Appalachian’s Teaching and Research Farm digs up alternative crops for local farmers while teaching a new generation about tending the land.

By Linda Coutant

Editor, Appalachian Today magazine

Tucked in the hills surrounding Valle Crucis, a charming, old red barn marks the entrance to Appalachian State University’s Teaching and Research Farm. You could call it a symbolic gateway from traditional agriculture to new ways of farming.

Two seasons after the university began leasing the hundred-year-old pasture from Valle Crucis Conference Center, the Teaching and Research Farm raises experimental crops of broccoli, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, beans, chard, hazelnut trees, and more. The eight-acre farm produces much more than fresh fruits and vegetables: Area farmers are getting scientific data on how various crops grow under certain conditions, and students literally dirty their hands as they learn to grow food organically.

The farm is part of the College of Arts and Sciences’s Goodnight Family Sustainable Development Program, which emphasizes ways to meet the present generation’s needs without compromising future generations’ ability to meet their needs.

The farm’s research is especially valuable as many local farmers seek economical alternatives to tobacco. “Farmers don’t always have the money to take risks or to conduct experiments. It’s not our livelihood, so it’s easier to experiment,” says Christof den Biggelaar, the farm’s director.

Den Biggelaar is tapped into local farmers and their needs through his role as president of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association’s High Country chapter, which serves Ashe, Alleghany, Avery, and Watauga counties plus parts of Virginia. CFSA gives him opportunities to share data from Appalachian’s experimental crops.

An assistant professor in Appalachian’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, den Biggelaar teaches and practices agroecology, a concept in which farmers imitate a natural landscape with their crops, applying ecological principles to agriculture.

“We use no fertilizers, no pesticides. This approach poses its own challenges, but with crop diversity—the farm has more than fifty kinds of crops, herbs, and flowers—we hope to keep an effective balance,” den Biggelaar explains.

In place of fertilizer, he and his students nourish the soil with compost that the university makes from its food waste. They utilize diversity by edging rows of vegetables with a “farmscaping mix” of plants designed to host beneficial insects like ladybugs, which eat aphids and other pests. They also are planting trees alongside vegetables to eventually attract insect-eating birds and to affect light and temperature.

Agroecology also emphasizes crop rotation, which is kinder to the soil than the monoculture concept where farmers repeatedly grow one crop in the same field, den Biggelaar says.

As consumers’ desire for organic food climbs, more and more farmers are working to meet criteria for organic certification as set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program. Appalachian’s involvement helps them do that, according to Dick McDonald, a local entomology consultant and member of CFSA.

“The demand for organic food is twice the supply,” McDonald says. “Used to be, farmers could have one cash crop like tobacco. Now you need three to four cash crops for the crop rotation required for being a certified organic farm.

“The university’s farm is great. It has all kinds of new varieties that farmers in this area don’t have, so if something works well at this farm, we can go to a local farmer and say, ‘You can do an acre rotation of a crop at this cost and make this number of dollars,’” McDonald says.

With the support of a university research grant, McDonald is working with den Biggelaar and his students to determine which variety of broccoli grows best in the High Country. Other farm research looks into the effect of different composting techniques on plant growth, the influence of row spacing on production, and which cover crops—like buckwheat, clover, and Sudan grass—best replenish soil nutrients between growing seasons.

For students, the farm teaches what today’s grocery store-dependent society often ignores: the basics of where food comes from and how it is grown. Whether for their own backyard gardening or for careers in agricultural reform, the skills learned on Appalachian’s farm benefit students concerned about the environment and sustainability.

Laura Uhde is majoring in sustainable development with a minor in appropriate technology. Her lab hours spent tending the fields this summer have been wisely invested, she says. “This is how you learn to farm. I think going with the environment instead of against it is a better way to go. It makes less impact on the earth.”

Jeremy Boone, an appropriate technology major, helped with initial planting last spring. He said he learned a lot about low-impact farming, information he plans to take far beyond the fields of Western North Carolina.

“I want to leave a legacy for future generations,” he says. “My ultimate goal is to take the skills I’ve learned here to Third World countries and share my knowledge of sustainability.”

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Photo caption: Senior Laura Uhde and Christof den Biggelaar weigh Rose Finn fingerling potatoes at Appalachian’s Teaching and Research Farm. Faculty and students share the produce with the less fortunate through two non-profit agencies in Boone, the Hospitality House and Hunger Coalition.