SOS 117 - Bits and Bobs - Selected Comments from the Module Short Answers

 Module 5 - Short Answer

Question 1: 

Give and describe at least one example for each of the following:

1. Food being used for bonding between individuals.

2. Food being used to distinguish social groups or identities.

3. Food being used to strengthen group affiliation.

4. Food being used as a status symbol(s).

5. Food being used for politics.

6. Food being used to achieve specific social objectives.

Your Answer:
1. A great example of food being used for bonding between individuals is when a grandparent uses a holiday meal to coerce her family into coming to visit. As Thanksgiving looms, my mother-in-law has already invited us over for a holiday meal as we have not seen them in person since before the Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent quarantine began. Though she works in a highly infectious job, with an elderly spouse, and we are not wanting to catch Covid from her, we have already politely declined the meal, citing a variety of reasons other than the fact that she works in an environment where positive Covid tests happen on a regular basis. I know she just misses us and wants to see us for the holiday. But we've been holed up in the apartment (except for essential trips) since March because neither of us want to take the chance that we happen to be in the 1-3% who die from Covid, or the 20% who have severe, lifelong effects when we have already lost friends to the illness.

2. In the video, I was actually interested most by the pizza rivalry between Chicago and New York City. Having only ever been to NYC, but having a deep dislike of the "Chicago-Style Deep Dish" pizzas that I have tried at seemingly authentic restaurants, I kind of like watching my New York friends argue with my Chicago friends about who has the superior pizza. It's almost a badge of pride for them.

3. As a Jew, I love how the laws of kashrut separate Jews from non-Jews, and how unique the cuisine of the Ashkenazi Jews is compared with the traditional American diet. We feast on days that are not on a typical American calendar, using food as the primary reason to get together. We eat things like gefelte fish, smoked salmon (lox) on bagels, and my husband has now introduced a variety of Ashkenazi dishes to my (convert) palate, just as I have introduced him to my traditional soul food meals, reinvented to meet the standards of kashrut. We also enjoy Halal food, as we have determined that Halal meets the same standards of kosher.

4. In one of the videos this week, a NY based caterer attended and fully catered a very lavish wedding. To me, local should mean cheaper, but this meal looked very fancy. When my husband and I met, as a show of wealth, his mother took us to this upscale restaurant that served rabbit stew with quail eggs. I tried to pick the "safest" option on the menu and still ended up with this gaudy mess of a meal that I just couldn't adapt to. I much prefer the poor shtetl food of my husband's grandparents than those "display of wealth" meals that his mother is so heavily fond of.

5. In my family, we use food to smooth over differences, unite the family, and welcome newcomers. It doesn't matter why you're fighting, you come to Sunday dinner. We'll settle this over roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, and cherry pie, with the whole family gathered around her huge dining room table. Hurt feelings are quickly whisked away in the brown gravy. Unkind words are remedied with a good piece of chicken thigh. We're still a family and family sticks together.

6. One of the social objectives mentioned in the film was that food can be used to encourage solidarity. When I first took my husband to meet my family, my grandmother made him a large serving of her favorite meal: liver and onions. Frankly, my sister and I ended up making "curry chicken" (another poor man's adaptation of an international recipe that was picked up abroad), because neither of us gets that "down home comfort" from liver and onions. But that was literally the only meal that she knew how to make that would be loved by a Russian, as much as she (an Irish Catholic) loves. She wanted to welcome him into the family, so she served him a meal that would make him feel more at home than if she'd served the traditional Irish feasts that I have grown up with.

Module 5 Lecture: Food & Culture: Non-Nutritional Goals Through Food (n.d.). [Motion Picture].

Professor Comments: I enjoyed reading each and every one of these, Kathleen! I appreciated the thoughtfulness and details, and all the connections from class to "real life."

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Module 6 Short Answer

Question 2: 

Excluding taste and cost, discuss at least three influences on food choice(s).

Your Answer:
There were only 5 mentioned in the reading: taste, cost, convenience, advertising, and the eating habits of friends and family.

The first one the pops out to me is convenience. It's much easier to pop over to Kroger at 7pm for a head of lettuce and a few tomatoes than it is to chase down the local farmer's market at 7am on a weekday. We would prefer to just pick up an apple off a shelf than to pick one from a tree during "business hours."

