Brita Olson can be found every Saturday morning throwing axes, chucking logs and slicing away pieces of a log with a crosscut saw.
Brita Olson waters plants at the UI greenhouse on Friday afternoon. What Brita enjoys most about soil stewards is that she gets to work with really great people and she is doing something fruitful, she describes soil stewards as a peacful and relaxing activity.
Olson, an ecology and conservation biology major at the University of Idaho, is on UI’s logger sports team, and said she was first introduced to the sport by one of her close friends.
“One of my really good friends was just like ‘we compete and we just throw axes and crosscut saw, it’s the best,'” Olson said. “So I just showed up, it’s a lot of fun.”
Despite her aggressiveness in the logger sports arena, Olson has a strong connection with sustainable living and the environment.
The logger sports team is only one part of Olson’s busy schedule. She is the president of UI’s organic farm club — the Soil Stewards — an intern with the Stateline Wetland Restoration Project and serves as program coordinator for the UI Sustainability Center.
“I’ve really found my home in the Sustainability Center and the Soil Stewards,” Olson said.
As Soil Stewards president, Olson said the organic farm allows students to impact the campus and Moscow community through providing a source of organically grown produce. She said the farm also allows students to learn about organic farming, while creating a community of mutual responsibility between participating students.
Olson said she was exposed to organic farming from a young age, but it wasn’t until a trip to Ecuador that she started to think more critically about sustainable farming. She said the experience tasting produce from an open-air market, and reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” convinced her to take action.
“It clearly got me thinking about my food system,” Olson said. “I felt very compelled to get involved somehow, and I’d known about the Soil Stewards student farm for a while.”
Although the only experience Olson had with organic farming was working in her mother’s garden, she started volunteering at the farm last fall.
Olson said the club had a large turnover the year before that allowed her to take on larger responsibilities in the club, including organizing the weekly harvest and delivering the produce to community members.
“I just kind of plunged right in, like first day in the club. Now I’m working for the club six hours a week,” Olson said.
Olson said working for the Sustainability Center as program coordinator allows her to organize events — like Bike Fix and the UIdeas Symposium — that have an impact on students and reflect the issues and topics she is passionate about.
The UIdeas Symposium is an interdisciplinary event that will feature five UI professors who will speak on a variety of topics from energy conservation to sociology. Olson was responsible for developing the concept for the first symposium, which took place last year. The event will take place this year at 6 p.m. Thursday in the Student Union Building Ballroom and is open to the public.
Olson said she had a large part in the creation of the event, and hopes to see it turn into a cornerstone event for the Sustainability Center. She said the symposium exposes students to new ideas, and gets students to think about how they affect the environment.
“It celebrates all of the things that are really positive about a university atmosphere, where you just have five very passionate people sharing what they do, and why,” Olson said.
Olson said the Sustainability Center will host multiple events throughout the week in recognition of Earth Day.
She said another event she is excited about is the Moscow Community Race for Action.
During the Race for Action, 24 teams of two will race around Moscow to complete tasks at local nonprofits. The winners will be able to donate the proceeds from the event to a local nonprofit of their choice, Olson said.
She said Race for Action is an important event for the center, because it gives back to the Moscow community and involves many community members — including Moscow Mayor Bill Lambert, who will compete on a team with Mary Beth Staben, wife of UI president Chuck Staben.
In the end, Olson said it is her commitment to sustainable living and close-knit communities that drives her to get involved.
“I have a really strong passion for communities, and I think that communities are a really strong thing,” Olson said. “It’s amazing what a group of people can do when they gather together for a common purpose.”
Ryan Tarinelli can be reached at [email protected]