“Slow food grows here,” reads a plaque perched on the fence of environmental studies Lecturer Heather Carpenter’s farm. This mantra invites guests into 4.5 acres of vegetables, fruits and livestock, an amalgamation of Carpenter’s time outside UP.
“I did always like growing food, and I didn’t create the food class until 2016, which is when I was hired as a lecturer,” Carpenter said. “I’d had my own farm at that point for two years. My farm is a little bit of a quotation farm. It’s definitely more of a homestead hobby thing.”
On her homestead, Carpenter substitutes fast-paced food consumption for a healthier and more sustainable alternative. Meanwhile, at UP, Carpenter teaches core environmental studies classes and an exploratory course offered next spring, ENV 360: The Science and Ethics of the Sustainable Gourmet, about sustainable food production.
Now, Carpenter’s farm sits next to a lake in Vancouver, Washington. She and her husband — a “crazy, techie inventor” — bought the land together a decade ago when it was still littered with berry bushes. With their homestead dream in mind, her husband designed their high-tech house, while the farm owes its growth to Carpenter and her friends.
“I get together with my girlfriends, and we help each other harvest or can [food],” Carpenter said. “I don’t have a life outside of my farm, UP and my children. There isn’t really anything in my life that isn’t connected to those three things.”
Through food research and facilitating field trips to her farm, Carpenter bridges the environmental studies curriculum with her homelife, while also giving students practical advice about eating sustainably.
Below are some tips Carpenter shared with The Beacon for students seeking to make changes towards ethical eating.
Give yourself grace by starting with the clean 15
First and foremost, Carpenter encourages students to give themselves grace. Food is joy, and she says that guilt can diminish the pleasure that is derived from sustainable eating.
“A big thing for students trying to [eat more ethically] is, don't worry about doing it completely,” Carpenter said. “Definitely buy the clean 15 instead of the dirty dozen.”
This slogan refers to choosing produce with lower pesticide residuals. The Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture update and compile a list yearly to help consumers identify safer produce.
According to Carpenter, oranges and bananas are better to buy non-organic than produce that can’t peel because as the peel comes off, so do the pesticides. Foods like strawberries, on the other hand, Carpenter says, are better bought locally and organic because non-peeling foods are much harder to clean.
Remember that farming takes a village
Carpenter holding some produce from her farm. Photo courtesy of Heather Carpenter
While she revels in organic food, tending a farm of so many crops and livestock requires work that is often overlooked by outsiders. To assist with farm maintenance, the property contains two houses where residents can help Carpenter with farm work 10 hours a week in exchange for rent.
Additionally, when pitching field trips to her farm to students, she refers to these trips as “mental health days” because they allow students to experience a change of scenery from their typical academics.
Nonetheless, Carpenter still wants her students to witness the unglamorous realities of homesteading.
“People come to my farm and say, ‘This is the most relaxing, beautiful place,’” Carpenter said. “And I'll tell you, I am not relaxed here. I'm constantly looking around, seeing that it's about to break. I need to, I need to, I need to. There’s a constant amount of work.”
Take advantage of culls
Despite how homesteading might be misrepresented as easy, Carpenter still emphasizes the reality of sustainable eating by acknowledging the financial positions of many college students.
While studying at UC Davis, Carpenter perused local farmer’s markets at the end of the day to ask vendors for culls, damaged or bruised items they can’t sell the next day, for cheaper prices.
For college students looking to find affordable, local produce, Portland State University’s Farmer’s Market is open Saturdays year-round.
Learn about the slow food movement
Alum Ruby Beauchamp, who graduated in 2020 with a minor in sustainability, says one takeaway from Carpenter’s class was learning about the slow food movement.
Founded in Italy in 1986 by Carlo Petrini, an Italian chef and activist, this movement advocates for accessibility to good, clean and fair food.
“It’s going out of your way to buy the whole food and the high-quality ingredients that were grown from more small-scale or organic farms or done through permaculture methods,” Beauchamp said. “Then you make the food yourself and start two days before you’re going to eat the meal to prepare different things. I think that’s more nutritious and flavorful.”
From this perspective, local and resilient food systems can protect the environment. However, currently 53.6 million people in America live in low-access areas known as food deserts. Food deserts are geographic areas that restrict residents’ access to healthy and affordable food options, especially fresh produce, due to a lack of convenient grocery stores. Notably, this lack of access disproportionately impacts people of color and low-income communities.
In 2017, Slow Food USA acknowledged these disparities by establishing an Equity, Inclusion and Justice Working Group which aims to address injustices in food systems. Still, some critics say the slow food movement remains privileged because it frequently promotes inaccessible food options, effectively excluding low-income individuals from participating.
Plant small seeds where you can
Finally, while it may seem inaccessible to grow food from a dorm room, Carpenter is all for growing basil in the kitchen window for those with minimal space.
“Unless you have the basement apartment with one tiny north facing window, there’s something you can grow,” Carpenter said. “The more you can eat local, the better it’s going to taste. A cherry tomato and a basil plant on your patio of your tiny little apartment? Yeah, you can make a pretty good meal there.”
Kaylee Monahan is a news/sports reporter at The Beacon. She can be reached at monahan26@up.edu.
