By Emmett Forster, with help from Dr. Sarah Kennedy, Tom Lamb, and ARCN 246 students

Critical to an understanding the Olin Farm Site is a discussion of how its usage changed over time. As such, it is first useful to investigate the origins of the larger Carleton College Farm and the intentions behind it. The project officially began in May 1914 when 108 acres of land to the northeast of campus was purchased from Frank Parr for $13,100; the purchase of the Olin Farm in April 1916 for $13,500 brought another 100 acres under the initiative.^[1] There were three main incentives behind the purchase. First, the project was to ignite a broader agricultural biology program at the college, with the first farm manager, Frederick Showers, teaching the classes “Animal Husbandry” and “Plant Life on the Farm.”^[2] Second, the college planned that the farm would be incorporated as a work-study option; that enrolled students could use the money they made working on the farm either to supplement their room and board or as they would with any other paid job. Third, it was hoped that work on the farm would be meaningful for students and that a culture and community would subsequently develop around it; this ideology was especially held by the college’s president at the time, Donald J. Cowling. Cowling was known to enthusiastically support and attempt to create a farm culture on campus, framing the study of cattle breeding as philosophy in an attempt to appeal to academic-minded students.^[3] Letters of correspondence between Cowling and Ben W Rieke, a previous manager of the farm, reveal that the president even had a personal investment in the farm. Responding to a message from Ben in October 1917, Cowling disclosed that despite his intentions to sell some of his cattle, he “dislik[ed] selling the team for they suit[ed him] splendidly” and that he had been “looking forward for the past three o[r] four years to the time when [he] would have the leisure” to look after them.^[4] Cowling also appears to have a personal appreciation for farming through a letter he received before the purchase of the farm in January 1913. Here, a man with the surname of Hendrickson was continuing a previous conversation with Cowling about the college’s potential purchase of a farm. At the end of the letter, Hendrickson mentioned how he would like to send Cowling “a statement of the things [he had] raised on [his] farm,” indicating an awareness that Cowling would likewise be interested in this information.^[5]

Despite Cowling’s love for farming and his eagerness to cultivate similar feelings in Carleton students, the college ultimately viewed that this effort had failed in large. The student body showed little interest in thDespite Cowling’s love for farming and his eagerness to cultivate similar feelings in Carleton students, the college ultimately viewed that this effort had failed in large. The student body showed little interest in the courses designed for the farm and they found working at it to be uneconomical given how much they were paying for their education—the long walk to the farm took time away from schoolwork, the intense physical labor did not pair well with the need to study, and the small wages gained through the work did not outweigh these issues. 

Cowling’s ideological hopes with the project were realized, however, by Ben W. Rieke. Originally enrolled in the Class of 1917, Rieke decided to forgo his education at Carleton in January 1916 to become full-time manager of the Carleton Farm, being in the position until August 1917.^[6] In his aforementioned exchange of letters with President Cowling, the two discussed Rieke’s plan for completing Carleton’s graduations requirements, as he was seemingly concurrently enrolled at an agricultural college while finishing his senior year at Carleton.^[7]

Given this information and the context of his work at the farm, it is likely that Rieke initially came to Carleton to study the liberal arts, fell in love with the farming, took a gap year to be the Farm Manager, and then committed to furthering his education on the subject; it can thus be assumed that Rieke’s pivot to farming came as a result of his experiences with the Carleton Farm project. Rieke was not the only student to have had good experiences with the farm project, however. When it was announced that the farm would be sold, many Carleton alumni wrote to the college expressing their sadness at the news; the assistant treasurer acknowledged this fact in a response to one such letter, writing that “[m]any, many people [had] great sentimental attachment to [the] herd.”^[8] Ralph W. Wayne, for example, fondly remembered in a letter how he “milked cows for [his] room and board at the Carleton farm and so [had] some personal ties [to the herd] that [went] back many years.”^[9] As for Rieke, the farm project indeed clearly had a profound influence on Wayne, who worked as an Extension Dairyman at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Agriculture at the time of his writing. As evidenced by these stories, Cowling clearly did succeed, if on a smaller scale than what was initially hoped, to incite his love of farming into his students while they were enrolled at Carleton. 

