be made of mud, and the rafters will be poles. Of course we’Äôll also
have to purchase some metal roofing, a used window and most importantly
- a wood stove to heat it up! The sauna is being built during a three
day workshop at the end of May. It represents a great beginner project
in natural building - it’s small, simple, inexpensive and has a great
practical purpose. The sauna project demonstrates another benefit of
building with local materials - you don’Äôt have to be an expert to be
a builder!
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WCS Visits WOF
By Katie Holden
In October students and teachers from the Wilderness Charter School
had the opportunity to visit White Oak Farm for a day. Our experience
left us inspired and exhilarated. We not only toured the farm and snacked
from the garden, but also got our hands dirty mulching garden beds and
plastering a large interior area of the Common House.
The Wilderness Charter School is an alternative program within Ashland
High School in southern Oregon. Students at WCS participate in a one
year curriculum focused on sustainability. Areas of study include permaculture,
forestry, ecological footprinting, sense of place exploration, natural
building, what it means to interact as a close-knit community, and much
self discovery.
Visiting White Oak Farm allowed the students to apply the concepts we’d
been talking about in the classroom to a real life experience. Witnessing
the integration of organic agriculture, community style living, and
a huge natural building project using locally and sustainably harvested
materials was pivotal in the students understanding that these ideas
are not only theoretical, but are also practical and possible. Many
students commented on the peacefulness of the setting and the gratifying
feeling that comes with working on a project that both provides comfort
and health for people and is good for the earth.
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Ode to Vegetables
By Molly Hamilton, WCS Student
Call forth the carrots
Summon the string beans
Usher in the rutabagas
In streaming deep tureens
Bow before the broccoli
Give homage to the leek
Honor cauliflower
And serve him once a week
Eat and thank your vegetables
For they feed both man and brute
May they grow and flourish forever
In leaf, in stalk, in root
Work and Play in
a Small Community
By Lee Cowan
"May the beauty that you love
Be what you do.
There are hundreds of ways
To kneel and kiss the ground."
This song, taken from a Rumi poem, runs through my head sometimes when
I think about all the different experiences people have living in community.
Beyond just different life styles and different guiding principles,
I am always in awe of the myriad ways in which people engage with one
another, creating little circles of community out of common experience,
common passions, and a deep yearning to create bonds of support. Living
at White Oak Farm is the second intentional community I have lived in
and already I am grateful for the perspective a new community affords
in reflecting on my past living space, as well as the new challenges
and new mirrors my land mates offer.
White Oak Farm is a special kind of community in that it grows during
the summer season. I am one of five apprentices learning the art of
growing food and building with natural materials. We’re here for the
growing season, so come November the community will shrink back to a
core group. In one month of living here I have already seen many similarities
between White Oak and the last place I lived, Tryon Life Community (TLC)
Farm, in Portland. We share meals, sing songs, care for each other,
offer support and hugs, have weekly community meetings and generally
live as friends and fellow stewards of the land.
It seems that a community living in the midst of a non-profit education
center has a special kind of challenge and opportunity. In one way it
is unifying to all be supporting the non-profit, creating its programs
and making the whole project go. It’s an incredible opportunity to be
working at White Oak Farm not only for the breadth of knowledge Taylor,
Stacey, and Jenn offer in the realm of agriculture, but also for the
chance to engage with the school children of this region. It is a real
gift to be sharing my noon-time meal with caring, supportive new friends
while discussing an upcoming school visit; all deciding whether to read
the story about Dandelions or Nettles, which native wild flowers to
identify, and how to find the best bugs in the creek.
And at times, it can be quite challenging to balance non-profit work
and community time. Immediately upon visiting White Oak Farm, I could
feel the air of comfort in the lifestyle here and could quite literally
see the spring in Taylor’s step as he took me on a tour of the ponds,
gardens, tipi sites, and beautiful Common House. I know sometimes community
members living in the midst of a project feel constant pressure, with
the demands of the non-profit looming in every waking hour. The ideal
as I have always seen it, however, is the peaceful merging of our currently
distinct notions of work and play. Working in the garden or taking care
of a land mate’s child become intertwined with playing music and cooking
food, which flow into answering requests for school visits and working
with children in the dirt. Although this is not always stress free,
I believe it is possible to blur the lines between "work days"
and "weekends" and rather live the life we want to be living
right now, while providing for our needs and taking care of our community.
I feel that in many ways I have found that ideal here at White Oak.
On the one hand the work week is clearly delineated from the weekend,
but everything I do is contributing to the same end: to bring health
and happiness to myself and those around me. So, although I’m digging
a bed on Thursday and taking a hike on Saturday, they all blend into
the delicious nourishment of life on the Farm.
While there are "hundreds of ways" to give thanks and care
for the earth and each other, I feel distinctly satisfied that I’Äôve
chosen this community to make "the beauty that I love" a reality.
Greens-n-Beans
Fresh favas are a delightful treat! If you like edamame, you’ll like
fava beans. To cook, open and remove the beans from the pods (the pods
are not edible). Drop beans into boiling water for one minute, then
remove with a slotted spoon. Finally, slip the greyish skins off. One
option at this point is to sprinkle with salt and eat warm, like a snack.
They can also be tossed into pasta dishes, soups or salads, or sautˆ©ed
with garlic and herbs and pureed, as in the recipe that follows.
A bunch of greens (whatever you have on hand: kale, chard, dandelion,
beet), cleaned and coarsely chopped
2 heads of green garlic, chopped
2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 C sun-dried tomatoes, re-hydrated in a little water and then chopped
1 1/2 C cooked fava beans
2 tsp. balsamic vinegar
1 tsp. honey
3 oz. of spaghetti or pasta
Salt, pepper, and grated Parmesan or Romano cheese to taste
Saute the garlic in olive oil until soft. Add greens and stir-fry until
just wilted. Add the tomatoes (and their liquid) and simmer until the
greens are cooked. Add beans, balsamic vinegar, honey, salt and pepper.
Simmer a minute or two to warm up the beans and meld the flavors. Meanwhile,
cook the spaghetti or pasta of your choice in a large pot of salted
boiling water until very al dente and drain. Add the pasta to the fava
mixture and toss. Serve in bowls with some cheese sprinkled on top.
Enjoy!