Advertising is another big player. When I went to high school, we had several vending machines with brand names on them, brands we recognized from watching television, that showed us it was cool to drink coke, or eat Cheerios. I'm reminded of the commercial for Life Cereal where "I'm not gonna eat it. Well I'm not gonna eat it. Let's make Mikey eat it. Mikey will eat ANYTHING." And then Mikey does, and it's delicious, and now we should all run out and buy Life cereal. I will admit that, as a kid, that ad did me in and I ended up with a box of Life cereal, which I hated. Probably because I'm not Mikey.

Finally, the eating habits of friends and family. As the book mentions, if there's soda around and kids watch their parents drinking soda, they're more likely to drink it too. If they see their family eat apples, they're more likely to eat apples. And in the video on obesity, we see a pair of identical twins, separated at birth, where one grew up eating high fat foods in her Catholic family while the other was basically a vegetarian in her Jewish family.

Chase, L., & Grubinger, V. (2014). Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England.

Diet and Influences on Food Choice. (n.d.). In Teaching the Food System. The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.

Diet: A Look at Processed Food, Nutrition, and Obesity in the 20th Century (2011). [Motion Picture]. Infobase. Retrieved from https://digital-films-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/p_ViewVideo.aspx?xtid=43516

Professor Comments: "Probably because I'm not Mikey." I laughed. :)

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Question 4: 

In the context of federal school meal programs, what are "competitive foods" and why are the controversial?

Your Answer:
Competitive foods are the foods sold in vending machines and snack bars at schools that have almost no nutritional value. When my husband began teaching, not only were there 6 vending machines in the school cafeteria (which didn't even serve very nutritious food to begin with), but there was an store-like office where students could go purchase chips and candy. When I was in high school, we had Fruitopia machines, and two candy/cookie/chip vending machines.

They're controversial because they promote obesity in kids, by offering snacks with zero nutritional value, at rock bottom prices, to entice more kids to buy more candy instead of eating the carrot sticks offered at the lunch counter.

I'm happy to report that his current school doesn't have a vending machine, but they do have a little store filled with fresh fruits and veggies for kids to snack on as they like. All for free.

Food Environments (Background Reading). (n.d.). In Teaching the Food System. The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.

Professor Comments: Wow! Where is this utopian-like school? :)

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Question 8:
1. What are the two goals (or levels) that "Farm-to-School" programs aim to achieve?

2. Give three examples of "Farm-to-School" efforts.

3. Discuss two challenges obstructing "Farm-to-School" programs.

Your Answer:
1. The farm to school program aims to increase the use of healthy, locally sourced food in cafeterias, and to educate kids about where their food comes from.

2. According to our textbook, Vermont lives on Mars or something compared to the rest of the United States, as they are the pioneers of the Vermont FEED (Food Education Every Day) program, and lead the way in collaborative projects that incorporate local farming into schools, not just through farming tours, but by establishing their own gardens, teaching children about plant growing, and helping them enjoy the fruits of their labors.

Vermont also has GMFTS (Green Mountain Farm-to-School) which has grown from a small operation to now serving over 24 school communities in the state.

And the third example of why Vermont lives in 2320 is the Burlington School Food Program, which proved that kids will eat just about anything you throw at them, including full grown carrots, rather than just baby carrots.

3. The main challenges as I see it is that there's so little to gain by the farmers. Yes, they get to help the community, educate some kids, maybe help them make better eating habits (and the textbook describes how some of them do post-program) and maybe that's enough. But they lose money on the venture. They also have to deal with Big Mac eating parents who wouldn't know what to do with a full grown carrot, and they have to teach these kids from scratch as we're so far removed from the farming process that my little niece once told me that milk doesn't even come from a cow; it come's from the store.

Chase, L., & Grubinger, V. (2014). Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England.

Professor Comments: "Vermont lives on Mars" and in the year "2320." Kathleen, I audibly laughed out loud. :) For Part 3, also difficult to measure the "impact" of all this education/effort, etc.

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Question 10:
1. Describe three kinds of agritourism activities.

2. About how much annual income is agritourism estimated to generate for U.S. farms?

Your Answer:
1. In the wonderland that is Vermont, there's skiing, maple syrup sugaring (?), and plenty of corn mazes, hay rides, pumpkin patches, and and even u-picking can be an agritourism activity.

2. The book says (on page 171), "According to the U.S. Census of Agriculture, 23,250 farms provide agritourism and recreation services valued at $566 million." Later on down the page, "Research using a broader definition of agritourism estimates that $800 million to $3 billion a year is generated for U.S. Farm income from agritourism activities." Schnepf Farms alone pulls in just over $900k last year because of its agritourism. And let's not forget Napa Valley and its $11 billion contribution to the California State Economy (p. 174)

Chase, L., & Grubinger, V. (2014). Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England.

