This month, Justine Appel (Yale College, class of 2015), writes about her participation in the Harvest program, part of the Yale Sustainable Food Project.

The soil felt like velvet under my fingers as I pushed the broccoli plant into the earth. I sat back on my heels, hamstrings protesting my perpetual crouch, and grinned at the sight of hundreds of identical green sprouts in slightly imperfect rows to my right. I hadn't felt a cell-phone vibration in days. I had never before been so utterly connected to the ground beneath me.

Two months earlier, I had been typing up my application for Harvest, a four-day pre-orientation program run by the Yale Sustainable Food Project. Harvest sends small groups of incoming freshmen, led by upperclassmen, to camp out and help out on small-scale organic Connecticut farms. The freshmen get to experience farm work, learn about sustainable agriculture, meet other students, and prepare for the transition into college life. Though I hail from the Garden State, I had never set foot on a farm. Here was my chance to do so; I figured that, and at the very least, I would come out of it with a few new friends. So I answered a few questions about my interests, opted for a medium-intensity farming experience, and hit submit.

Soon after arriving in New Haven in late August, I found myself sitting in a circle at the Yale Farm with leaders Sam and Bonnie, both rising juniors, and seven other freshmen. After lunch and introductions, we headed off; my group's destination was Waldingfield [http://www.waldingfieldfarm.com/], a family-owned organic vegetable farm in Litchfield County. I was surprised by how quickly the city and its suburbs gave way to gorgeous, wild landscapes, urban sprawl melting into pastoral beauty.

When we reached Waldingfield, we somewhat reluctantly relinquished our phones to Sam and Bonnie. I was a bit surprised when they asked for our watches as well, but Bonnie was happy to explain the "Harvest philosophy" to me. On the farm, hours and minutes would be inconsequential. Our time was governed by the rising and setting sun, and all that mattered were the land and each other. As someone who compulsively checks her e-mail and feels aimless without a to-do list, I embraced this notion wholeheartedly. I thought to myself, I can be a total hippie on this trip. I'm in.

I quickly found out that farming isn't all about meditative reflection—we worked really hard, and our short trip only gave us a glimpse of the labor that goes into growing and cultivating food. We woke up fairly early each morning so we could get to the fields on time. The first morning, we weeded chard. Farming organically meant that any unwelcome plants competing with the actual crops had to be removed by human hands, instead of the much more convenient—but ultimately destructive— method of dousing the beds with chemicals. We learned how to move quickly down the rows, and by the end of the morning, we had turned a sea of unruly weeds into an attractive plot of glossy green and crimson chard. I had never thought that vegetables could be so pretty.

Each day we had nice, long breaks for lunch and dinner, and while our group bonded plenty in the fields, it was a lot easier to relax and chat over food. We reflected on our farm tasks, but we also talked about hilarious YouTube videos, the rise of China, and our favorite ways to procrastinate. Of course, Yale came up every once and a while. The most common subject, though, was food. When you become a part of the food production process, you can't help but think a little more deeply about the ways we nourish ourselves.

These conversations continued through our afternoon work. When picking tomatoes with Bonnie, I sheepishly asked her what she liked most about Yale, fully aware of how trite I sounded but curious nonetheless. The answer she gave me was so real, marked by the familiarity of lived experience; nobody in the admissions office could hope to formulate something equivalent for their pamphlets. When I spoke with Sam I got an entirely different perspective, and we ending up talking a lot about farming.

My four days at Waldingfield helped me feel ready for the enormous transition I was about to make, but they also fundamentally changed the way I think about the food I eat and where it comes from. I felt it first on that afternoon of planting broccoli: a certain harmony with the earth, which was going to turn this little shoot into food, which would in turn end up on someone's dinner plate in just a matter of weeks. I felt responsible for something big and important. Then, later that day, we sat in the barn and Sam and Bonnie passed around the essay "The Pleasures of Eating" by Wendell Berry, which we read aloud to one another. One of the last lines summarized my experience better than I could: "Eating with the fullest pleasure — pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance — is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world."

The Harvest program planted a seed in my mind that has begun to grow over the semester, as I make time in my schedule to volunteer at the Yale Farm and participate in the inspirational community there. That seed is the idea that our lives are sustained by food, and therefore by the farms that grow it. To be a part of food production is to participate in something sacred and essential to life. I am so grateful that Harvest introduced me to what is now one of my greatest pleasures, the simple process of cultivating, planting, and harvesting the thing that keeps all of us going each day: food.