Still, the farm was sold in May 1964 after the college’s Business Manager, Frank Wright, wrote to then-President John W. Nason that “it is unrealistic to expect a profitable operation on the farm using hired labor,” encouraging the sale of the farm’s Holstein herd and equipment and the lease of the land “on a 50% share crop basis.”^[10] The fact that the farm was not economically sustainable, however, had been recognized by the college for years. A 1925 report discussing “the improvement of the farm situation” found that “the chief need [was] a reconsideration of financial policies,” as the college had “too great a capital investment for the size and quality of the land.”^[11] Indeed, the author of the document explained that “Corporation-owned farms run by paid managers [had] not proven successful and show[ed] very little promise of doing so” and that, concerning the financial profits of the investment, “[the project had] been a failure, and promise[d] to continue to be so. However, the author also noted how the farm had “rendered invaluable service to the college… in assisting young men,” arguing that “[this service had] probably more than repaid the losses incurred.”^[12]Here, it is apparent that the intent and hope for the farm to be more an experiential benefit for students rather than strictly than a financial benefit to the college was shared by more faculty than just Cowling. By the 1960s, however, the ideological motivations for the farm’s existence no longer were important to the college; in his letter to Nason suggesting the termination of the project, Wright expresses his regret that the college “didn’t have the sense to admit defeat five years ago.”^[13] As such, the project was terminated a few weeks later.

The material evidence we gathered during our excavation of the Olin Farm corroborates this understanding of the shift in ideology about the farm. In our fieldwork, we chose to mainly investigate a walled depression that we called Feature 1, as we suspected it might have been the location of a previous structure. In looking at a 1923 arial photograph of the farm, this suspicion seems to be correct, as a small barn can be seen in a similar area and orientation to Feature 1 and a nearby machine shed corresponds in the same way with a rectangular cement foundation we identified as Feature 2.

As such, we decided to place three excavation units near the feature: one (EU-1) in the depression itself, and two (EU-2 and EU-3) upon the angled walls of the depression. Together, EU-2 and EU-3 valuable provided insight into the usage of the site due to three intertwined factors: they had a much greater yield of artifacts than EU-1, there was no clear variation in stratigraphy throughout our excavation, and the artifacts from the pits had no traceable connections in terms of use usage in life; they were a variety items such as scrap metal, jewelry, beer cans, pieces of pencil, and broken pottery and glass. These variables in tandem suggest that the walls of the depression were the result of a trash midden that outlined the location of the barn itself. Critically, however, items within this midden can be traced to dates after the termination of the Carleton Farm project.

The can lid in Figure 12, for example, has been identified as that of a 1973 either an Old Milwaukee or a ScThe can lid in Figure 12, for example, has been identified as that of a 1973 either an Old Milwaukee or a Schlitz beer can.^[14][15] Another beer can was traced to 1965 at the earliest, one year after the Carleton Farm was discontinued; a third can, that of a Budweiser beer, must have been deposited after 1977, as the stay-on-tab on its lid was patented in that year.^[16][17] As such, it appears that after Carleton terminated the farm project in 1964, the Olin site quickly became, if it wasn’t used for this purpose already, a place for either the college or residents of the surrounding area to deposit their trash. Indeed, Figure 15 shows the changes in the arial map of the site between 1951 and 1964.^[18][19]

Especially significant here is the disappearance of the large central structure—likely what we identified in our site as Feature 1 due to its orientation in relation to other buildings and the surrounding area—in the later image. This interpretation of the material evidence found during our excavations thus fits with the previously discussed understanding of the college’s change in perspective on the site and the farm project as a whole: the purpose of that land was no longer to give students meaningful and unique experiences through participating in farm life, but to suite whatever financial and special need the college required.

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^[1] History of College Farm. 1925. Retrieved from Carleton College Archives.

^[2] Headley, Leal A., and Merrill E. Jarchow. Carleton: The First Century. North Central Publishing Company, 1966. Page 307.

^[3] Headley, Leal A., and Merrill E. Jarchow. Carleton: The First Century. North Central Publishing Company, 1966. Page 307.

