The Hidden Gem of Stonehill College

By Jamie Fleming

If you pass by Stonehill College, you are most likely to see a farm, with a blonde haired woman working along side her yellow Labrador. That woman is Bridget Meigs and she is the Stonehill farmer.

                       

Stonehill College owns a farm located just across the street from the entrance of the school. The farm has done extraordinary work thanks to Meigs.

In February of 2011, Meigs was offered a job at Stonehill College to work the new addition to the school, the farm. Before working at Stonehill, she was in Pennsylvania managing the Philadelphia branch of The Fruit Guys, a small company delivering fresh foods to offices for wellness at work.

Although it was a big transition, she said she was excited to get to do hands on work, and work with college students as she had done years earlier in East Africa on an abroad program.

Meigs grew up in Millbrook, New York, where as a child she attended boarding school where she helped her father tend to the boarding school zoo.  She then attended Queens University in Canada, majoring in Biology.

In her junior year of college, Meigs studied abroad in Kenya with a group who traveled around with different professors. Being exposed to the culture in Kenya opened her eyes up to “food security,” the availability of fresh, affordable food. The semester abroad taught her about wildlife conservation, natural resource use, and the lack of equality when it comes to resource distribution.

On a recent day, she was driving her truck down the road to drop off peppers to the Easton food pantry, one of the four community partners that work with the farm. A smiling couple walked out of the pantry with a bag of produce given to them inside.

The farm provides free fresh produce to local people in need. It has four community partners, My Brothers Keeper, which receives about half of the produce, The Easton Food Pantry, David Jon Louison House in Brockton and the Table at Father Bills in Quincy.

What brought Meigs to Stonehill was simply the mission of the farm.

“I love the mission of the farm, which is to grow vegetables and educate about food justice issues” Meigs said.

The Stonehill farm is unique in that the way the vegetables are grown.

“The way we grow the vegetables is very much in awareness of the resources and soil health and teaching about those things in classes and then trying to do that practice as well. So when you grow vegetables in nutrient rich soil, it can increase their nutrients that they have in them and that’s healthy” Meigs said.

Some benefits of this farm are pesticides aren’t used, and being that it is a local farm, it doesn’t use large amounts fossil fuels for transportation.

The farm receives around twenty of volunteers on “Farm-Fridays” said Meigs. On Fridays volunteers come to the farm to do a wide range of tasks, including planting or pulling out crops.

Mark Gambon, a Stonehill student has been working at the farm since the beginning of his sophomore year, Gambon said it’s rewarding working there knowing that everything produced is going towards a good cause.

“I like to call it the hidden gem of Stonehill,” Gambon said.

Gambon described Meigs as enthusiastic and efficient. She knows what she’s doing and knows how to tell people what to do to make the volunteer days efficient.

Ellen Edgerton, a junior at Stonehill College, has been volunteering at the farm for over two years after a friend, who was in one of Meigs classes, told her about it.

Edgerton said Meigs is a supportive individual who always sees the big picture and always has a goal to make a difference.

“[Meigs] wants to help people become successful,” Edgerton said.

Michelle David, began working at the farm her freshman year to be apart of something but now she sees its importance and is a big believer in sustainable agriculture.

David said Meigs is knowledgeable in the work she does.

“She once talked 10 minutes solely about soil,” David said.

Meigs lets many inexperienced people work at the farm, and trusts them, David said.

This year, the farm reached its most productive year, producing nearly 15,000 pounds of around 90 different kinds of vegetables. In the average year, the 1.5-acre farm would produce from 11,000-12,000 pounds a year, Meigs said.

She said maintenance of soil, paired with great student help, helped the farm to produce more than usual.

Not only does Meigs work the farm at Stonehill, she also teaches a few classes on agriculture and its sustainability.