I first came to Duke Campus Farm in winter, for an interview, hoping to become the site's inaugural full-time farm manager. The ground was frozen and the soil tight-lipped, revealing little. Returning in the spring to start work, I found to my chagrin a red clay so fine as to be almost greasy, which seemed to speak only in horse nettle and fire ants. Before arriving in Durham, my most recent farming experience had been on the Central California coast, where the soils are young, rich, and deep. As a grower, the old, tired, Southern Piedmont soils originally struck me as a cataclysm, a shambles.
As I've settled into North Carolina and started teaching with the farm, through hands-on work in sustainable agriculture and also in the environmental humanities, I now see the same landscape more clearly, as an incredibly rich environment for a campus farm. With less production pressure...
