Northland College

• Type: Liberal Arts, Private, 4 yr, <1000, Rural
• Region: Midwest
• Address: 1411 Ellis Avenue
• City: Ashland
• State: WI
• ZIP: 54806
• URL: http://www.northland.edu
• involvement in the Real Food Challenge?
  Level 3: Taking the Challenge
• Provider: Flik (Compass)
• On campus concessions: Sandella's
• Dining Services Director/Executive Chef: Jeff Spanenberg
• Farm size: 5
• Farm operated by students? yes
• Needs and challenges: We need to develop relationships with local, organic and sustainably focused, food producers and establish a set of basic food requirments for feeding our campus. The challenges are: working with/around corporate contracts, changing community behavior towards food through education, and working with administration and Chartwells to adapt our food system.
• Successes and achievements: - We successfully tried "Trayless Tuesdays" and enstated trayless as our daily operating routine, saving thousands of gallons of water, energy and CO2 emissions for heating. - We have free-range Friday once a month featuring locally grass-fed meat. - We have a student-started & run Soup Cafe each Tuesday and Thursday selling homemade, allergy friendly, organic, as local as possible soups for $2 BYOBowl with all funds going towards more food initiatives (like making more soup, cooking workshops, supporting national sustainable food efforts, and more). - We have free-range eggs in the cafeteria. - When available produce from the Mino Aki Campus Garden is used in the cafeteria. - We compost all vegetable and paper towel waste on campus and a local farmer uses our meat waste as pig food.
• Composting: pre-consumer food waste, post-consumer food waste, other organic waste
• Food activities: student farm/garden, farm-to-college program, organic purchasing, local purchasing, fair trade purchasing, academic programs, student organizations
• Farm functions: supplies dining hall, research, training growers, other educational, food consumed by volunteers
• comments: In the beginning stages of designing a permaculture farm. The design will come from our Growing Connections classes mainly from students with aid from faculty.
• Relevant academic programs: Course(s) offered, Research, Major or concentration, Undergrad degree, Extracurricular Activities, Student-run programs
• comments: Northland College has 3 gardens and 3 greenhouses all available for community use; a production garden (produces for orientation trips, special events, and cafeteria supplement), a community garden with rentable plots, an herb spiral, as well as a soon-to-be planted farm off campus, one greenhouse in a dorm building, one in an academic building, and one outside next to the production garden.