Terri Kempton teaches food and farming classes at Fairhaven College and is the manager of the Outback, a non-profit farm behind the Fairhaven complex. The farm hosts events, provides free food to the campus community and allows students and community members to get their hands dirty. It has historically been student-run, though recent student workers decided it would be beneficial for someone to provide structural support in a permanent role as students cycled through. Kempton was hired and has worked there for the past six years.
Q: What experience did you have coming into the Outback farm? Why do you feel like you were meant for the position?
A: I have a combination of skills. One part is farming — actual farming labor. I was a Peace Corps volunteer and for two and a half years was managing, running and creating agricultural projects. My degrees and a lot of my professional experience are in conservational biology and managing open spaces. There’s a piece of ecological restoration that’s really important to us here on the farm as well. As an educator, I’ve worked as a facilitator, negotiator and mediator for groups. I have that community organizing, knowing how to bring people together.
Q: Do you have a favorite memory or highlight from working here in the past six years?
A: I mean, I have so many. The Earth itself is very precious to me, so I have those special moments of the sun is shining just right; I’m eating an apple straight from the tree. The other part is the people, right? Getting to see students connecting with nature… kind of rediscovering the roots of how naturally we interact with other species, getting their hands dirty and feeling the soil. Watching that magic happen is so meaningful to me.
I’m trying to think of one specific story because there’s an ocean of them. The weaving event, how special. That weaving event used the same space as the community singing class in Fairhaven, and they offered to stay and sing us in with a song that was about weaving. Then planting the willow the next day. We planted 120 trees, four different varieties of basket willow. So, within the next two to three years, we’ll start to be able to harvest it every year to meet our fiber needs.
Q: Can you walk me through how the Outback functions?
A: It’s not a money-making endeavor. We operate on a mutual aid model. Everything that is produced on the farm is distributed to students facing food insecurity. In short, the farm is a place where students grow food for other students. Very powerful.
We also have an acre and a half of a food forest. Everything in that food forest is what we call a perennial, meaning… it grows year after year after year. That’s where we get our apples and quince and cherries and plums and pears and hazelnuts, chestnuts and all that stuff. Then we have honey from our bees, eggs from our chickens. All of that’s distributed through the food pantries. The biggest ones are the Whole Pantry in the VU and Fairhaven Food Pantry. Summertime it gets really quiet around campus, so we host free farmer’s markets where students can come and shop.
In addition, we have community gardens. We have 60 different beds and students, student groups, staff, faculty, administration and some community members who aren’t otherwise affiliated with Western all work together and garden together.
The thing that I love the most about the community gardens is that we’re able to practice something called food sovereignty. That’s the idea that we have the right not only to food — like everyone should be able to eat — but we have a right to choose what food we want and how it’s grown. So it's different than just food access where you can go to a food bank and maybe there's like a funky jar of olives from 1993. That's very different than “I want to be eating tomatoes and I want them to be grown organically.” You know, we give people that chance to exercise their right to decide.
Q: What else should students know? Are there any other resources for students facing food insecurity?
A: There's a basic needs group. We have a resource navigator that helps students find things. There's a lot of supports that are out there. It's literally just a matter of asking. So whether it's signing up for Snap and EBT benefits or finding, you know, all of the free food sources in town.
What I’d love students to know is that this is their farm. By default, every Western student is a farmer because you are part of this farm. So coming to visit, spending time in the different areas, you know, we've got a big swing, we've got hammocks , you know, come enjoy the sunshine as the season changes. But we also have work parties that happen twice a week. You don't have to know anything, bring anything. You just show up and meet some cool people. Have some good times. It's open house style, so people are welcome to come and go. And then we host a lot of events. So every quarter we've got 2 or 3 events. Some of them are social, some of them are educational. We do really kind of nerdy, farm things like ‘let's make biochar,’ but then we also do things like, ‘let's just watch this really cool documentary that just came out.’ So we always have a variety of friends and we hope people will join us.
Eli Voorhies (he/him) is a fourth-year student at Western in the visual journalism program. Now serving as the photo and video editor, he has worked two previous stints as a Front editor and interned for Cascadia Daily News. Outside of the newsroom, he rock climbs and loses track of time in the photography dark room on campus. You can reach him at eliv.thefront@gmail.com
