What Does Carleton Football Team and A Latino Farmer Have in Common?

Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on September 14, 2009

That the team and Farmer Mercedez Solorzano care about locally produced food and community building is one major thing in common, but there is more. It is a story of community building, I first received an e-mail form Jim Blaha at the Northfield Community Action Center towards the end of July introducing me to the idea from Kurt Rambler, head coach of the Carleton Football Team and their commitment to contributing to the community. Their “problem” as Jim and Kurt put it is “engaging the whole team on a project”, apparently engaging 60 or more people with high energy is sort of a challenge, unless you are a farmer like us. In our work of launching farmers, there is no shortage of large scale projects that never get done because they are so overwhelming and would take more resources than any farmer has, one of these tasks that can involve almost any amount of people is “picking field stones”.

So, we had the whole Carleton Football Team with their coach shouting orders and keeping everyone on track down the field yard-by-yard until they covered the whole field. This step will save a lot of the small farming equipment that will be used to work the land to plant a cover crop this fall and delicious fresh vegetables next spring. Some of them, may even end-up at the Carleton cafeteria next year.

Here is a photo show of the event, don’t mind the groups that became obsessed with digging out the large rocks bare hands.