Announcement: We would like to invite all of you to join us next Monday 10/27 from 3-4pm in the Deans Auditorium, Pfendler 241 to help us celebrate the Purdue Student Farm being awarded the Purdue Agriculture 2025 Team Award winners. All are welcome so please join us if you can!
So, we’ve reached our first frost of the season, but what a lovely Thursday! I don’t know about you all, but I’m enjoying the sunny sweater weather today. Although, the cold wind during my bike commute to class this morning set my nose running and eyes watering. That’s the smallest sacrifice now that I can dig my favorite handmade scarf out of the closet. Before I get into my ramblings, check out this article about the Student Farm written by our very own Petrus Langenhoven: Purdue Student Farm: Growing Leaders, Knowledge, and Community.
Do you get a certain feeling when you enter a specific environment for the first time in a while? The feeling is like recalling a memory, but it’s not of a specific occurrence. The best way I could describe it is like the trace image of how my senses were engaged in a distinct location. It’s a culmination of memories of smell, temperature, emotion and context all homogenized into one visceral feeling that can’t really be distinguished. I’m sure there’s a word for it… ‘Sense-memory’ might have the most accurate definition, but it’s so literal and unromantic. If I were to call on the gods of portmanteau, they might give me ‘esthesiomnesia’ as a stand-in until I meet someone who speaks a more descriptive language than English.
All that being said, this weather is esthesiomnesic. The biting wind brings me back home to endure a cold hike with my mom and a scalding cup of coffee that burns my tongue and stays too hot long enough for me to forget until it gets cold. The gray overcast gives me cold feet, more so in anticipation of the specific moment I arrive back home and put on a dry pair of thick, warm socks. I actually enjoy working at the farm once it gets cold. On one hand, things slow down and go into hibernation once we clear the hump of tearing things out of the ground. But I think cold weather brings more novelty to everything. A hot drink feels more special, soup is ideal, and bundling up becomes a ritual. To all you winter haters, I might sound a bit idealistic… It does take a lot to find pleasure in the cold and gray, but I think there’s something nice about the extra effort put into making myself comfortable during the colder season. It’s easy to take the beauty of dormancy for granted when summer’s beauty is so vivid and eye-catching.
This week’s photos include… Chris as a pumpkin. (Sorry Chris, that’s all I got.)
Chris here, yes it was my fault for wearing an orange sweatshirt…..I should have known.
Spotlight
Brian Schilling and Wil Brown-Grimm.
Purdue Meigs Horticulture Facility, a great thanks to them as they are always helpful and provide us with great opportunities to acquire or grow produce that we do not have space for or are unable to at the student farm site:
The Student Farm collaborates with Purdue’s Meigs Horticultural Facility to help grow a portion of their produce including a variety of the cucurbits, apples, and tomatoes that members receive in their shares. The primary mission of Meigs Horticultural Facility is to host a great variety of research on horticultural crops. Weed scientists, entomologists, and pathologists come to Meigs each year to execute horticultural studies.
The staff at Meigs, in addition to supporting the research plots, greatly enjoy tending to a few additional plots dedicated to produce for the Student Farm. Brian Schilling started as manager of Meigs this May. Brian brings a diversity of production experience to his work at Meigs, including a couple summers working for CSAs like the Student Farm offers. Brian most recently managed the production for Center Grove Orchard, a U-Pick orchard and pumpkin patch in central Iowa. Brian is also an active member of Sycamore Audubon Society, where he helps to support bird conservation and education in Indiana.
You may recognize a face in Wil Brown-Grimm, in their second year as a technician for Meigs, who was a dedicated employee of the Student Farm for many years. Wil is an alumnus of the Sustainable Food Systems program in the Horticulture Department at Purdue and is passionate about producing food and feeding the people of Greater Lafayette. You might also see Wil at the bowling alley representing the Horticulture Department in the club bowling league.