“I can see the world through food,” said Kirsten Walter ’00, perhaps speaking for all the participants in a wide-ranging Bates discussion of food-related topics on March 16. “I can see all these different issues,” she said, “and how to approach them and how to engage people with them.”

Walter, director of the St. Mary’s Nutrition Center, was one of four Maine-based Bates alumni, each an expert in food issues, who took part in a panel discussion sponsored by the College’s Nourishing Body and Mind: Bates Contemplates Food initiative.

Walter joined artisanal baker Jim Amaral ’80, founder of Borealis Breads, and two farmers: Nicolas Lindholm ’86, who owns Hackmatack Farm in Penobscot, and Steve Hoad ’72, of Emma’s Family Farm in Windsor.

The discussion traced the concept of “good food” — local, nutritious, delicious, natural or organic — across a roadmap of knotty questions. How do you make a living growing food? How sincere is the supermarket industry’s commitment to local, healthy foods? How can food help empower, nourish and be affordable to low-income communities?

An audience of some 40 students, Bates staff and local farmers attended the event in Pettengill Hall. Anna Bartel, of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships at Bates, moderated.

To begin the 80-minute program, the Bates alumni shared how and why they embarked upon their current paths. Amaral, a sourdough breadmaker whose story of success is well-known, focused on one of his proudest accomplishments: the role he has played in re-establishing wheat production in Maine after an absence of about a century.

His early attempts to source wheat in Maine, Amaral said, were discouraging, as the grain was sometimes spoiled or contaminated. Those problems reflected what happens when “you lose a whole industry, you lose the whole network of relationships between farmers and millers and bakers, and the challenges of actually recreating that.”

Lindholm had a good-food conversion experience as a Bates student, then held several jobs related to sustainable agriculture and now makes about half a year’s living — with carpentry filling the gap — through selling his organic produce directly to consumers.

He plans to build a freezing plant, the state’s first intended for a strictly organic growing operation, for wild blueberries — a fruit native to this region. “Working with a crop that’s native to our land has a lot of meaning for me,” he said.

Hoad and Lindholm expressed a common depth of idealism about farming. Coming to Bates, Hoad left development-wracked New Jersey for a relatively unspoiled Maine, bringing with him with visions of working his own land with his family.

Hoad explained that his farm is deeded back to 1820 and the Hoads are only the fourth family to occupy it. The first owners had the place from 1820 until 1950. “You can feel those people in this land,” he said.

Now he and his daughter Rose raise poultry, pigs and produce that they sell from the farm, with the goal of making the food affordable to all comers.

Walter, who has dedicated her career to food justice, picked up Hoad’s theme of accessible food. She traced her interest in food justice to her youth in California, where her early concern about farming’s impact on the environment gave way to the realization that she needed to consider “the people in that environment” — migrant farm workers.

Walter may be best-known at Bates and in Lewiston for founding Lots to Gardens, an organization that uses community gardens in Lewiston to empower young people and their neighborhoods. “I really wanted to see how we could use [the work of] connecting people to their food, connecting people to their landscape and each other, as a means of building a voice and power.”

Walter described a food assessment, undertaken by the St. Mary’s Nutrition Center and local colleges including Bates, that has revealed the difficulty of putting together a nutritious meal in downtown Lewiston. Of 67 stores that sell groceries, only seven sell all the basics for a well-rounded meal. And small downtown markets, she said, charge almost 50 percent more than the supermarkets, which are away from downtown, for the same basket of foods.

“Everybody deserves access to good food,” Walter said. “It shouldn’t be a privilege. It’s a right.”

Much of the conversation revolved around the supermarket industry and its efforts to meet the increasing demand for local and organic foods. As Amaral pointed out, the industry is willing to pay lip service to local food as long as consumers demand it, but at root, the current model — based on inexpensive commodities, large-scale processing and far-flung supply networks — is making money for them. If Maine was growing half or more of its own food, he said, “I’m not sure that the supermarkets could really prosper in that environment.”

Farmers in the audience, meanwhile, pointed out that even as supermarkets turn more to local growers for produce, they are imposing requirements on small growers and processors that make it impossible to profit. Mandates, such as liability insurance or certain security and sanitation measures, that make all kinds of sense for industrial-scale producers make none at all for small, hands-on operations.

Steve Hoad offered a telling example. At his roadside stand, he sells sweet corn grown by a farm that also supplies a local branch of a major supermarket chain. His customers are always surprised to hear that, Hoad says, because the corn from his stand tastes so much better than the supermarket’s.

