OUTBACK IN BUSINESS Article by Emily Stebbins
Photography by Elizabeth Olwin
If it were a person, the Outback Farm would be a neglected child. Rescued from a premature death, its five acres of garden, woods, and wetland were passed from one foster family to the next. The Outback has emerged as an adolescent with an identity crisis. Is it a permaculture farm, an environmental education site, or just a muddy weed patch?
Tucked into the woods just south of Fairhaven College is the Outback, where beds of beans and rows of rhubarb share a city-block-sized space with a native wetland. Douglas firs and cedars shade the stream, while black cottonwoods send summer snow drifting into the sunny garden.
The Outback was originally farmed by pioneering Bellingham homesteaders. The site escaped a parking lot destiny in the 1970s when Fairhaven students adopted it. More recently the farm’s focus has shifted to environmental education, and was officially named the Outback Outdoor Experiential Learning Site.
The Outback’s mission statement establishes it as a student-run site "dedicated to teaching, developing and implementing sustainable land use methods." The question is whether the site can leave behind its rag-tag, tumbleweed past and become fully integrated into the campus community.
The Outback has been an educational resource for more than 30 years, but it only recently gained an official position through Associated Students. These days, Outback fans are brimming with ideas for the site. However, many students still don’t even know it exists. Newly appointed coordinator, Steve Shaw, said it’s invisible to most of campus.
The Outback Amphitheatre, or "Sustainable Stage," is a half-finished monument to the recent peak in Outback inspiration.
Students Casey Hons, Andrew Bernardt, Arin Smith and Trent Eliot began working on the stage in 2005. Made almost entirely with recycled wood, it will feature solar panels and a water catchment system.
"The really tricky stuff is out of the way," Eliot said. "From now on, it’s just slapping boards up."
Eliot said the amphitheatre could bring a lot of recognition for the Outback as a theatre and music venue. When finished, it will offer performers solar-powered sound and lighting.
The stage’s construction has been organized entirely by students, a feat that has contributed both to its originality and its unfinished state. Over the summer and fall volunteers worked diligently on the amphitheatre, but more recently Eliot said it has been difficult to juggle classes and construction.
"This is the furthest a project like this has ever gotten," said Campus Facilities Manager David Willett, who drew the architectural plans for the amphitheatre.
The Outback attracts a core group of dedicated students who come together for weekend potlucks and work parties. Herb-garden coordinator Amanda Smith said the Outback creates an active community where everyone has a voice in decision-making.
"Whoever has a relationship to the Outback ends up being more involved than they ever thought they would be," Smith said.
Matia Jones coordinates the Educational Garden and is eager for the broader campus community to embrace the Outback.
"I think it’s intimidating if you’re not a gutter-punky, hippie type," Jones said.
Students hope to make the Outback more inclusive through a garden mentoring program. Experienced gardeners in the community will coach novice green thumbs and tend community plots in the summer when many students leave. The Associated Students Child Development Center might also claim a plot, so preschoolers could get their hands in the dirt.
Willett has a three-inch binder overflowing with student plans and ideas for Outback projects. Students have often enlisted his help in projects they later abandoned.
"People have put a lot of energy into that place," Willett said, "And sometimes you look at it, and you’d hardly know it."
Melanie Swanson, who last year became the Outback’s first Associated Students coordinator, said she’s frustrated that people forget the Outback’s history.
From a historical perspective, the Outback has been dependent on student whims, riding the ebb and flow of transient student enthusiasm. Projects of the forgotten past include maintaining pigs, goats and ducks, solar panels, wind power generators, composting toilets, a cob greenhouse, a sauna and various outdoor theatres.
"It just kind of goes along in stops and starts," Willett said.
Despite waxing and waning student productivity, the Outback may be on its way to greater heights.
For example, Engineers Without Borders is developing an organic digester to convert cow manure and food waste into compost and methane fuel. Engineering student Tori Talkington would not otherwise have been involved in the Outback, but said it could be the perfect place to develop the digester.
Students are also introduced to the Outback through Fairhaven human ecology and ethnobotany classes. Others participate in LEAD, an ecological service-learning program in which students remove invasive plants and restore the Outback’s wetland.
LEAD’s student co-director Stacia Dreyer said the Outback is an ideal place for students to apply environmental learning.
"Class work can be transferred here, and learning here can be transferred to class," Dreyer said.
Jones said some people are turned off by the grungy aesthetic of discarded student tin can art, cement blocks, and old bathtubs she calls "classic Outback." The ramshackle, recycled feel is charming to some people, but alienating to others.
"We’re face-lifting it," Jones said. "I don’t know if we’ll get the computer science folks coming down there in droves, but we could be more friendly to them."
Students look forward to empowering more people to incorporate ecological learning into their lives.
"You don’t have to be a radical leftist dumpster-diver," Jones said. "You can be an accountant and grow vegetables on your balcony. It’s part of our inheritance rights as humans."
Emily Stebbins studies human ecology, sustainable community design, and Spanish. This is her first time being published.
ARTICLE PHOTOS
INTIMATE DANGER Article by Danielle Koagel
Photography & Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Olwin
