The weeds had been overtaking the greenhouse behind Gamage House, a growing family of mice had been nestling in for the winter among rolls of plastic sheeting used to protect young seedlings, and the homegrown kale had been missed from the Trinity-Pawling dinners. No more! Josh Frost ’04 (previously a faculty member from 2010-2013) has returned to the Trinity-Pawling faculty after a 4 year hiatus, during which time he was managing an organic vegetable farm in Bedford, New York. Teaching upper levels of Spanish, Frost has also been tasked with reinvigorating the farming program he began in partnership with Maria Reade in 2011. Reade subsequently moved her base of operations to Vermont, where she splits her time between writing for several publications and running an organic farm.
With the help of twelve of the Pride’s finest—Nico Bonasera, Hayden Carillo, Georgie Chen, Tim Colmey, Alex Connors-Mallory, John Critz, Xander DiSanto, Blake Erdmann, Doug McHale, Aiden Pincombe, Kevin Sausville, and Peter Zhang— Frost, and fellow faculty member Anne Pearson, has cleared six outdoor beds in the field north of Gamage House and the interior of the adjacent greenhouse. An impossibly hardy specimen of kale with a stem diameter of four inches was discovered, marveled over, and then added to the compost pile. Potting trays have been cleaned and seeded with quick-growing varieties of kale, spinach, bok choy, lettuce, and kohlrabi, and are being tended in the Dann Building greenhouse nursery.
The group took their first field trip to assess the open spaces of campus, and to determine which areas might be suitable for cultivation. Josh is working to line up Wednesday field trips to local composting facilities, dairy and crop farms, farm-to-table style restaurants, and renewable energy plants, such as Trinity-Pawling’s solar field. The goal of the program is to teach the students about the concept of sustainability through exposure to and participation in local agriculture, composting, and renewable energy. Membership on the farming team is open to students in place of a sport during the Fall and Spring Terms.