FARMINGTON — Rustic Roots Farm owners Erica Emery and Dave Allen have received the Maine Campus Compact [MCC] Corporate Partner of the Year Award for their partnership with University of Maine Farmington.
Maine Campus Compact honored Rustic Roots Farm in Farmington as its Corporate Partner of the Year Award recipient for its work with the University of Maine Farmington. Seen during the award presentation April 28 at the University of Maine Augusta are from left, UMF Campus Sustainability Coordinator Mark Pires with farm owners Erica Emery and Dave Allen. Submitted photo
“We were so honored to be considered for this kind of award,” Emery wrote in an email to The Franklin Journal. “I think our involvement with UMF started the first year of the farm when former UMF professor Grace Eason brought her sustainability classes out to the farm in the fall.”
Students got a tour and pitched in with the fall harvest to learn about how food production happens, Emery noted. “Since then we have hosted dozens of UMF classes, sometimes for a short tour and sometimes for a short volunteer gig,” she continued. “I think it is so important for young people to have a direct connection with food and food production and nothing is more direct than digging potatoes or picking tomatoes.”
“Countless UMF students in the natural sciences, social sciences, and creative writing have visited Rustic Roots Farm over the years,” UMF Campus Sustainability Coordinator Mark Pires wrote in a recent email to The Franklin Journal. “Whether our students are engaged in explorations of nature-society relationships, biological research, creative writing, outdoor education, local economic development, or issues of social welfare having to do with food security and nutrition, visits to Rustic Roots have enriched the traditional student experience by providing field-based opportunities to learn about sustainable agriculture, environmental stewardship, and community service.”
Last fall students in Pire’s first-year seminar course, The Sustainable Campus visited the farm as part of a tour of nearby sustainability-oriented sites including the Farmington Compost Cooperative’s Tom Eastler Memorial Compost Site and the Farmington Solar project.
“Rustic Roots Farm acts like an extension of UMF classrooms, and Erica and Dave are practitioner-partners who help students learn about aspects of land stewardship, environmental management, local farming, and community service,” Pires noted.
Sometimes students with a particular interest and/or experience in local farming volunteer at Rustic Roots, Pires wrote. UMF faculty collaborators try to get student-volunteers involved, particularly during certain “crunch times” for harvesting, etc., he noted.
“A strong community service ethic is part of what Rustic Roots Farm is all about,” Pires wrote. “Giving back to the community is evident in everything they do, such as with their efforts to provide service to the Greater Franklin Food Council to help stem the tide of increasing food insecurity through contributions to area food pantries and support for local farmers’ market gleaning operations, and to organizing and supporting various festivals and events that celebrate local foods and rural living in western Maine.”
UMF students who visit and/or volunteer at Rustic Roots are introduced to those service opportunities, that they can get involved with either locally or in their respective hometowns, Pires wrote.
“As UMF faculty and staff strive to incorporate and expand rich and meaningful experiential learning opportunities into the curriculum, we need to strengthen and maintain the roster of community partners who assist us in helping students learn how to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and between the college campus and the greater community to which it belongs,” Pires noted. “University-community partnerships play an important role in achieving academic learning objectives, helping students find their passions and identify pathways to fulfilling careers with meaningful work, and to developing a sense of citizenship and service to community that guides their life experience after graduation.
“UMF students lucky enough to see and learn from the examples set by Rustic Roots Farm are steps ahead on their journey to becoming contributing members of the communities in which they live.”
In addition to hosting UMF interns, Emery and Allen have served on the Fiddlehead Festival planning committee.
“In my short time at UMF as an adjunct faculty and as the campus sustainability coordinator, I have had ample opportunity to work closely with Rustic Roots,” Pires wrote. “In doing so, I have come to appreciate the relationship UMF has developed with this valuable community partner. Whether it’s finding solutions to our challenges, or working to celebrate our community, Rustic Roots Farm has been at our side as engaged and reliable partners.
“The beloved annual Maine Fiddlehead Festival hosted at UMF, now in its 10th year in 2023, would not be so successful without the time, energy, and devotion Rustic Roots provides as a chief member of the festival planning committee.”
Maine Campus Compact celebrated its 22nd Annual Awards ceremony April 28 at the University of Maine at Augusta to recognize outstanding work in public service and civic engagement by Maine faculty, students, and community and corporate partners, a release stated. Recipients’ positive impacts on campuses and in communities throughout the state reinforce the importance of the public purposes of higher education, it noted.
“The Corporate Partner of the Year Award recognizes an outstanding corporate partner and its staff for their exemplary partnership with an MCC member institution,” the release continued. “Through robust partnerships with Maine Campus Compact member institutions, the corporate partner exhibits expertise and provides resources in support of community-engaged learning that helps to educate and empower students in real-world problem solving.
“Rustic Roots Farm’s support of UMF students to learn first-hand about sustainable agriculture, environmental stewardship, and community service has made it an outstanding corporate partner. Rustic Roots has opened its fields and greenhouses and made available the accumulated wisdom and experience of its staff members to help students expand their understanding of how campus and community members can work together to address challenges in a real-world setting.”
In many ways, Rustic Roots Farm serves as an extended UMF field-based learning laboratory, the release stated.
“We want as many students and community members as possible to experience what it is like to produce food because that deepens the public’s appreciation for the work all farmers do!” Emery noted.
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