Page 20 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 2 Winter 2013
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18
his mother’s reproach that in leaving teaching for farm-
ing he was wasting his education and his brains. “I told
her, ‘No, I’m using them more than ever.’”
Describing life on the farm, Coleman cheerfully -
squeamish readers beware – describes the humane
chicken slaughter, which he says takes place in a simple
little building where the chickens’ throats are slit, their
feathers loosened, and their carcasses spun clean in a
spinning ribbon-fingered plucker.
“The chickens have a wonderful life,” he says. “They
run around and then they have one very bad day.”
Coleman runs through the calendar, highlighting the
allure of each season. Spring is fun, because life is just
beginning. Summer is the hardest-working time, he says,
citing a still-experimental foray into growing artichokes,
but adding, “Anything they can do in California, we can
do better.” He likes fall for the harvest. But his most fa-
vorite time of year is reserved for winter, when, in addition
to growing hardy Asian greens, he skates on his frozen
irrigation pond.
“It has black ice all winter long,” he boasts. The pond is
the size of a hockey rink by design, homage to the sport
that highlighted his time at St. Paul’s.
organic grain, at market size they’re worth $1,000 to you,
each – not including labor.”
A small farmer and activist, Fleming currently directs
The Greenhorns (
), a 13,000-
member organization she founded in college to promote,
recruit, and support young farmers. The peer-to-peer
organization produces a weekly radio show that prompts
5,000 downloads a week, a blog called the Irresistible Fleet
of Bicycles, and
The 2013 New Farmer’s Almanac
. Fleming
also operates Smithereen Farm in New York’s Champlain
Valley, raising small livestock, pigs, geese, and culinary herbs.
Growing up, Fleming spent summers on her mother’s
family farm in Basel, Switzerland. She studied at Pomona
College for two years, where, inspired by the California
climate and a couple of handsome tree farmers she spotted
on a jog, she joined the young men in starting a farm in
the college dump.
“We just started growing – guavas, loquats, and figs,”
says Fleming, who finished her undergraduate study at
UC Berkeley, where she earned her degree in conserva-
tion. “At the beginning, we didn’t ask permission; it was
a guerilla farm.” But, by necessity, Fleming became an
organizer, learning about irrigation by coordinating the
hoses, and about insurance issues when enlisting students
to join in the farm’s growth. Today the farm is included
on the college tour.
Fleming attributes her career choice to a mix of politics
and sensuality. “I eat like a king,” she says, waxing dreamy
when she describes the quiet pleasure of milking her
cow. “The cow’s relaxed and you’re relaxed; your cheek
is pressed to her flank.”
Harvesting dry herbs and teas is another respite in an
otherwise jam-packed day.
“I do it quietly and I do it alone in the late afternoon,”
she says, “with the sun coming through the barn and
swallows darting in and out.”
Women farmers, Fleming says, are making a tremendous
impact on the sustainable agriculture movement. “Highly
educated and highly ambitious women are behind all the
major sustainable agriculture organizations and are run-
ning the certification agencies, conferences, and many
organic farms and food companies,” she says, pointing to
Kathleen Merrigan, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture.
“There’s still a notion that farming is a country
bumpkin who takes out a tractor and drags some seed
behind it,” Fleming says, ticking off details of a real
farmer’s life: planning, accounting, marketing, green-
house work, animal chores, fence maintenance, grant
requests, and capitalization. “Young farmers in the
sustainable agriculture movement have to be savvy and
run their operations with foresight, stamina, and
imagination. We’re talking about very diversified crops
and activities. It takes brawn and brains.”
Fleming is making a recruitment pitch, too. “In the next
10 to 20 years, 400 million acres of farmland will be pas-
sing from one generation to the next. The average Ameri-
can farmer is 59, so we’ve really got no time to waste.”
F
Severine Fleming ’00
“IT TAKES BRAWN AND BRAINS.”
leming laughs when she recounts the time her five
pigs ran away.
“We waited till they were hungry and tempted them
with corn in a bucket.” Neighboring farmers weren’t as
lucky when their two pigs went galloping down the road
never to return. “You have a significant investment locked
up in a pig,” Fleming explains. “If you’re feeding them
BARBARA DAMROSCH
