A Guest Blog from Darron Collins, President and Alumnus, College of the Atlantic
The College of the Atlantic, a private liberal arts institution in Bar Harbor, Maine, continues to nurture young men and women who are passionate about the environment.
COA was founded in 1969. Its focus areas include environmental sciences, marine mammal habitats, and sustainable food systems. The students come from around the world and many graduates stay on to work as entrepreneurs, farmers, and teachers. I have been involved with COA for some time. Whenever I am in Maine, I try to attend some of the college's cultural events. I’ve also hosted a few receptions and dinners at Skylands.
Earlier this month, COA hosted a student-led fundraising affair at its farm - one of two on-campus that supply the school with organic produce, eggs, and meat. Because of my very busy work and travel schedule, I was unable to attend. COA's President and alumnus, Darron Collins, offered to share some photos from the event and information about the work the students are doing to help less fortunate area residents - enjoy.
We take food very seriously here at College of the Atlantic (COA), way beyond serving good food to our students, staff, and faculty. Food is an essential element of the COA curriculum, where we ask questions like “how can we minimize the ecological impact of food production” and “how can we improve access to healthy, local, organic food to those who have the most difficult time affording it”?
That latter question was the focus of the annual mid-September "Share the Harvest" dinner, an annual fundraising event to support the COA student-led "Share the Harvest" program. The program was founded in 2008 by a cohort of students who saw food injustice and food scarcity right here in our own backyard on Mount Desert Island (MDI). With an initial grant of $1000 from the local non-profit Healthy Acadia, those students designed and built an organization to help bring local, healthy produce to families who couldn’t afford the typically higher prices of that high-quality produce. Working closely with island food pantries and other organizations dedicated to eradicating food insecurity, the program distributes farmstand vouchers, subsidized farm shares, and Harvest Deliveries to community members in need.
Now in its 11th year, "Share the Harvest" is a thriving program on MDI and throughout Maine’s Hancock County. For the sixth year running, we’ve worked collaboratively with the COA-alumnus owned restaurant, Havana, to hold a farm-to-table fundraiser for the program out at COA’s Beech Hill Farm. Despite threatening weather, more than 70 guests came to support and celebrate the extraordinary work of these COA students. If you would like to find out more about the program, please click on the following highlighted link and visit Share the Harvest.
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- High winds and threatening rain are just part of any Maine September. But neither stopped our guests from coming out to support “Share the Harvest.” We did, however, gather under a tent at COA’s Beech Hill Farm.
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- Though under a tent, we kept to the format of a beautiful, long table with linens. Mason jars held our wine and water. I wasn’t sure if Martha would have approved of the utensils all on the napkins like this, but we needed them for weight against the wind!
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- Anyone who has spent much time on MDI has likely visited COA’s Beech Hill Farm farmstand. We served appetizers and a start-up cocktail in the shelter of the farmstand.
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- Every year we experiment with new cocktails… and then name them. We called this concoction of white port, tonic, and orange with a sprig of rosemary the “Harvest Sunset.”
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- Students Rayna Joyce ’20, Ana Maria Zabala ’20, and Indigo Woods ’21 are this year’s program coordinators. With “Harvest Sunset”-fisted guests in tow, they led farm tours of Beech Hill and also stewarded the program and the fundraising event. It will be their job to pass along the torch to younger COA students.
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- Chefs from Bar Harbor’s Havana restaurant are prepping the COA-raised lamb and chicken that would be the main course of the evening’s meal.
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- The farm grows and sells cut flowers as well as produce. They were a nice touch—very nice, in fact.
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- T-shirt sales also support the “Share the Harvest” program. Jenna Farineau ’18, former “Share the Harvest” Coordinator, designed many of the graphics for the program.
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- Assistant farm manager Lauren Cote cleaning shallots for the farmstand during the farm tours.
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- With the wind gusting at its peak, we decided we needed to get the show on the road. It’s always hard to pull people away from the farm tours, conversation, and the “Harvest Sunsets.”
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- As COA’s president, I’m often called on to do introductions and speeches—I have a Pavlovian response to the sound of a utensil banging a glass. But this is their show, the COA students, and their words are what people want to hear. This year’s “Share the Harvest” program served over 140 families on and near Mt. Desert Island. During their introduction, the three student coordinators reflected on how hunger cannot be tackled without also tackling poverty and inequality; that they are, indeed, inextricably linked.
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- I have a new appreciation for photographing food. Greens like these—right from Beech Hill Farm-are easy. I couldn’t, however, do photographic justice to the lamb and chicken, which were extraordinary.
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- This was my favorite shot of the evening. I said to myself, “I think Martha might really like this one.”
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- Conversations lasted deep into the evening, despite the colder than average temps. Here we see two very special guests of COA, the MacArthur Award-winner Mary Reid Kelley, left, and her partner/collaborator Patrick Kelley. Mary and Patrick are the inaugural COA Kippy Stroud Artists-in-Residence. Here they’re seated with Dr. Catherine Clinger, the COA Allan Stone Chair in Visual Arts.
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- Two Pound Cake – Blackberry pound cake with raspberry pastry cream, candied rhubarb salsa, and ginger syrup.
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- Here’s Anna Davis, the co-director of COA’s Beech Hill Farm, with Wayne Biebel, our Assistant Farm Manager and Commercial Kitchen Director and Chef. If I could wind the clock back, I’d get David Levinson, the other co-director at Beech Hill in there as well—sorry David! We have the best staff in the world and nothing would be possible without their leadership.
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- COA student Michael Feng ’22 watches from the farmstand—he and other students were part of COA’s “Discarded Resources Team,” who were there to make sure we reduced, reused, and recycled.
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