Students Volunteer at Kentland Farm

BLACKSBURG, Va.— A handful of students traveled to Virginia Tech’s Kentland Farm this past May to lend a hand in getting more local food for VT dining centers. They spent the afternoon volunteering in a small grove atop an overlooking hill on the 3200 acre farm.  In a process called “thinning,” young, small peaches are plucked from the branches in order to make room for larger, juicy fruit to grow for the coming months. The students dedicated a few hours of their time in the sunshine so that all of us can enjoy the local peaches come Fall semester.

“Kentland Farm is gorgeous!” said Gretchen Allen, a junior studying Communications and Wildlife Sciences. “Volunteering was a fun way to support a cause that I believe in: local food.”

Charlotte Branton, also a junior, enjoyed her time at Virginia Tech’s farm as well, and she also saw the big picture. “Relatively few of us get to play a role in the maturation of our food these days,” she mused. “I’ll be extra happy to enjoy a peach from our dining hall knowing I may have helped it flourish into the juicy fruit it is.”

Interested in spending some time under the sun at Kentland or another farm that Virginia Tech sources food from? Stay tuned on the blog for these and other service opportunities this summer and over the next semester.

(Above, Gretchen Allen thins peach trees at Kentland Farm. Photo courtesy Charlotte Branton.)

Rap Video on Food by Earth Sustainability Students

Leah Stiegler and Amanda Gurley, former students in the Earth Sustainability course series at VT, created a fun, educational hip-hop video about food issues for their class action project–featuring Farms & Fields!