The Sierra Club’s Sierra magazine has ranked America’s greenest universities for the past eight years and has just issued its rankings for 2014.  Colleges at the top of the annual “Cool Schools” are “dedicated to greening at every level of their operation, from energy usage to recycling to food sourcing to curriculum, that sustainability has become woven into their very culture [emphasis added].”

Participation in Sierra magazine’s “Cool Schools” ranking is open to all four-year, degree-granting undergraduate colleges and universities in the United States.  For this latest ranking for 2104, college administrators could participate by going to stars.aashe.org to complete an extensive questionnaire about their schools’ sustainability practices. The questionnaire, officially called the Campus Sustainability Data Collector, is the result of the collaborative efforts of four organizations: the Sierra Club, The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), the Sustainable Endowments Institute (SEI), and the Princeton Review.

Schools that submitted complete data by Sierra’s deadline were eligible for the 2014 rankings.  Complete responses were received from 173 qualified colleges out of the more than 2,000 four-year colleges and universities in the United States.  Out of a possible 1,000 points, the top-rated university, #1 University of California, Irvine scored 813.51 “indicating much work completed but also room for improvement” according to the  description of the methodology used for ranking schools.

The dining services of four schools in the Top Ten, American University, #2 with a score of 804.25,  Dickinson College, #3 with a score of 803.44,  Lewis and Clark College, #5 with a score of 759.18, and the University of Connecticut, #9 with a score of 743.05, received special mention.  According to the report in Sierra by Avital Andrews and Don Dresser, at American University “By 2017, at least 50 percent of dining-hall fare will be from sustainable sources”;  Dickinson College has “an organic farm that supplies the dining hall”; Lewis and Clark College’s “sustainable-food program helped it shoot up our ranking: At least 25 percent of ingredients served on campus are sourced from within 100 miles, and almost all of them are organic.  Its cafeterias serve seafood that meets Marine Stewardship Council standards and meat that’s hormone-and antibiotic-free (the beef and chicken are grass-fed and free-range too)”; and the University of Connecticut “serves food that’s mostly local and seasonal, with lots of vegetarian options.”

The  Complete Ranking, showing results for all 173 qualified colleges, notes that for evaluating the “food sourcing” of the greenest colleges, a perfect score would be 51.00.  Here are the top ten schools for sustainable food sourcing: #1, Maharishi University of Management which achieved a perfect score of 51.00; #2, Lewis and Clark College, 47.84; #3, Loyola Marymount University, 46.43; #4, Mills College and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona tied at 43.63; #5, Warren Wilson College and University of Washington, Seattle tied at 42.16; #6, Villanova University and Kenyon College tied at 41.74; #8, Carnegie Mellon University, 40.96; #9, Cornell University, 40.47; and #10, University of California, Berkeley, 39.69.

Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, which scored a perfect score of 51.00 for sustainable food sourcing, is the first college in the United States to offer an organic, 100% vegetarian, freshly prepared menu and according to its website “serves a wide variety of vegetarian fare, from home-style pizza to Chinese stir fry, from Mexican to Indian cuisines.”  The school bakes its own breads and pastries using organic flour and uses locally grown produce whenever possible.  Milk, yogurt, and ice cream come from a local organic dairy farm.

All 173 colleges and universities that participated deserve praise for demonstrating to their students that they care about environmental sustainability.  In the words of Sierra’s Lifestyle Editor, Avital Andrews, they “honor their students’ idealism by committing to the planet’s big issues.”

(Frank W. Barrie 8/17/14)

Cooperstown, the lake-side, rural town in upstate New York (Otsego County) is the home, not only of the renowned Baseball Hall of Fame, but also the Farmers Museum, which first opened its doors to the public in 1944 on land which has been part of a working farm since 1813 when it was owned by James Fenimore Cooper.  When it opened in 1944, the Farmers Museum had 5,000 tools and objects (including important collections of the Otsego County Historical Society; the Wyckoff family, one of Brooklyn’s oldest farming families; and William B. Sprague, founder of the Early American Industries Association).