Professor Comments: Again, "In the wonderland that is Vermont" :) Agritourism is big business, isn't it? (Or can be.)

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Module 7 Short Answer 

Question 10: 

Describe three "innovations" or future scenarios as presented in "Tomorrow's Food." What did you think of each of these in the context of food system sustainability?

Your Answer: 

The first one I enjoyed learning about was the miracle berry. I think that with Climate Change now changing the growing cycles of food, and potentially making sweet foods (like strawberries) taste a little bitter when picked because of the growing cycle changes, these miracle berries are going to go a long way towards decreasing our reliance on cane sugar, potentially ending the obesity crisis we studied a few modules ago, and allowing us to enjoy tarter varieties of fruits that we already know and love.

I loved learning about all the edible fungi as meat replacements. Despite my desire to rid the planet of the social ills of the meat industry, I still happily chow down on meat products on a regular basis. For me, what I loved is that these fungi could be grown in a tenth of the space needed for a cow, and supposedly they taste very similar. That's the problem I have with a lot of meat substitutes: they just don't have the flavor profile or texture of the actual meat. But this one looked very promising.

Finally, my least favorite: crickets. I actually have a very intense phobia of crickets so I would never just pop one into my mouth, no matter how desperate I was for food. But seeing them whipped up in flour, as flakes... I could almost see a cricket meat replacement on the horizon. And while I absolutely hate crickets, I would love to see more of them used in food, especially given how nutrient dense they are. Maybe one day we will have a cricket and horse burger with a side of Cod Tail.


Tomorrow's Food: Episode 1 (2015). [Motion Picture]. BBC Worldwide Learning. Retrieved from https://fod-infobase-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/p_ViewVideo.aspx?xtid=124998&tScript=0

Tomorrow's Food: Episode 2 (2015). [Motion Picture]. BBC Worldwide Learning. Retrieved from https://fod-infobase-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/p_ViewVideo.aspx?xtid=124999&tScript=0

Tomorrow's Food: Episode 3 (2015). [Motion Picture]. BBC Worldwide Learning. Retrieved from https://fod-infobase-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/p_ViewVideo.aspx?xtid=125000&tScript=0

Professor Comments: "Maybe one day we will have a cricket and horse burger with a side of Cod Tail." You never know :)

SOS 117 - Stakeholder Presentation - Meet Elizabeth "Liz" Spiva!

If you would like to know more about Liz or Fox Run... 

Instagram: @LadyNerdLiz 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/foxrunfarmstead/ 

The Lonestead Podcast: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/966-the-lonestead-podcast-70909868/ 

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/FoxRunFarmstead?ref=shop_sugg

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Grade: 100/100

Professor Comments: As ever, a couple comments on the rubric. This presentation was nicely representative of both your Interview and many of our course themes/concepts. Well done, Kathleen. 

Rubric: 

Slide Count: 5/5 - (no comments)

Time: 5/5 - (no comments)

Presentation and Narration: 25/25 - (no comments)

Graphics & Visuals: 20/20 - Lovely photos! Also quite kind of you to include links so interested folks can find and support her. We need more of these kind of gestures. 

Content: 25/25 - (no comments)

Sources: 10/10 - Very nice! This was one of the best aspects of your presentation, Kathleen. 

APA Citations: 10/10 - (no comments)

SOS 117 - Final Short Answer

How Big Ag is going to kill us before it feeds us.

Industrial Agriculture is big business in the United States. However, the methods used to produce the food consumed by over 321 million people is going to kill our land before it can even hope to feed our exploding population. Advances in farming technology have not made us immune to the disaster waiting to strike if we do not take better care of our soil and encourage more sustainable farming practices within the Big Ag Industrial Complex. It is estimated, by Stanford University, that we are losing about one-inch of top soil every year, mostly due to agricultural farming practices (Verso, 2015). If we are to have any hope of continuing to feed our growing population, we need to start by taking better care of our soil. “Soil is the foundation (of) farm ecosystems; we depend on it for most of our food supply (Agriculture and Ecosystems: Background Reading).” With Climate Change becoming a more urgent problem every year, it is critical that we confront Big Ag on their soil practices, or we risk losing everything.