^[4] Cowling, Donald J. Letter to Ben W. Rieke. October 4, 1917. Retrieved from Carleton College Archives.

^[5] Hendrickson. Letter to Donald Cowling. January 27, 1913. Retrieved from Carleton College Archives.

^[6] History of College Farm. 1925. Retrieved from Carleton College Archives. Page 3.

^[7] Cowling, Donald J. Letter to Ben W. Rieke. October 4, 1917. Retrieved from Carleton College Archives.

^[8] Pfoutz, C. Y. Letter to Ralph W. Wayne. May 16, 1964. Retrieved from Carleton College Archives.

^[9] Wayne, Ralph W. Letter to Frank Wright. May 11, 1964. Retrieved from Carleton College Archives.

^[10] Wright, Frank. Letter to John W. Nason. April 15, 1964. Retrieved from Carleton College Archives.

^[11] History of College Farm. 1925. Retrieved from Carleton College Archives. Page 8.

^[12] History of College Farm. 1925. Retrieved from Carleton College Archives. Page 8.

^[13] Wright, Frank. Letter to John W. Nason. April 15, 1964. Retrieved from Carleton College Archives.

^[14] ashes0fyou. (n.d.). Old Milwaukee Jos Schlitz Brewing Co.. empty aluminum pull tab beer can. eBay. Retrieved from https://www.ebay.com/itm/224997456248?hash=item3462e4b978%3Ag%3A~m4AAOSwI8Rh0WHG&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAABIETaLpXIrgmesGNyZdyTQC0RnMU%2FgkLZOUpVXTNRa7AsinZo0N%2Brx4ycM2PvedTZ3uJDuSMHgqJa7bf3VxdTDcVvd6QJ9J5IC6zFLIpZ5SCJgorHClA5iPChy2n3UQ9CQKJ7K7MrW1xY%2FcHGtil9F2k7qlTTYxHQJSQe1goJGzWCZ%2FEKbN2aoNbusxgNGA4Bg4JvHcR0VrYdOcUrG6L%2BEKg0UmxK5z4wvI0VLXHUJuNCo0CbKDdcbo3TMOTdZc9Hx2KjRJ80OwCrVLKzvLTl5C2FuNuXVRuE2hfCJUAZnJwfHMhL39o9gogna71yEgruc3KNk0ABnqjcr%2FwA5nzmqide9W0MSzalZQG3qkeon0jbrcpzcun4yKwg6vWcEpo42g%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABFBMvN35uKFg 

^[15] chicagofan85. (n.d.). Schlitz 1973 aluminum 16 oz beer can Milwaukee, WI, Tampa, FL, Longview, TX ETC. eBay. Retrieved from https://www.ebay.com/itm/144322272984?hash=item219a471ed8%3Ag%3A8YoAAOSwPnxhq9PY 

^[16] Theo. Hamm Brewing Co. (1965). New seamless all-aluminum can seals in Hamm’s famous freshness. Facebook. Retrieved from https://scontent-msp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.18172-8/12141001_998808156827566_8095583736306591482_o.jpg?stp=cp0_dst-jpg_e15_fr_q65&_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=2d5d41&_nc_ohc=fjK8VU-V7NoAX_KDPFh&_nc_ht=scontent-msp1-1.xx&oh=00_AT9lTrcTIOXZr9Uqoy67OgZky4kEi45iODQYGFaRLtAzkg&oe=62BCF8FF 

^[17] Cudzik, D.F. (n.d.). End Closure for a Container. Patent number 244,915. Filed August 20, 1975. Issued July 5, 1977. https://patents.google.com/patent/USD244915#citedBy

^[18] Carleton College. Georeferenced 1964 aerial photo of Carleton College and the surrounding area. University of Minnesota Libraries MHAPO. Created September 4, 2020. https://carleton.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=eeef26ed34df4ca5a28f5b92d516dd2f

^[19] Carleton College. Georeferenced 1951 aerial photo of Carleton College and the surrounding area. University of Minnesota Libraries MHAPO. Created September 3, 2020. https://carleton.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=c37c6b7dfde04fe4a0052a612561e86d