Last week, I participated in a UDaB program with the Allegheny Mountain Institute in the mountains of western Virginia. The organization runs a fellowship program where fellows work on the mountain farm for six months and learn about sustainable growing, herbalism, and a variety of other skills that come across as outdated to many. They then move on to work on other projects that AMI runs, such as their farm located outside of a hospital where fresh food is put in to the hospital cafeteria and used like a prescription would be through their Food “Farmacy” program for people with type two diabetes and similar diet related conditions. Before working on the hospital farm, we stayed in the mountain lodge at their mountain farm and helped prepare for the spring season. Highland County, Virginia was the most rural place I had ever been. I lost cell service past Harrisonburg and panicked until I realized how dramatic I was being. The town closest to the lodge had three streets, was fifty minutes from a grocery store, ninety minutes from a hospital, and was excited about the dollar general that had just opened because it meant more accessibility to food and other necessities. We reached the farm after a stressful drive up mountain roads that many of us didn’t stomach well. The stars here were the clearest I have ever seen, and I stood in awe, in snowy weather, for thirty minutes, unable to glance away. Food was a huge part of our time there. We had complete breakfast, lunch, and dinners each day- not the norm compared to my typical college diet. Everything besides a few staple items like rice and beans came from the farm or had been preserved in to salsas or pickles or sauerkrauts from the last year. We gathered potatoes and beets from the root cellar, and eggs from their fifteen chickens, and ate no meat or processed food. The only plastic I could find in the lodge was a pack of toilet paper and was told that AMI has a separate line in their budget for mason jars, because glass is completely decomposable, so everything is stored in them. Never have I felt my carbon footprint grow smaller than it was this week. Every day, the thought of coming back to campus and seeing the amount of unnecessary waste my roommates and I, and the campus have been creating felt like a big, growing, gray cloud hovering over me. I realized that a lifestyle exactly like this one would not be possible at this point in my college life, but paired with the lessons from this class, I gained greater awareness of the value of local food and the footprint I create in my daily life being five minutes from a grocery store full of plastic and food shipped from across the country. Coming back to class and visiting the farm on campus the day after returning from my UDaB trip fueled a frustration in me and added even further meaning to my past week. In Food Fight, Strella, of the farm in Baltimore City, says, “teaching people to think as intimately as they can about the relationship between their bodies, their food, and their soil- the prospect of giant agribusiness seems entirely counterintuitive.” The lack of access to the food grown a mile away from the dining halls at the University seems counterintuitive when thinking from this viewpoint, especially when comparing it to a week where the food I ate and the place I lived was entirely interconnected. The idea of large businesses, including the University, prioritizing convenience and profit over quality and physical and environmental health of students and the area around us is utterly clear in this example. In class, a comment was made about using this class to turn students against the harmful policies of the university, and it’s working. I had never questioned why I have never seen any information about the organic food grown here and available for sale, or why students weren’t eating it, even though I was aware that this food is being grown. Now that I see the issues at hand, the big dragon that is the University seems even bigger. I want to see and create change here but can’t help but feel intimidated by what would be necessary to do so. However, an informed group of students that grows in to a bigger and bigger group of informed students seems like the best option.