How does the agricultural community in Finland, Minnesota build resilience under economic and environmental strain? Can a Northfield farm support a diversity of growers while attending to the ecology of the land it relies on? How might a worker-run composting cooperative relate its work to immigrant defense and mutual aid?
Carleton students engaged these questions and more on the CCCE’s two 2026 Alternative Spring Break trips. Supported by the Julianne Williams Memorial Fund, the trips offer students an affordable opportunity to engage critically with the CCCE’s community partners in Northfield and northern Minnesota.
Students’ work also supports host sites by filling volunteer gaps during Carleton’s spring break and providing extra capacity during a busy season. For example, students on the Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center trip performed a variety of tasks to prepare the center’s organic farm for spring planting. They also shadowed youth naturalist classes and visited other farmers in the Finland area, learning about the interdependence of a tight-knit agricultural community.
Trip leader Junyoung Benjegerdes ‘26 reflected on the importance of relationships in Wolf Ridge’s work: “Seeing how people in Finland supported each other really reaffirmed to me the importance of community relations in building resilience.”
While students at Wolf Ridge focused on environmental education and rural resilience, students on the Food and Community trip explored how food systems intersect with immigration and environmental justice closer to campus.
Staff from the Community Action Center and Sharing Our Roots Farm shared how their organizations support cross-cultural flourishing, from providing abundant culturally-relevant foods at the Northfield Community Education Center (NCEC) food shelf to supporting immigrant land access. Over break, students stocked and staffed the NCEC shelf and helped with seeding, pruning, and community garden maintenance at Sharing Our Roots.
Local trip participants also learned about the importance of composting at both small and large scales. They worked on-site with the Curbside Compost Cooperative and toured the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’s new Dakota Prairie Composting facility. Curbside took the time to explain how their worker-run composting model reflects a broader commitment to systemic social change, sharing how they analyze root causes of injustice and environmental degradation in order to intervene most effectively.
Trip leader Aimee Yuan ‘26 connected each composting organization’s work to its local and global impact, citing the 2023 Rice County Landfill fire and the climate impact of methane gas emissions from organic waste in landfills. “By making and selling compost, we recycle nutrients back into the earth instead of creating pollution. This practice of healing the earth mirrors the work of Sharing Our Roots.”
When they weren’t working with community partners, students from both the Wolf Ridge and Food and Community trips spent time cooking for one another at Dacie Moses House. Local trip leader Moriah Reusch ‘27 remembers the nightly Dacie Moses dinners as one of the most rewarding parts of the trips. “There, each of us shared the foods that are important to us, often ones that reminded us of home.”
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Hear more student perspectives on the Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center trip here.
Hear more student perspectives on the local Food and Community trip here.