The reason is simple. Corn loses flavor rapidly once it’s picked. The corn that Hoad sells is no more than a day and a half old, if that. But the supermarket chain, fearing that one fine day the farm might fail to deliver on time, insists on keeping as much as a seven-day supply on hand.

The farmer can’t convince the chain “that he’ll continue to show up,” even after 10 years of working together, Hoad said.

Borealis Breads founder Jim Amaral and food activist-author Mark Winne are among Bates College alumni featured during March events relating to the Nourishing Body and Mind: Bates Contemplates Food initiative.

All these events are open to the public at no cost.

First on the menu is a lecture about the impacts of globalization on poverty, food security and nutrition by Cornell University professor Per Pinstrup-Andersen at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 2, in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom (G52). The talk is sponsored by the economics department.

Two weeks later, Bates alumni involved in food production and nutrition in Maine discuss a variety of issues in a panel presentation at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 16, also in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom (G52).

Moderated by Anna Bartel, associate director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships at Bates, the panel comprises Borealis Breads founder Jim Amaral ’80; Maine farmers Steve Hoad ’72 of Windsor and Nicolas Lindholm ’86 of Penobscot; and Kirsten Walter ’00, director of the St. Mary’s Nutrition Center of Maine. The event is sponsored by the Bates Contemplates Food Planning Committee.

Finally, food activist and author Mark Winne ’72, gives a talk titled “Food Justice and Good Food — When Shall the Twain Meet?” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 30, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. A reception and book signing follow in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St. This event too is sponsored by the Bates Contemplates Food Planning Committee. For more information, please call 207-786-6336.

This academic year, inspired by the opening of a new dining Commons and a $2.5 million gift supporting the use of organic, natural and farm-fresh foods, Bates launched Nourishing Body and Mind: Bates Contemplates Food. The initiative explores the ramifications of our food choices and spotlights Bates’ own award-winning sustainable food-service practices.

• Monday, March 16 at 4:30 p.m.
• Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom (G52).

Sarah Davis '10 (center) with NASAP growers at the Lewiston Farmers' Market.

If soup makes the soldier, as Napoleon Bonaparte said, it does a pretty good job shaping students, too.

Issues around food have an unusual teaching potential, a power rooted in one simple fact: everybody eats. And its branches reach out to nearly every corner of the human endeavor.

At Bates, the topic of food tends to invoke “issues of stewardship and sustainability, writ large,” says Anna Bartel, associate director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships. “And poverty and social justice, because there’s no escaping the fact that food is huge in terms of social inequity.”

That scope holds true for the community activities, both volunteer and academically driven, that the Harward Center funds and coordinates year-round.

For instance, this past summer Sarah Davis ’10 worked for a Maine-based nonprofit, administering the Lewiston Farmers’ Market and helping immigrants learn the ways of American farming.

Meanwhile, Ariel Garfinkel ’08 taught kids in Lewiston where food comes from and how to cook it. Also working with youth was Andie Bisceglia ’09, who spent her summer at the Hillview apartments running a program for Lots to Gardens — an agency, founded by Kirsten Walter ’00, that uses gardening projects to strengthen community and support local young people.

For all three, the summer work illuminated the studies that awaited them when autumn came around. In her Harward-funded position with the New American Sustainable Agriculture Project, Davis guided farmers from Somalia and Guatemala in getting their produce to market. “I learned so much about the people that I worked with,” she says.

The work gave her “a first-hand perspective on the idea of difference” — a perspective valuable to her self-designed major exploring issues of difference and conflict in a context of social justice.

As a vehicle for teaching, food is distinctively useful as an exemplar across disciplines. “Pedagogy functions on the assumption that we start where people are and push them to someplace new,” Bartel says. “And everyone can start where they are with food. So pedagogically, it’s really powerful.”

All the more so given today’s mass critique of the food-industrial system. “Food and sustainable agriculture are perfect examples of readily identifiable areas where ordinary citizens can actually do a fair amount of research,” Bartel adds.

“There’s a lot of good information out there,” she says. “People can move from problem identification to problem solving, to living in a set of commitments that promote sustainable answers. And that, right there, is the model of what we think liberal education is doing in the world.”

“I came to Bates just wanting to be an environmental studies major,” but not knowing how many directions that might take her in, says Bisceglia. “There’s just so many options. And I think farming and local food combine them all.”

