A hub of sustainability education since its founding in 1958, Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vermont, will launch a program this summer “to help students not only deepen their focus on artisan food and organic agriculture but also turn them into viable businesses,” reports Civil Eats, in a piece by FERN’s Kristina Johnson. The School of the New American Farmstead allows students to take one class or several, ranging from a summer-long practicum on sustainable agriculture to a two-day workshop on a single subject.
Nicole Civita, a college official, says the Farmstead program was designed around topics essential for any food enterprise to be both financially viable and environmentally sustainable while remaining “comfortably small” at four or 20 acres. The course list includes harvest preservation, foraging, draft horse farming, and wildcrafting. Ruth Reichl, former editor of Gourmet, and the Atlantic’s Corby Kummer are teaching “Food Writing from the Farm.”