Fruitful field trip yields bounty for area's food banks
Americans like to go large, so forget pecks or bushels. Let's talk tons?two tons of Jonagold, Empire, and Crispin apples, picked by about 15 freshmen, three sophomore peer mentors, and three professors one brisk October Sunday. Their labors were fueled by both academic and civic fervor: this year's three First-Year Experience seminars with "American" in their course titles were joining forces at an orchard near a famous Revolutionary War monument to help provision the regional food bank.
With logistical and budgetary help from Skidmore's student-community-service office, the group shared a short bus ride to Saratoga Apple, a family-owned, low-spray orchard and farm market near Schuylerville, N.Y. According to Mary Lynn, the American-studies professor who teaches the "American Taste" seminar, one goal was simply to "enjoy and appreciate the beauty of the landscape" overlooking the historic Saratoga Battlefield. Her second goal was to get her students thinking about hunger in America, so she was pleased that a few volunteer pickers from the food bank were on hand to talk about the families they serve.
"American Dreams" professor Barbara Black, of the English department, says the experience
"tapped into some key questions in this course about American culture and identity.
Community is one of our most pressing questions, and so is consumption?including the
food we grow and eat." Similar sociocultural and service interests inspired government
professor Beau Breslin, First-Year Experience director and teacher of the "American
Liberty" seminar, to complete the threesome.
The afternoon began with some orientation from Saratoga Apple's Nate Darrow, who demonstrated proper harvesting technique. Then the gleaners were unleashed in the groves of stout, low-branching trees, and they got busy (with only brief pauses to eat an apple or two out of hand). Three hours later, Lynn says, the students were "proud of the sheer size of their accomplishment" on behalf of the food bank.Black herself was "surprised by the degree of satisfaction I got from it. It felt right and pleasurable to give up a Sunday afternoon to some greater purpose."
The whole affair sounds as American as . . . well, you know.
