Lee Howard: What's Going On: Sprout program at Conn teaches students, feeds the community

It’s not easy to find unless you are familiar with the Connecticut College campus, but a quiet farmers market in back of the Crozier Williams Student Center, currently undergoing renovations, offers freshly picked produce at a nice price: whatever you can afford.

The Sprout Market, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. every Tuesday through the summer, is run by students who stay over on campus on an internship program that gives them experience running a small farming operation at a place where I used to run tennis tournaments 30 years ago.

The underused tennis courts have been replaced by nearly an acre of fruits and veggies, including onion, squash, kale, cantaloupe, watermelon, sweet potatoes, beans, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, cabbage and carrots (apple and peach trees are not yet mature enough to bear fruit).

In protected tunnel areas, snow peas, cherry tomatoes, basil and cucumbers also grow, along with snack beds where people are free to pick raspberries and other delights.

“We're now in our fifth year of the internship, and it's evolved somewhat to include a bit of student research, more youth program collaboration, and more student leadership,” said Eric Vukicevich, the Sue and Eugene Mercy Jr. assistant professor of botany at Conn, in an email.

Vukicevich said the program started in 2020 thanks to the leadership of two students, Emir Kulluk and Bailor Jalloh, who along with others helped produce about 2.5 tons of food in the first year.

“It was kind of crazy, but we had already started to expand into the new field and had planned to start a sliding-scale CSA program with FRESH New London, so we went for it,“ he said, ”helping supply a 30-family CSA and a market stand at the Field of Greens Farmer's Market.“

This year’s market is less ambitious, with the community-supported agriculture aspect off the table to reduce pressure on the students and their supervisors, but the output is no less impressive. Every weekday for about six hours a day, a half dozen students are out in the field, often in hot and humid weather, taking care of the crops that they pick for the general public on Tuesday and for FRESH New London, a local food sustainability nonprofit, on Friday.

“Eric helped us to settle in, but then we grabbed the reins on our own,” said Joseph Robles, a rising senior at Conn who lives in Nevada. “We know what to do.”

Pluto Payne, another rising senior from Chicago, told me that the Sprout Market will run through Aug. 24, when students return to classes. In addition to the crops now being harvested, she noted, corn should start to become available in August.

The students switch off on Tuesday working in the field or manning a table where an assortment of freshly picked food is available. On the day I visited last week, Eliza Macaluso, a rising sophomore from Vermont, and Sophie Colbert, a rising junior from Massachusetts, were helpfully offering me a wide range of produce at no cost, but I decided to pay $15 for four quarts of luscious raspberries, a small squash and a huge head of magnificent lettuce.

Vukicevich said the market is currently visited mostly by the Connecticut College community and nearby neighbors, but he would like to see more people come and participate.

“Students seem to usually be in favor of allowing people to pay what they are used to paying, or what they can afford, for the produce, even if that's nothing,” he said. “It typically works out to us bringing in about market value for the produce, sometimes more, sometimes less.”

The majority of the farm’s summer produce, Vukicevich said, winds up as free food at the FRESH Mercer Street garden on Saturdays or at the Food for the People Pantry. Some of it also ends up at Harris dining hall at Conn, where students enjoy super fresh salad bar items direct from the farm. To follow Sprout on Instagram, type in @conncollsprout.

Vukicevich said student farmers come from a variety of educational backgrounds, including those majoring in philosophy, art, music, economics and even computer science, though inevitably there’s always someone studying botany or environmental sciences.

“What's interesting is that just about everyone who gets involved finds some sort of connection with their studies and, importantly, greater connection to place and a sense of belonging.” Vukicevich said.

During the academic year, Vukicevich teaches such courses as community agricultural systems and agroecology that use the farm as what he termed a “living lab.” Other botany and biology courses also use the farm as a teaching tool.

Vukicevich said the farm has been a testing ground for a variety of unusual local crops, including aji amarillo peppers, okra, chayote, callaloo, and peanuts.

“A lot of these seeds come from the community, including FRESH and their community gardeners,” he said. “Our main season lettuce is a delicious, heat tolerant variety that was seed gifted to us by a talented gardener named Jen Wong, who brought it from China when she moved here 30 years ago.”

Vukicevich said he came to Conn from an Oregon community college where students ran a two-acre organic farm before it was cut due to budget issues. He majored in viticulture at California Polytech, and during grad school had been involved in community farming in Kelowna, British Columbia.

The students I talked to said the work was hard, but fulfilling. And during the summer, if they are a student manager, they get paid for their work; the rest of the year, if they are taking a course, they earn college credit.

“They learn valuable life skills, develop a real connection to land, and therefore feel like they truly belong here, even if they are only here for four years,” Vukicevich said. “Over the season, they tend to develop more autonomy, more confidence, and pride in what they are doing.”

And you won’t find anything fresher than the lettuce and raspberries I bought that were picked that morning. Can’t wait for the corn!

Lee Howard is The Day’s business editor. To reach him, email l.howard@theday.com.