By Doug Hubley, photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

View slide show: The Wedding Gift

Kirsten Walter ’00 and Ben Ayers ’99 didn’t register for traditional wedding gifts — eschewing the deep-sided pie dish, $17.99 at Macy’s — but instead asked friends and family to contribute to a barn-raising at their ca. 1800 farmhouse in Leeds, Maine.

The photo below and slide show at left show the gift being given. For two days prior to their Sept. 15 wedding — held in the completed barn — scores of family and friends, including some three dozen Bates alums, gathered to raise the frame and enclose the new building.

The raising culminated weeks of framework that commenced in earnest when barn designer Brad Morse ’99 arrived in August. He, along with Ayers and father-son neighbors Bruce and Nat Bell, formed a core team that cut the hemlock, milled the timbers at Bell’s farm, and cut the frame behind the brick farmhouse.

Ben Ayers '99 hammers pegs on Day One of the barn-raising as neighbor Kevin Hudner, an experienced timber-framer, steadies the beam.

As the gift of time, expertise, and funds grew large, the couple got uneasy about not being able to give back, “other than some homemade jams,” says Walter with a smile. Guidance came from two mentors, Gloria and Gregg Varney of nearby Nezinscot Farm, who said this: “Asking for help is the biggest way to build trust.”

The truism resonated with the couple, whose careers involve building communities by building trust — she as founder of the urban-agriculture nonprofit Lots To Gardens, he as project director for the dZi Foundation, serving Himalayan communities. “We decided to accept everything that was happening,” says Walter, “and to feel incredibly honored by the trust, community, and friendships it helped us build.”

By H. Jay Burns

Pole beans, cukes, and tomatoes are among the things that Bates senior Rachel Booty and a group of local teenagers grow in downtown Lewiston.

They grow youthful aspirations, leadership skills and neighborhood spirit too.

Scion of a farming family in Sandwich, N.H., Booty has put her agricultural experience to work for Lots to Gardens, a Lewiston-based nonprofit founded in 1998 by another Bates student, Kirsten Walter. Booty — who is as passionate about civic involvement as she is about raising food — is the youth coordinator for the program, which uses gardening projects to strengthen community and support local young people.

Few of us can pass a rose without sampling its perfume or a vegetable bed without eyeing the tomatoes, and this primal appeal drives Lots to Gardens. Urban beautification is part of the mission — in fact, Booty’s young gardeners maintain several public flower beds around the twin cities.

But the program’s crux is the use of vegetable gardens to build both neighborhood solidarity and, for the youths who sign on to tend the gardens for a stipend, personal and work skills conducive to leading a better life.

“It feels great,” says one crew member, 19-year-old Christina Breth. “We know we accomplished something ourselves. And we’re giving back to the community.”

Lots to Gardens maintains organic vegetable beds in two downtown Lewiston neighborhoods. The one on Blake Street is new while the other, on Knox Street, is in its fourth year. Although one evening a week residents work together in the gardens in exchange for produce, the Lots to Gardens youth crew — numbering eight this year — directs and performs most of the gardening, from designing the beds to site prep, from planting to harvest. Field trips to local farms are also part of the program.

“We base our summer program on youth leadership and youth development. All of the rules and standards for the workplace are developed by the crew,” Booty says. “They really take a lot of leadership.”

The idea is to strengthen self-esteem, responsibility and an appreciation for teamwork, in addition to providing practical experience and a summer income. Lots to Gardens looks for participants at the Lewiston and Auburn high schools, in local transitional-living programs and among people fulfilling community service commitments.

It’s a popular gig. “It’s a workplace that’s so significantly different than any other place that you might find for a summer job,” Booty says, “that we probably got 35 applicants this year.”

Booty, one of four paid Lots to Gardens staffers, has worked full time this summer and will continue part time during the academic year. Lots to Gardens is affiliated with the Sisters of Charity Foundation, in Lewiston, and receives additional grant support from agricultural and youth programs. It’s modeled on such operations as Boston’s Food Project, which was launched in 1991 and now distributes some 250,000 pounds of food to farmers’ markets, homeless shelters and program participants.

Operating on a much smaller scale, Lots to Gardens’ produce all goes to those who grow it: neighborhood residents and the youth crew. Through a survey each spring, residents express their preferences for the summer’s crops. This summer’s offerings include zucchini, sweet corn, garlic, eggplant, cabbage and broccoli.

“We have a pole-bean teepee this year that’s looking gorgeous,” Booty says. “Of course, that’s the kids’ favorite place to play.”

