Campus Community Farm Service Learning

Campus Community Farm


1. Include the title of the project or event and the number of hours you volunteered. Include the name and email of the event organizer who can verify your attendance at the event.

- For my service learning assignment I decided to participate in the Community Farm. Our organizer was Lia Andrews (lia.andrews@email.edcc.edu) who is part of the Bio-anthropology department. I began my hours at 12:00 PM up until 3:00PM.


2. What organization sponsored this event or activity and what were the goals of the event? Describe the goals or purpose in a sentence or two.

-The organization was Edmonds Community College Center for Service Learning. The goal of this event was to learn about skills needed to sustain a farm. These skills include food issues knowledge, gardening skills, sustainability, nutrition, and many more. After participating in this event I feel as though I have a better understanding of what it takes to manage a farm.


3. Briefly (in a sentence or two), summarize your duties at the event and include photo documentation.

-Since there were many participants the duties would depend on which section you were in. My section focused on chopping wood and building a fire. We took turns chopping wood by using an axe. After our wood was prepared we started a fire by preparing wood in a cross section in the fireplace, adding wood chips and a wax mix to help start up the fire, and a lighter. Since our fire was already lit we moved the leftover wood into a shed that will be used for another time.





-These photos were taken by a participating member of the service learning event.


4. In at least one paragraph, reflect on how this experience affected you and your thoughts on the role of science in society and the importance of your service to your community. This reflective essay should be written in one or more paragraphs (7-10 sentence bio (150-200 words) minimum, not including items 1-3). It should be something that can easily be slightly edited to strengthen a personal statement for an academic program or a job or internship application.

-I felt like this event has affected me positively and gave me a better understanding of not only what it takes to run a farm, but science as well. You really get to see the effects science has on farm work. We learned about how plants and crops could grow, even when the weather is at an extreme (cold for our situation). Structures such as greenhouses were built on the farm to help keep plants that require regulated climate conditions grow in the harsh weather. Plants that would not be able to survive in the cold were placed in this greenhouse in order to obtain all the sources needed to grow a plant, but escape the cold. It’s very simple to see how these science can play a role on our society when it involves farming. We use science to study and perform the best/most efficient way to grow crops. These crops are then supplied to the society in order to survive. Science helps us grow food that is then used to feed our society. It’d be very difficult to survive in our society if science was not playing a role.


5. In at least one paragraph, make explicit connections between what you did for this Service Learning activity and the material in this course, including the potential impact on biology, ecology and/or people in our bioregion. How is biology interdisciplinary? This reflective essay should be written in one or more paragraphs (7-10 sentence bio (150-200 words) minimum, not including items 1-3). It should be something that can easily be slightly edited to strengthen a personal statement for an academic program or a job or internship application.

-One of the main topics our class was discussing during this event was muscle groups. We talked about certain groups of muscles such as skeletal muscles and how they play a role in our body. Since my main job for this event was cutting wood you could see how it would relate to skeletal muscle. I used muscles connected to skeletal structures through tendons so it known that I used skeletal muscles to complete my activity. Wood cutting would most likely be classified as an anaerobic exercise; this means that I would be required to use Type II Fast-twitch muscles to complete this activity. We can also see how locomotion would play a role on this. Wood cutting requires a lot of movement, so it would be very hard to complete this job if i were a sessile organism or an organism with very little locomotion such as a sponge. It’s easy to forget how biology can impact our lives, If i were a phylum such as arthropoda instead of chordata wood cutting would not be possible for me. Since my body plan designed me to become a chordata I was able to complete this event. It’s amazing how biology plays a role on our daily lives.


6. Provide at least 4 questions that were raised based on your service learning activity.

-What types of activities (if any) are stopped because of the snow? Are there plants that cannot grow when the weather becomes this cold?

-What type of issues does a farmer face on a daily basis?

-Why are some plants in need of greenhouses while other plants can survive outside?

-What are the precautions farmers take to protect their crops from ice?