While the purpose and goals of Big Ag are to provide as much food as possible in as small an area as possible, they do this by damaging the very soil that they are trying to use for crop growth. “The industrial ethic views agriculture as just another part of industrial society, in which commodities are produced at the lowest cost possible (Chase & Grubinger, 2014, p. 59).” Yet, the methods used to produce food commodities are costing us the health of our soil. Norman Borloug’s Green Revolution attempted to create a better way for us to maximize yields in smaller spaces by creating crops that could withstand drought, and grow anywhere, and be immune from disease and pests (The Man Who Tried to Feed the World). “The Green Revolution basically implies that food production is everything. It is the most important thing. And of course, it is extremely important. (…) But as we know now, agriculture is not just about supplying food (Agriculture and Ecosystem Services).” Big Ag must respect the land on which they grow to continue to provide food that feeds all of us.

The Dust Bowl did not happen in a vacuum. Farmers in the Great Plains used modern technology to over-till the soil, churning up over 850 million tons of top soil that simply blew away during the Great Depression due to poor soil management (History Brief: the Dust Bowl). “Soil health is incredibly important in order just to sustain our ability to feed, not only ourselves, but to feed the world (Living Soil Film).” It is absolutely critical that in the 21st century, we start looking closer at our farming practices and create incentives for Big Ag to adopt better soil health practices, or we are dooming ourselves to the possibility that the soil won’t be able to handle humanity’s intense food needs. If we fail, we are going to experience widespread famine as a direct result of not maintaining the soil.

One way we can improve soil health is by using organic matter to enhance the soil, rather than rely on heavy chemicals. “In many areas where The Green Revolution has been successful, the land is losing its value. It’s losing its quality and we have to regenerate the land (Agriculture and Ecosystem Services).” Restoring the land means that we need to restore the natural balance to the land, not by using heavy chemicals, but rather using organic matter and biomes. “If the soil life is health and the bacteria and the fungi can all work, they actually release all the nutrients that are naturally locked up in the soil and make them available as plant food for the next crop (Industrial and Sustainable Farming).”

Monocropping and overtilling are other ways in which soil health is lost. Crop rotation is an easy and simple way to further this goal. Instead of using acres of land to grow a single crop, Big Ag can diversify and start alternating between crops, allowing the soil to regenerate and renew after each growing season. As Darryl Soljan explained, “The Earth was really never designed to be a monoculture, to have just one species or a limited number of species in one place (Industrial and Sustainable Farming).”

It is absolutely imperative that we start convincing Big Ag to take their soil health more seriously or we are going to be faced with another famine equal to or greater than that of the Dust Bowl. If we plan to feed over 9 billion people by 2050, we need to start by taking a closer look at our soil health and nurturing it back to optimum health, both for ourselves, and for the world.




References

• Agriculture and Ecosystem Services (n.d.). [Motion Picture].
• Agriculture and Ecosystems: Background Reading. (n.d.). In Teaching the Food System. The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.
• Chase, L., & Grubinger, V. (2014). Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England.
• History Brief: the Dust Bowl (n.d.). [Motion Picture].
• Industrial and Sustainable Farming (n.d.). [Motion Picture].
• Living Soil Film (n.d.). [Motion Picture].
• The Man Who Tried to Feed the World (n.d.). [Motion Picture].
• Verso, E. (2015, December 09). Topsoil Erosion. Retrieved from Stanford University: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph240/verso2/#:~:text=%22The%20estimate%20is%20that%20we,30%20to%2040%20times%20faster.

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Grade: 96/100

Professor Comments: A nice way to wrap up the course! Very best of luck with whatever comes next for you, and wishing you a wonderful holiday season! 

SOS 117 - Stakeholder Interview

My Stakeholder interviewee is Elizabeth “Liz” Spiva, owner and sole operator of Fox Run Farmstead, a 10-acre farm in East Texas where she raises cows, goats, chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, and geese. She uses the native vegetation around her land for various reasons including food for herself and her animals, and for her non-food products (like soap and other beauty products). She has developed a sustainable, (non-certified) organic, and ecologically diverse operation with the ultimate goal of becoming completely self-sufficient. She is also a certified nurse who works in a clinic part-time, assists her father on his cattle ranch, and is a full-time double major in Agricultural Sciences and Ranch Management at her local community college.