Naturally, tomatoes and cucumbers are particular favorites. “We ended up having a significant amount of volunteer tomatoes this year,” Booty notes with a smile. “You wonder who threw those.” Next year, she hopes to start a garden on Pierce Street for plants appropriate to the cities’ diverse immigrant cuisines.

The gardens provide a social focus, a rallying point. On run-down Knox Street, it’s been a challenge winning respect for such a vulnerable space — yet, Booty says, “as more people have gotten involved in it, of course they’ve taken ownership of it.”

Another goal of Lots to Gardens is simply to re-establish the connection between the land and what we eat, while sharing some ideas about the value of local sustainable food supplies. Preparing fresh fruits and vegetables for the table is part of the program for the crew members, who get cooking lessons and, three days a week, a lunch made from their own vegetables and other food produced in the area.

They’ve baked bread and made ice cream from locally produced ingredients. “We spent a whole afternoon picking zucchini and squash,” says Booty, “and baked ourselves a huge vegetable lasagna for dinner — from garden to table in hours.”

Crew member Sonya Strout, 15, is a convert to chem-free homegrown food. “We know where it’s from,” she says, adding with a smile, “We know it won’t kill us.”

Garden-to-table comes naturally to Booty, who grew up knowing that pretty much all her food came from right outside the house. Run by Peter and Diane Booty with help from Rachel’s younger sisters, Hannah and Robin, Booty Farm sells its organic produce to restaurants and grocery stores in central New Hampshire, as well as directly through the traditional roadside stand.

Booty, an environmental studies major at Bates with a concentration in environmental geology, started working in community gardens in Lewiston during her sophomore year. For her, Lots to Gardens is a way to advance her academic career while indulging her passions for feeding people and making a difference in her community. She entertains the notion of becoming a baker after Bates — but whatever she does, she says, “working one-on-one with people, especially with youth, is something that I always want to be doing.”

Walter will receive formal recognition for the Swearer Award at the National Youth Leadership Council’s annual meeting March 15-18 in Providence, R.I. The Swearer Award recognizes outstanding contributions made by college and university students to the community. As one of five nationally selected Swearer Award recipients, Walter will receive a certificate commemorating the award and a check for $1,500 to provide continuing support of the Hillview gardening project.

The Schwerner award recognizes five U.S. undergraduates for their exceptional achievement in fulfilling the spirit of citizen activism and promoting positive solutions for social change. The five annual awards of $1,000 each are dedicated to the memory of Michael Schwerner (Cornell University class of 1961), an impassioned civil rights activist who was kidnapped and murdered in Mississippi, along with co-workers James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, in June, 1964.

A community studies major with a focus on political science, education and environmental studies, Walter established communal gardens at Hillview as a model for community development that focused on the power of public gardens to transform individual lives and bring people together in the community. She created a Learning Garden Project with the Hillview children and developed production plots with 14 families to help provide food security as well as to connect individuals to their land.

Walter also conducted workshops on composting and landscaping and helped the children to build a vegetable stand and cook dinner with the produce from their garden. The project was funded by a community work-study grant through the Bates College Center for Service-Learning.

Excited by national recognition for the garden project, Walter shared news of the awards with her fellow gardeners at Hillview, emphasizing that “others are viewing their work as a valuable way to build community. I hope it sets a precedent in Lewiston,” Walter says.

According to Venise Trafton, resident services manager for the Lewiston Housing Authority, Walter’s gardening project “generated a lot of excitement and positive community feeling. She taught the entire gardening process, and the kids saw vegetables, like arugula and eggplant, they never knew existed. She did a fantastic job.” Trafton plans to submit Walter’s work for regional and national recognition from the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials.

The Hilltop Community Garden that Walter planned last winter and spring and worked to establish during the summer, turned into a case study for her senior thesis in the fall, done under the supervision of William Corlett, professor of political science. According to Walter, the project became “a central focus of my life. Underneath all of this ‘official service’ is a deep emotional connection to the families and children with whom I have worked and played throughout this experience.”

“Kirsten’s passion for social justice and love of the earth helped to create a community which nurtured its members and strengthened their ability to give back to that community,” Bates College President Donald W. Harward said. “Her communal gardens provide an elegantly simple, yet powerful model for releasing human potential and building community. We are extremely proud of Kirsten’s work.”

The daughter of Rick and Donna Walter, 24995 Skyland Road, Walter is a 1995 graduate of Los Gatos High School.