Seed Savers, Soil Saviors, and Sanctuaries

From Soil Saviors to Sanctuaries

How Laurentian Women Are Reassembling Ecological Balance Through Small-Scale Agriculture

When I was 10 years old, a St. Lawrence student asked if I was going to continue my parent’s organic farm. “No,” I replied. I have great respect for agriculturists, but a career at Bittersweet Farm was not what I wanted to do with my life. My interests were environmental conservation or maybe journalism. It wasn’t that agriculture was daunting or unappealing; my passions simply lay in litter cleanup and tree protection.

Mowing Less is All the Buzz: The Pollinator Project

“I want to be clear,” says Aswini Pai, associate professor and co-chair of biology at St. Lawrence. “I study wild bees. I do not study the European honeybee. I think that has received far more attention, quite honestly, than it deserves.”

A Patchwork of Chilean History in ‘Arpilleras’

Following a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet in 1973 that overthrew Chile’s democratically elected socialist government, Chilean women began to sew patchwork tapestries called arpilleras. The brightly colored pictures were made from scraps of household cloth, including the clothing of abducted and missing relatives.