Fairfield Farm reconnects ‘the human element’ to nutrition

LAKEVILLE — Harvest is in full swing at Fairfield Farm, the 287-acre farm and cattle pasture owned by The Hotchkiss School and located just a mile from campus in Lakeville.

Peppers and tomatoes are crowding the vines in the hoop houses while corn dries in the Grange, a multi-purpose structure that serves as a storage facility, teaching kitchen, ad hoc classroom and concert venue.

With classes back in session as of earlier this month, Bridget Lawrence-Meigs, the farm manager and programs director, is ready to get students involved.

“The farm is this place that, like a lot of campus farms, has a mission,” said Lawrence-Meigs. “At Hotchkiss, it’s very much about production and education.”

Acquired by the school in 2004, Fairfield Farm has become a major producer for Hotchkiss’ dining hall and today supplies 20-25% of the produce and 100% of the beef served on campus each fall.

According to Joshua Hahn, Hotchkiss’ assistant head of school and director of strategic initiatives, the farm fits into the school’s broader efforts over the past several years to reduce its carbon emissions.

“The school’s grass-fed beef has a much lower carbon footprint than conventional beef,” said Hahn. “So decisions we’re making in terms of where the food’s coming from [have] an impact, not just nutritionally and economically, but also on the climate.”

Beyond a full-production farm, Hahn said the space acts as an “interdisciplinary laboratory for the school.” Teachers and visiting instructors have utilized Fairfield as a classroom “en plein air,” teaching on topics from English and social science to engineering. One group of engineering students designed an overhead irrigation system for seedlings; another designed a composter.

For Lawrence-Meigs, a seasoned educator and co-leader of a gathering of campus farms called the Campus Farmer Network, the farm is an opportunity to make complex dimensions of the food system more tangible for students.

“One of the big problems with our food system is that the human element is often lost,” she said. “Like, who grew this tomato?”

By involving students in multiple steps of the food production process, Lawrence-Meigs says the farm can foster conversations about the “social, environmental, and political” aspects of food production both on the farm and off.

The goal is “helping the kids really understand that the farm isn’t in a bubble, and food systems aren’t in bubbles,” she said.

As part of that education, students can help harvest the roughly 10% of Fairfield Farm’s product that gets donated to groups like The Corner Food Pantry and Northeast Community Center, which work to alleviate hunger in the communities surrounding Hotchkiss’ campus.

According to a study by Connecticut United Ways, 10% of Connecticut residents said they experienced food insufficiency in 2022: a statistic due in part to the 25% increase in U.S. food prices between 2019 and 2023, as reported by the Consumer Price Index.

At Hotchkiss, where the student body represents 31 countries, food security and sustainability are issues that resonate.

The Hotchkiss Food Access Society, a student group which works with the farm, was formed by a student who learned about food insecurity in Ghana and wanted to help address similar issues in Connecticut.

For other students, engagement with the farm may be limited to two visits over their four-year tenure: the annual potato harvest for first-year students and senior prom, which is held on the grounds. Hahn hopes that, for these students, the visibility of farm-grown food at the dining hall will invite critical thinking about what they eat.

“We’re not going to graduate 175 seniors who are gonna go on to be farmers next year,” he said, offering politics and business as more likely career paths. “But everybody eats. As Wendell Berry says, ‘Eating is an agricultural act.’”