I selected Liz as my Stakeholder because she is a new farmer with an eco-conscious, sustainable mindset that uses horizontal relationships with customers and other farmers to sell and trade her products (Chase & Grubinger, 2014, p. 61), working on becoming a full-time farmer whose primary source of income and food security will come from the farm. Having the dream to one day become a small-scale sustainable farmer myself with no goals of selling more than I need to break even, choosing instead to farm for self-reliance, Liz was a natural choice to interview.

I created a list of twelve formal questions with multiple parts but used them mostly as a guide during our 2-hour long video chat. The conversation was very natural and evolved on its own to cover my questions. I sent her the questions ahead of time so she could prepare, but it ended up just being a friendly conversation about her, her life, and farming, which I really enjoyed.

My first question asked about the history of the farm and her background with regards to farming. With Liz being a new farmer, having just started Fox Run within the last two years, I felt it was important to find out how she ended up deciding to become a farmer full-time. Liz explained that she’d developed a passion for living off the land at a very young age so it was natural for her to transition from city life in California to rural East Texas, and that in doing so, it ignited her passion for becoming completely self-reliant. Her family has a history of urban homestead farming, “instilling the pioneer spirit” in her while living in California. Her dad has also become a new farmer, taking over operations of a mid-sized cattle ranch that is quickly expanding, and teaching her how to manage cattle in addition to her schooling.

I had to ask what made her decide to farm and what were her goals. She explained that, once she was on her own as an adult, farming became her means of healing. Starting Fox Run enabled her to apply the visions in her head into practical reality, deviating from traditional farming methods in her own way, and developing her own individual sense of purpose through farming. Though she still works as a nurse as a source of income while she builds up the farm (which Chase and Grubinger (2014) mention as common among new farmers), she spoke a lot about the differences between working with people and animals, mostly about how working with people can be draining, while working the farm gives her a real sense of purpose in the world. Chase and Grubinger talk about new farmers “simply start growing crops or raising animals and let their markets evolve (p.206).” This is basically what Liz is doing. Though she wants to keep it small and self-sufficient, primarily as a source of food for herself, she is also still navigating the marketing of her goods and services, figuring out what sells, to whom it sells, and what doesn’t. I asked if she ever plans to become certified organic, which she said wasn’t one of her goals, since she doesn’t plan to sell to the public. She also said that she doesn’t ever plan to try to compete with Big Ag because her focus is primarily on being self-sustaining and trying to compete with Big Ag would force her to deviate from her vision of the farm.

We talked about some of the challenges and rewards about working the farm, as well as discussing the practical matters involved and how that has affected her vision. She spoke about how bookkeeping and time management are some of her biggest struggles but that being able to create her own little slice of paradise in the middle of nowhere has really impacted her overall well-being. Between all of her obligations, I wondered where she found the time to manage everything. She joked that she doesn’t date or watch TV anymore, “So I have a lot of free time.” She also spoke about how having a strict routine has been critical. Liz said that she can just zone out and think about her classwork while performing her tasks from muscle memory.

I asked for the current head count of her animals and her plans for expansion, if she even had any. Right now, she has 4 beef cattle calves, 20 goats (with 4 of them pregnant), 46 chickens, 7 geese, a dozen ducks, a dozen guinea fowl, “and two squirrels that keep coming around to rob the chicken feeder.” She also has two dogs (Deeks and Katie), two housecats (Mischa and Purrcival), and her bottle baby, a Nigerian Dwarf goat named Navi. She surprised me by telling me that expansion is actually not one of her goals, and that she’s actively looking to reduce her head count to better afford her more time to devote to the restoration of the land and effectiveness as a farmer. I was curious how she manages so many animals and found out that most of her animals are completely free range. She’s trained the chickens to roost at night, the guinea fowl hang out in the trees or go into the coop when the weather is bad, and there are dog kennels out for the geese and ducks. But by and large, except for the property fences, her animals just go wherever they want. This could potentially cause a problem as she lives near a waterway, and her animals all have free access to it. The possibility that there could be too much animal waste and fertilizer in the water, creating threats to marine wildlife and even her own fowl (pp. 92-93) is a definite issue. We didn’t discuss this in this conversation, but I think that if the waterway started to be affected, it would affect her own flocks, and Liz would be the first one to put up fencing to keep the animals out, alleviating at least some of the problem. She’s already mentioned to me that she’s hyper-aware of the impact on the waterway, so at least she’s keeping an eye on it.

