Campus Farm

From field to farmer’s market

On the campus farm, students from the CLC Horticulture program grow, tend and harvest about 6,000 pounds of produce every year. Café Willow and the student-managed Prairie Restaurant at Brae Loch use the produce.

You can buy farm-grown vegetables, herbs and flower bouquets at CLC’s seasonal Farm Market:

Thursdays, June—October

3—5:30 p.m., H Building Lawn

What can you find at the market? Check out the CLC Horticulture Facebook page.

Field to table, table to field

We use sustainable farming practices to gain a better yield every year. As part of this, we compost food scraps from Café Willow—food that might have started as our organic garden products.

We bring the food scraps back to the farm and mix them with garden waste in our composting process. As the food and garden waste decomposes, we maintain an environment rich with healthy microbes. These microbes speed the process by which waste becomes clean compost, ready to be blended with soil to fertilize the next round of food.

Cover crops for winter

In the fall, we plant deep-rooting cover crops and spread leaves from the arboretum to protect the garden from erosion and compaction. This keeps the soil fertilized, aerated and healthy for the next growing season.

Campus Farm benefits

At CLC: Learning sustainability

In addition to supplying Café Willow and the Farm Market with food, the Campus Farm gives us a living laboratory for our horticulture students. The Horticulture program offers a certificate and an associate degree in sustainable agriculture, as well as other areas.

The Campus Farm gives students a chance to get their hands in the dirt, as well as to see the fruits of their labor.

In Lake County: Look locally

The CLC Campus Farm is just one of many organic farms near you. Almost half of all organic farms in the U.S. sell directly to consumers, such as through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs and farmers’ markets.

Get to know the sustainable suppliers in your community—the produce is tasty, and the practices make your environment cleaner, safer and more supportable in the long-run.

Around the world: Sustainability everywhere

Sustainable farming is a global movement. From coffee plantations in San Jose, Costa Rica, to vineyards in Dijon, France, small growers are adopting, adapting and perfecting organic methods. CLC students have opportunities to visit some of these farms through study abroad.