By Jason Ericson
The University of Minnesota’s farmers market opened Wednesday, July 9, on Church Street, on the Minneapolis campus, and continues every Wednesday, from 11 til 2, through the growing season. Local growers will offer produce, berries, and fresh flowers, and the University’s Landscape Arboretum will sell maple syrup and, later, apples. But perhaps most unique among the vendors you would find at any farmers market are the students participating in Cornercopia, the University’s three-year-old student-run farm, which becomes officially certified organic this month.

Julie Noren has always been a gardener, but this spring the University of Minnesota student has been doing some real urban farming, tending the 1.3-acre Student Organic Farm on the St. Paul campus. Noren, an undergraduate majoring in Italian (with a minor in horticulture), was looking over some cabbage sprouts in the greenhouse on a recent afternoon. She’s one of 20 students in the spring semester class who are learning about the realities of organic agriculture. They start plants from seed in the greenhouse, observe the growing cycle, and watch over the 50 or so chickens that roam the grounds.

“Every student is responsible for three crops,” Noren said. “One is a perennial, so we don’t really do that much with it, because it’s already out there. With the other two, we have to look at all the old records, look at its sales, inventory the seeds, figure out when to plant, how many to plant, when to transplant, do a layout of the bed.”

Professors Paul Porter and Bud Markhart provide instruction and context, sharing stories about the three-year-old program, which is funded by the sales of its produce to campus dwellers. Last season’s profit: $10,000, mostly on the strength of the mixed greens and strawberries.

Markhart said his challenge is to provide the necessary horticultural context without stemming his students’ creativity. “When I’m out in the field and I have a chance to show [students] something that’s going on, or look at a new bug, or something starting to flower, that’s what’s really interesting.”

The class, Noren said, has helped teach her to see a farm as a whole system. Her analogy is chickens: “Chickens offer eggs. They’re composters. You can use their waste. They go through the garden and eat insects after you harvest.” With everything you introduce to the farm, she said, you have to consider its various aspects.

“You hear the news reports,” said Markhart, “‘Oh, farmers lose X’ or ‘flood takes out Y,’ but until you’re out there and it’s you putting the seed in the ground, and you’re personally vested in the success or failure of that seed — that is what the farm experience here gives people.”

Recently, Noren began raising chickens in her own garden, at her home near downtown Minneapolis. She adopted some fertilized eggs from chickens at the farm, and borrowed a hen to sit on them from a former student of the class. The four hatchlings arrived over spring break.

For more information, see http://sof.cfans.umn.edu.