The Guelph Centre for Urban Organic Farming grows a healthy community

It would be challenging to buy food that’s more local than the produce grown, picked, and sold right on the University of Guelph campus.
Fortunately for Guelph students, local food isn’t difficult to come by. Every Thursday from 3-6 p.m., the Guelph Centre for Urban Organic Farming (GCUOF) sells its fresh fruits and vegetables along Reynolds Walk. The produce is grown by agriculture students on a farm that’s just a few minutes’ walk from the East Residences.
“The initial mandate was to provide a place on the university campus to build a farm centre that would enable the students a hands-on experience for how to grow food,” said Martha Gay Scroggins, farm coordinator for GCUOF. “The theoretical knowledge was being gained on campus proper, but research showed us that there was a need to connect the students to the land. We also thought at the time that it would be important as a response to climate change and economic factors to build a farm that was post-oil and post-water.”
“So we started this farm with no water,” Scroggins continued. “We brought in just four-litre containers to start our seedlings, and we were actually farming the first three or four years without any water. It was very, very difficult…So we grew into a relationship with the Canadian Research Chair, Beth Parker, who provided us, gratis, a well.” Scroggins explained that the wells are directly linked to solar panels. “When a cloud comes over, I have no water,” she said. “It’s still very challenging to grow food with a little bit of water…[But] fresh water is not a renewable resource. Most of the world is running out of fresh water, and so I think it’s a very important teaching instrument.”
The farm is also run on as little oil as possible, and started out without typical modern-day farm machines. Even now, very little machinery is used.
“We now have a tractor, and Martin [another employee] and I are getting older, so the tractor’s been a blessing,” said Scroggins. “But I’d like to be able to farm, certainly in an urban environment, with more hands-on work.”
“We’ve been building this landscape here, which is about two and half acres, predominately without a tractor and we’re building it in a permaculture system where we make permanent beds that require no tillage.”
Although GCUOF places a strong emphasis on traditional, hands-on labour, it’s still an excellent testing ground for new agricultural research.
“We’ve had three graduates do research here, and it was wonderful to have them here and to be able to provide a space on-campus where they could do small-scale research,” said Scroggins. “We now have applied research, which is certainly a step up. I welcome it because I think it’s really needed in the organic sector of industry.”
“[A current] project is a high tunnel [to extend] seasons earlier in the spring, later in the fall, because our climate here is really quite short…We have a tour on Wednesday with about 40 or 50 people from the industry to see the results of the research.”
But it’s not just industry experts that GCUOF aims to share knowledge with; the group also places a strong emphasis on education for students and for the Guelph community.
“We’re involved with…a group of students led by Prof. Bruce McAdams, called Garden2Table,” said Scroggins. “He has a class where his students take the lead to coordinate with grade fours and grade sevens…They get to, in the fall, clean and harvest the food and bring it up to PJs [Restaurant] or one of the kitchens up there. They make the food, and then they eat it.”
Scroggins and another farm employee, Martin Ronda, also have many opportunities to learn from the farm. Ronda said that he feels the structure of GCUOF allows him to try out more types of agricultural practices than if he were working on a commercial farm.
“We’re always observing things and seeing how they work, whether it actually works in practice,” said Ronda. “A lot of farmers have to make a decent profit every year to pay their mortgage. If they make a mistake, that could be the end of their business. But here, we can recover from that, because we’re not completely dependent on our food sales to keep us in business.”
Having some freedom for experimentation provides an excellent environment for student learning. In addition to running the farm, Scroggins teaches vegetable production at the university. This is a course that includes working at GCUOF and the campus farmers’ market as a significant component of its curriculum.
“We come down here twice a week and we also run the market as our lab,” said Danie McAren, a vegetable production student and a volunteer at the farm. “We’re kind of working backwards because of when the course starts. We’re starting with harvesting and then slowly working our way to planting some things for winter.”
“You get the experience of picking your food, getting it to market, making it look nice at the table,  [and] figuring out how to start customer relationships. So it’s definitely one of the most hands-on courses I’ve taken so far.”
McAren said that as a volunteer, she was also able to gain hands-on experience outside of her classes.
“We also had the chance to form a relationship with Cutten Club, which is a country club right across from the football fields,” said McAren. “They came over and started ordering food from us, so I had the experience of being able to put together restaurant orders weekly and meeting with chefs.”
“Having this farm is a resource that’s pretty priceless for me. Especially because I’m so busy, and as a parent of three kids, I can’t spend as much time interning on other farms as I’d like to…I don’t have to live off away on someone’s farm for three months. I can come in every day as if I’m going to school and still get the same experience.”
The GCUOF aims to educate not just agricultural students, but the general student population as well. This year, the farm has teamed up with the Wellness Centre to help raise awareness about the importance of eating fresh fruits and vegetables.
“Wellness is hoping to raise awareness about the benefits of eating healthy, eating organic, buying locally, and helping sustain your community,” said Tessa Vincent, a placement student at the Wellness Education Centre. “We’re giving out recipes to students so that when they buy the vegetables, they know how to cook them and what to cook them with.”
“The new collaborative market will now offer organic fruit in addition to the organic vegetables grown by GCUOF,” added Lindzie O’Reilly, dietitian for Student Health Services. “The goal of the collaborative market is to provide high quality and affordable produce to students.”
Last year, GCUOF partnered with the Wellness Centre to give out soup made from the last of the harvested vegetables, and plans to do the same this year.
“We’re going to have a soup day right at the bitter end, when everybody’s tired of cooking and everyone wants to go home for Christmas,” said Scroggins.
And good food almost never fails to bring people together, even in Canada’s often-unforgiving climate.
“Most students in most courses, they just show up for lecture, and then they go home, and they don’t talk to each other. [But] a lot of the students that take [vegetable production] become friends and stay friends,” said Ronda. “It’s not just about growing food; it’s about growing a community around food, too.”