Today the Farmer Museum’s collections number more than 23,000 artifacts.  In addition, the site of the Farmers Museum now includes. not only the barn, creamery and herdsman’s cottage (constructed of local stone in 1918 for the Clark family’s prized herd of cattle then maintained on the property), but also a 19th-century Historic Village comprised of buildings gathered from rural communities around New York State.  Painstakingly relocated and restored, piece by piece, the buildings now number over 20.  They provide a tangible recreation of commercial and domestic practices common to rural life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Restored commercial buildings include a blacksmith shop, pharmacy, doctor’s office, tavern, general store and law office;  Rural domestic life is reflected in the recreated farm houses, barns, smokehouse, kitchen and woodshed, corncrib, and carriage shed.  A church dating from 1795, which first served a congregation in East Durham (Greene County) and then was moved to serve the Cornwallville (Greene County) Methodist Episcopal congregation, has found its ultimate home at one end of the recreated village green at the Farmers Museum.  The church building, pews, pulpit, two altar chairs and a storage cabinet have all been carefully restored.

The Farmers Museum has made a tremendous effort to share its resources with a wider audience.  It offers a Distance Learning program which provides “real-time sessions between schools and educators at the Farmers Museum, who use objects, images, engaging activities and hands-on projects to create a ‘virtual trip’ to the museum.”  A 20 minute preview session for teachers is offered by the museum.

And in 2010, the Farmers Museum initiated PLOWLINE: Images of Rural New York, with the goal to create in one comprehensive photography collection “change over time in agricultural practice and rural life in New York State.”  Available for viewing on-line, this outstanding photography collection now numbers nearly 1400 images of  farming and rural life over the past 100+ years.  The on-line images include the photographs of Dante Tranquille, who was a photographer at the Observer-Dispatch newspaper in Utica, New York from 1944 to 1972, collections of county and town historical societies and the New York State Historical Association, Cornell University’s Department of Dairy Industry, and two farm families (the Garretson and Dezemo families).

On a recent visit to the Farmers Museum, the hops were thriving (as depicted in the accompanying photo) and reminded this visitor of the growing resurgence of hops as an agricultural crop in upstate New York, with the increasing demand from Farm Breweries.  In July 2012, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation to support and strengthen New York’s craft breweries. Under the new law, in order to receive a Farm Brewery license in New York State, the beer must be made primarily from locally grown farm products. Until the end of 2018, at least 20% of the hops and 20% of all other ingredients must be grown or produced in New York State.  From January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2023, no less than 60% of the hops and 60% of all other ingredients must be grown or produced in New York State.  After January 1, 2024, no less than 90% of the hops and 90% of all other ingredients must be grown or produced in New York State.  The legislation was modeled after the 1976 “Farm Winery Act,” which spurred the growth of wine production in this state, including the creation of 261 farm wineries and tripling the number of wineries.

In Hamilton (Madison County), NY (the home of Colgate University), not far from Cooperstown, the Good Nature Farm Brewery and Tap Room takes pride in its “handcrafted natural ales brewed with local ingredients.”  Good Nature Farm Brewery is now one of 25 licensed New York Farm Breweries according to the Facebook page of the Northeast Hops Alliance.

New York’s rich agricultural past depicted at the Farmers Museum is showing signs of renewal in this cultivation of hops once again across upstate.  The on-line Plowline: Images of Rural New York includes two wonderful photos by Charles Zabriskie (1848-1914) of a 19th century hops harvest and this second memory of times past harvesting hops.  Take the moment to click on these two preceding links and enjoy the fruits of the Farmers Museum’s preservation on-line of a remarkable photography collection that is ever-growing.

Farmers Museum, 5775 State Highway 80 (one mile north of the village on west side of Otsego Lake), Cooperstown, NY
Hours: April 1 – May 11, Open Tuesday – Sunday 10 a.m. – 4 p.m (limited buildings open);
May 12 – October 13 (Columbus Day), Open Daily 10 a.m. – 5 p.m;
October 14 – October 31, Open Tuesday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m (Limited buildings open);
November 1 – March 31, Closed for winter except for special programs and events.

Frank W. Barrie (8/5/14)