A club date for the students who run Dilmun Hill has a whole other meaning than in most clubs.

Their activities include hoeing, weeding and harvesting produce at Dilmun Hill, Cornell's student-run organic farm and an official Cornell club. During harvest, they hitch rigs to their bikes and haul up to 400 pounds of fresh produce to the Ag Quad, where they sell the veggies to Manndible Café in Mann Library and to passersby at a farm stand on Monday afternoons.

"The idea behind Dilmun Hill is to create an experiential learning center where students can teach students," says photographer Ben Scott-Killian '09, the farm's summer co-manager, treasurer of the club and a science of natural and environmental systems major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. "It's not just farming but philosophy, politics and a way to get away from the more rigid academic setting."

At 12 acres, Dilmun Hill is one of the nation's largest student-run farms and has about 30 undergraduate members, says Scott-Killian. Decisions are made democratically. And what doesn't sell on campus is donated to local food pantries; this year more than 400 pounds of produce has gone to charitable organizations in the Ithaca area.

Scott-Killian says he's trying to get a holistic education at Cornell, though he's not sure what he'll do with it. "I like to tell myself I'll be a farmer, a photographer, a philosopher. I think my education is giving me the learning tools that will support me in my goal of living sustainably and on a subsistence level while challenging myself at the same time."

Whether he's putting in his weekly 10 hours at Dilmun or on a field trip for one of his classes, such as Organic Food and Farming, a new course intended for the new ag science major, Scott-Killian is working the angles through his camera's viewfinder.

"Photography lets me to explore these sustainable agricultural settings in a more spiritual and intentional way," he says. His photographic record allows him to "look back at these pictures and get back into the same mindset as when I was there. I can reconnect with the land, the people and the feelings again. Its very good for me in that way."