Dripping Springs: Working the Land

May 1, 2014 | Travel

[title subtitle=”Words & Images Laurie Marshall”][/title]

Taking a stroll around the Fayetteville, Arkansas square on a Saturday morning during farmers’ market season is a kind of Nirvana for anyone interested in the art and science of people-watching. One of the largest crowds gathered on the square each week surrounds the space occupied by Dripping Springs Garden. The garden’s founders, Mark Cain and Michael Crane, have created a go-to source for organically grown flowers and produce.

In the mid–1980s, Mark and Michael were both headed toward the same goal of spending their lives in a garden. Mark received a degree in biology from the University of Illinois and studied organic horticulture at U.C. Santa Cruz before heading for the Ozarks to find a place to start an organic farm. Michael, a native of Springfield, Missouri, was working as a landscaper and creating an enviable garden around his home in Eureka Springs. Friends say he not only has a green thumb, but “green fingers, feet, heart and mind as well.” After meeting through mutual friends, Mark and Michael decided to join forces and began looking for land. The small valley they found along the banks of Dry Fork Creek in Carroll County was home to a derelict blueberry farm, but they saw the potential for revival.

As you turn off Arkansas Highway 21 to drive the final few miles to the farm, it’s easy to see why they chose this location. The small creek that wanders through the woods beside the dirt road feeds the irrigation source for Dripping Springs’ crops, and the bluffs lining the road are made up of “karst” stone — a natural limestone formation that acts as a filter system for ground water in the Ozark mountain region. Karst geology also aids drainage in planted fields, helping keep plants from becoming waterlogged in wet seasons.

There is indication that there have been fertile soils in the valley for much longer than the thirty years Mark and Michael have been there. As Michael gathered stones to build a pathway from the main house to the creek, he found a perfect fossil of a pre-historic Cycad plant in one stone that is now featured in the herb garden. But the forty acre farm is not only producing organically-grown flowers, vegetables and mushrooms, they are also raising an annual crop of young people who are determined to go out and make a difference in the world.

Since 1994, Mark and Michael have advertised a small number of annual internship positions on websites specifically aimed at matching qualified applicants with farming internships and apprenticeships such as theirs, a continuation of the kind of education Mark experienced in California. The methods used to grow their crops are sustainable and organic, and students who work with them learn by doing. As Mark says, “We’ve had people working with us on the farm since the beginning — this is the way I learned.”

The Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA) program connects young people across the globe with farms offering internships in the United States. Often, these students have already studied some form of agriculture and may even be working on farms in their home countries. Students in the United States find the farm through ATTRA’s Sustainable Farming Internships and Apprenticeships listing, and by word of mouth from others who have worked on the farm.

Four to six interns arrive in April each year, when planting for the summer crops begins in earnest, and they stay through October or November when the main gardens are put to bed for the winter. Each intern is paid a stipend and provided with room and board. A hand-built timber-frame barn on the property provides rooms for interns, and there are two yurts available as well. Mark and Michael have welcomed interns from just down the road, and from around the world.

If anyone arrives with bucolic dreams of living an easy life on the land, those dreams are soon abandoned as the real work of running a working organic farm begins. But despite long, physically demanding days, Mark says there has been a resurgence of interest in programs such as theirs in recent years. “The experience of working on a farm where income comes from sales is different than working at an institutionally supported program with a student garden.” Knowing that the work one does as an intern directly impacts the bottom line of the farm creates a stronger commitment from the interns. There is no university budget line supporting Dripping Springs — only the hands of the people living on the farm.

Intern Patrick Jones is from Ava, Missouri, a small town southeast of Springfield. He toured Dripping Springs while working for Ozark Alternatives, a farm and orchard located in Fayetteville, and after a few more visits with Mark and Michael, he was asked to join them. This is his second summer to work at the farm. When asked what he plans to do after his time at the farm, he doesn’t hesitate; “I want to manage an organic farm myself. We’ll see what comes along.” Another intern, Grace Hockenbeck, is originally from New Jersey, and also worked at Ozark Alternatives, where she met Patrick. “I was WWOOFing, and heard about the farm from people I met in Fayetteville.” The acronym “WWOOF” stands for Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. As the WWOOF website states, “WWOOF-USA® is part of a worldwide effort to link visitors with organic farmers, promote an educational exchange, and build a global community conscious of ecological farming practices.” WWOOFers, as individuals involved in the activity are called, trade a short-term commitment to work on participating farms for room and board. Grace and Patrick have decided to work toward their individual goals of owning an organic farm together, much as Mark and Michael did thirty years ago.

Caroline Aoyama, an intern from San Francisco, touches on a different kind of value provided by the work she’s doing at the farm. “I’m not a school person. This is our school.” For young people who are not interested in a traditional, college-based education, internship programs such as the one at Dripping Springs provide an alternative foundation for building a career. The farm’s sole source of income is its crops, so the six-day work weeks are full of planting, weeding, irrigating, harvesting, planning, and solving problems. The work done here is not intended to be a fun summertime diversion — it’s serious business. The work ethic taught in the gardens and the immersion in a sustainable and organic lifestyle impacts the lives of those who spend a summer here, even if they do not choose agriculture or farming as a career. Many of the students who work on the farm are putting their hands-on education to good use in their lives after they leave Carroll county.

Tee Belón came to the farm as a student from Peru. After returning home to Lima, she created the first inner-city environmental education program of its kind in the city of 8.4 million people. Aphisak Camphen returned to his home in Thailand and formed the first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in a country where forty-nine percent of the country’s labor force is employed in agriculture. Matt Champagne co-operates a stone mason and timber-framing business in Northwest Arkansas. In fact, he and his team hand-crafted the timber-frame barn and home on the farm using wood found and milled on the property. Chris Hiryak and Ryan Norman were hired straight off the farm to become Garden Specialists with the Delta Garden Study, an initiative set up through the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute in Little Rock. Chris then went on to found Little Rock Urban Farming, a community organization that produces organic fruits, vegetables and cut flowers for local markets. Phillip Bullard is a co-creator of the Dunbar Garden, a two-acre outdoor classroom that provides hands-on education for school children, teenagers and adults in downtown Little Rock.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are harvest days at Dripping Springs, with Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings spent in Fayetteville at the market. No sales are made at the farm, but they do sell shares in a CSA program for individuals who are interested in organic, locally-grown food options. Ozark Natural Foods, a cooperative grocery store in Fayetteville, sells produce and flowers from Dripping Springs year-round. Learn more about Dripping Springs, internships available through ATTRA, or WWOOFing, by visiting drippingspringsgarden.com, attra.ncat.org, and wwoofusa.org. Support local farmers through your area CSA. Find a location near you at localharvest.org.

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To buy flowers and veggies grown at Dripping Springs Farm, visit the Fayetteville Farmers’ Market on the Fayetteville Square at 110 W. Mountain St.

Thursday: 7 AM to 1 PM, Saturday: 7 AM to 2 PM

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