Then we talked about the agriculture, both her animal agriculture business and her utilization of native vegetation. It turns out that her biggest challenge with animal agriculture on such a small scale was deciding not to sell food products to the public at large. She went into great detail about the high cost of processing and selling animal products but has enough of a close relationship with a few customers that she’s been able to exploit some loopholes to sell them processed meat and dairy. Most of her farm customers are either new farmers themselves, or seasoned homesteaders who invest in the farm for mutual gain (as in the case of one customer who gave her two free goats, intending that, when one came of age, she would slaughter and process it for them). “Social capital goes a long way,” she said to me. Her biggest moneymaker is selling livestock outright, which was also a surprise. When she was unemployed in the spring, she said she made enough by selling the animals to keep her farm afloat for a little while. Coupled with the money she makes selling her quilts and soap, she was able to break even until she could find new employment. When it comes to the use of natural vegetation, she went on a rant about pesticides in your food and commented that she doesn’t need to go to the store when she has violet greens and curly dock in her backyard for a salad. I asked her how that started, and she commented that she turned to foraging as a way to stay off of social media and overstimulation. It has become one of her favorite tasks, saying, “What can I say, picking flowers makes me happy.”

She discussed plans to install a vegetable garden in Spring to lessen her personal food costs, so that more money can be diverted back into the farm, but says the hardest part is setting up the fencing to keep the goats out. She currently grows brassicas (mostly turnips and mustard greens) and clover with the native grass that the cows pasture on, using a homemade fertilizer pellet invented by her grandfather, and other native vegetation as a way to fertilize the ground without contaminating the nearby waterway, but doesn’t plan to grow crops specifically for the animals beyond what she already has growing and will plant for herself. To her, this is a waste of natural resources to farm crops over existing edible vegetation. She also went into great detail about her plans to acquire a better vehicle to help her handle the intense demands of farming in a rural area.

That led to a discussion on her non-food items. She talked about how she was inspired to create the deliciously moisturizing goat milk soap working as a nurse. Sadly, they are her lowest sellers, but her beautiful, heirloom quality quilts (which she has been making for almost 20 years now), usually made from thrifted or scrap fabric, are her biggest sellers, and almost all done by commission. She talked about how marketing has been a huge challenge for her, mainly because of time constraints, so much of her sales have been by word of mouth. She knows she’ll have to expand on that and plans to start selling at farmer’s markets in the future, as well as online, but right now, her current methods of sale are paying the bills while she focuses on other aspects of her life, so she’s in no rush.

For my last question, I had to cover the tech arena. For a 21st century farm, Liz likes running it the old-fashioned way, using electrified fencing, incubators, and heat lamps, but preferring to be as low tech as possible. She still vaccinates her animals and utilizes antibiotics when the goats injure themselves. But she spent a good while explaining to me the various herbal remedies that you can use for minor problems.

In our almost 2-hour long conversation, I learned a lot more about Liz, about small scale farming and homesteading, holistic remedies for everything from acne and psoriasis to poor blood circulation, intestinal parasites, and mild infections, and especially about goats. Liz discussed many of the challenges listed in our textbook’s chapter on new farmers, having inherited the land, but also being a first-generation farmer who is still learning the ropes. She has worked out some mutually beneficial horizontal relationships with other farmers and is trying to find a niche for her commodities for the larger market. Right now, though, the sense of pride she has in her farm, and the complete transparency she has with her customers is enough to keep the farm breaking even, which she considers a success.



References 

Chase, L., & Grubinger, V. (2014). Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England. 

Spiva, E. M. (2020, 11 22). Owner of Fox Run Farmstead. (K. J. Kagan, Interviewer)

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Grade: 96/100

Comments: 

Me (to the professor) - Had a hard time chopping this down to 3 pages. Sorry it's late. I had two finals yesterday and hadn't slept. 

Professor (to me) - Yes, synthesis can be quite challenging! But such a wonderful skill to possess (and practice). As ever, a few comments on the rubric. 

Rubric: 

Page Count: 5/5 - (no comments)

Interview Questions: 20/20 - Almost always best to let conversations (especially interviews) 'evolve' naturally. Reading this, it sounds like you guys had a wonderful conversation & covered a lot of ground. 

Introduction: 15/15 - (no comments)

What did you learn?: 20/20 - (no comments)

Sustainability Issues: 26/30 - Certainly not a superficial discussion! However, a few more connections to course materials would have strengthened this. You guys touched on so many of the topics that we have covered in class! 

Grammar, Spelling, Punctuation: 5/5 - (no comments)

APA Citations: 5/5 - (no comments)