Elizabeth Ellis, a first-year student from Sudbury, Massachusetts, works in the greenhouse as part of OSAP's Experimental College course. PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHARLES HAINE Sustainable Agriculture in Oberlin: A Dream Becomes Reality By Sara Marcus
	Ellis and Jessica Kapelke-Dale, a senior from Milwaukee, Wisconsin helped prepare the greenhouse in the spring.		MAY 12, 1999--As he neared graduation, Brad Masi '93 visited his friend Iris Hunt at her small organic farm just east of Oberlin. The conversation turned to an adjacent plot of unused land owned by the College. "We sat at dinner, talking about how nice it would be to farm on that piece of College land," Masi recalls. "We were laughing, saying we could live there and have horses. It wasn't a serious thing at all back then." What started as a supper-time pipe dream will soon become reality. Last month the College allowed the Oberlin Sustainable Agriculture Project (OSAP), which Masi now helps coordinate, to plant crops on those acres of land. OSAP will move its farming and educational operations to the new land over the next three years. "It blows me away to think about it," Masi says. "When I was a student, these things seemed inaccessible. Now it's all happening." The new land is the latest in a string of auspicious developments in the short history of OSAP, a program that for four years has brought town and College together for sustainable-agriculture and environmental projects in the Oberlin community. History and Growth OSAP began in fall 1996 when a group of Oberlin Student Cooperative Association (OSCA) members sponsored a town meeting to explore the possibilities of community gardens or a community-supported agriculture (CSA) project in Oberlin. Masi, who several years ago returned to Oberlin to work on the environmental-studies center, reports that a few aspects of the CSA fell into place quickly. Several reliable people committed to making the CSA happen, OSCA granted the project a sizable loan, and a local art-restoration specialist offered to lease eight acres of his farm for five years. Thus OSAP was born. CSAs, Masi says, seek to preserve small-enterprise agriculture in an age of huge agribusiness while creating rejuvenating ties between town- or city-dwellers and what OSAPers reverently call "the land." In a CSA, households purchase shares in the farming project at the beginning of the growing season, providing needed capital for seed and equipment purchases. As the harvest proceeds, shareholders get their investment back as fresh fruits and vegetables. The farm benefits from the upfront capital as well as the increased efficiency of selling produce directly and locally. "The shareholders get a steady supply of ripe, healthful produce, along with a feeling of connection to their food source," Masi says, adding that many CSAs, including OSAP, welcome volunteer involvement in the cultivation and harvest. "It helps people get a sense of place." In addition, because the transportation and refrigeration involved in big agribusiness entail heavy fossil-fuel use, local produce-selling arrangements are good news for the environment, Masi says. For the past four years, the CSA component of OSAP has been expanding. Last year, thanks to another OSCA loan and grants from the USDA and the local Nord Family Foundation, OSAP began paying its grower for full-time work. The grower, Gerry Gross of Elyria, supervises and coordinates the harvest. "I was told by an agriculture-extension agent that I was a fool to try to farm this land," Gross, who grew up subsistence farming in North Dakota, says with a defiant grin. "Anyone who says anything like that to me has got to know I'll try to prove them wrong." And so he has, innovating natural solutions to the local soil and weather problems and, with the help of a slew of volunteers and student interns, producing a harvest last year that exceeded everyone's expectations. Gross sees his work for OSAP as connected to Lorain County's hot-button issues of growth and rural preservation. "You know what urban sprawl is?" he says. "It's the city people who have the power and money, moving out into the country and building their big houses and chasing the country folk out, chasing the farmers out. Well, I am a farmer. And I am rebelling. I'm fighting back my way--taking a wheelbarrow and a shovel, and staking my claim." Wide-Ranging Projects OSAP is more than just a CSA. Its weekly area-wide Farmers' Market (May through October), outreach and education projects, and unique combination of town and College resources put OSAP in a class of its own. "We're working to expand our market to include Oberlin's low-income population," says Kerry Lowe, a senior from Concord, Massachusetts. Lowe is the student member of OSAP's Board of Trustees, and has been working all year on low-income outreach. "We've just gotten approved to accept food stamps at the Farmers' Market, and we're setting up a low-income share program" through which needy families can purchase shares at half price, subsidized by contributions from other OSAP members, Lowe reports. OSAP sees education as another way to expand its role in town. Its educational projects demonstrate the benefits of organic locally grown produce and introduce the joys of growing one's own food. Last year, OSAP instituted a community garden at Eastwood Elementary School, where students and community members help tend vegetables, herbs, and flowers. This semester, for the first time, Gross and Masi are teaching an Experimental College (ExCo) course that gets students out to work on the OSAP farm. Called Practicum in Organic Gardening, the course combines classroom studies in topics such as soil fertility and composting with hands-on work sessions at the farm. "It's so peaceful to go out on the farm and work," says Elizabeth Ellis, a first-year student from Sudbury, Massachusetts, who is taking the class. "Your thoughts are with you, and it's very quiet and beautiful out there." "A Dynamic Partnership" What makes OSAP work so well? Without hesitation, Masi answers, "It's the community support--the mix of students, faculty, and townspeople that's made it happen." Each of these groups, Masi says, has something valuable to offer. College students, for example, are eligible for work-study and other grants that enable them to do paid summer work on the farm at no cost to OSAP. Yet college students are by nature a transient population, moving on after four or five years. Permanent Oberlin residents, says Masi, are a vital anchor for OSAP, providing stability and continuity and making sure the project stays in touch with the needs of the community. "We've put together a dynamic partnership," Masi says. "I don't know of any other program that combines college and town resources the way we do." Lowe, OSAP's student trustee, plans to keep working for OSAP after graduation. She says she's excited for the project's future. "Anything is possible at this point," she says. "It's just a matter of how many people we can get involved."
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