Evergreen college students try their hand at farming

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP)--Attention, shoppers. Before those lamb chops you're holding in your hand were a shrink-wrapped item in your supermarket meat section, they were hoofed herbivores munching grass in a pasture somewhere. Did you ever think of that?

These days, fewer and fewer people do. At least that's the opinion of Alea Hoffman, a student at The Evergreen State College.

"With increasing urbanization, a lot of people have lost that connection we have with food animals," said the 21-year-old junior from Seattle. She and a dozen other students from the school are doing their small part to reconnect.

They're not farmers. Most don't even come from farm backgrounds. But for up to 10 hours a week during the past school year, they did some serious farming.

Specifically, they raised and managed a flock of sheep. "We've vaccinated them," said Emily Scofield, a 21-year-old senior. "We've dewormed them. We've done hoof care. We've been there for the births. We were there for the breeding. We've done ultrasound (with a portable device out in the field)."

They've herded the sheep. They've shorn the ewes. They've moved fences. They've monitored the animals' diet.

"The whole life cycle," summed up Mike Paros, a professor of veterinary medicine who is adviser to Evergreen Students for Sustainable Animal Agriculture, a campus club organized last fall to give students hands-on experience in raising sheep. Hoffman and Scofield were two of its founding members. The sheep, which were purchased by Paros, primarily are pastured at his farm in the Centralia area.

Some of the students will be there when the lambs are slaughtered in September after classes resume. The students won't be doing the slaughtering; that will be handled by a butcher.

"If they want, they can witness the process the whole way through, including the cutting of the meat," Paros said.

Do Hoffman and Scofield plan to observe the slaughter? After a long pause, they said they hadn't thought about that part of the cycle.

Even though they have been intimately involved in every aspect of the animals' lives, the two women do not in any way think of the sheep as pets, although Scofield said some other club members do. "There definitely are members who have become more attached to them at a personal level."

Scofield and Hoffman have maintained a more arm's-length approach. They haven't named any of the 20 ewes and 28 lambs in the flock or even given them numbers. "They're kind of just one big family," Scofield said.

"There is a relationship in the sense of having a respect for the animals and being deeply connected to the whole process," Hoffman said. "We're learning about that relationship that we have with food animals, and I think that's really crucial."

Out in Paros' pasture, the sheep grazed peacefully on sweet clover on a recent sunny July day. A black-faced lamb came up and nuzzled Scofield.

"We try not to handle them too much because the more we handle them, the more stress they have," she said. The lamb's friendliness seemed to indicate that the hands-off policy has produced a stress-free herd.

Although she grew up in Seattle, Hoffman said she long has had a love for big animals. From the age of 12, she spent summers working on a horse ranch in Eastern Washington serving as a guide for tenderfoot riders. Through the years, she developed a desire to work with farm animals of all kinds: horses, cows, sheep, goats, you name it. That led her to enroll at Evergreen to study to become a veterinarian.

"Experiential" and "sustainable" are two words that often come up as Paros and the two students discuss the sheep-raising project.

"Evergreen, as a college, is very focused on experiential learning," Hoffman said. Although Evergreen is generally thought of as a liberal-arts school, it has an agricultural curriculum that is becoming increasingly popular, Hoffman said. She and Scofield, who also is planning to become veterinarian, take agriculture classes that entail a lot of field trips, often to fields. Their sheep-raising project is not part of the school's formal curriculum, but it allows students to put what they've learned in class to practical use.

The sustainable aspect involves what Paros calls a "closed loop" approach to raising the animals. The idea is to keep the whole process intensely local. That's in contrast to the way lambs are raised in large commercial operations. They generally are born in pastures, then fattened in feedlots where the feed is trucked in from distant farms.

"Our winter feed is locally grown grass," said Hoffman. The club has a policy of restricting purchases of feed and other supplies to vendors within a 20-mile radius of Olympia.

During the spring and summer, the sheep are pastured not only at Paros' farm but at nearby fields as well.

"There are three or four different locations we operate out of, and the good part of that is we are utilizing ground that would not be utilized otherwise," Paros said.

Although the area around his farm largely is rural, there are an increasing number of homes nearby. Many of the lots are quite large and require a lot of effort by homeowners to keep them properly mowed. The students' flock can help with that situation.

"Rather than you mowing the lawn, we bring the sheep out there," Paros said. The grass gets clipped, the sheep get fat and there is the added advantage of the land receiving plenty of natural fertilizer. Have sheep, will mow. "It's a win-win situation," Paros said.

It's a very ecologically friendly way of operating, he said. There is no need to truck feed in from great distances, and because the club is very careful not to overgraze a field and overstay the animals' welcome, the sheep are taken elsewhere before manure becomes a nuisance.

"We also sell locally, which means the food is shipped less distance," said Hoffman.

Customers come to the pasture to select a lamb. After it's slaughtered, they get the meat. A 110-pound lamb can yield 50 to 60 pounds of chops, roasts, shanks, stew meat and other cuts.

Paros estimates the students' flock will yield 1,500 pounds of meat total. The club will receive $1 per pound from the sales to support its activities.

Scofield, who grew up in cities--Hartford, Conn., and Milwaukee, Wis.--said the most valuable lesson she'll take away from the time she's spent in the club will be "what it takes to be a farmer. If you're going to work in agriculture, you have to know the business, the lifestyle and what it takes every single day to keep your animals healthy and happy.

"Because I want to be a vet and not a farmer, this will probably be my only opportunity to experience that lifestyle." That, she said, will help her to better understand the people she'll be serving.

"What I've taken away from it is that applying book knowledge to the real thing is always a journey," Hoffman said. "There is always something new to learn."

"Every animal is different, every piece of land is different," Scofield said.

"Every situation is different," Hoffman added.

Books are one thing, but it's out in the field where many of life's most valuable lessons are learned.

8/25/08
3 Star CO\6-B

Date: 8/20/08

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