‘Weekends are not a thing’: Meet the students who live year-round at Cal Poly’s agriculture units

Luke Somma didn’t think he’d spend his junior year at college living in a trailer.

But unlike most trailers, this one has an official name: Cal Poly Building 18-L—the Dairy Science Residence Trailer. 

And Somma, the dairy unit’s student maintenance manager, can’t beat the 30-second commute to work. 

“I just roll out of bed and I’m there,” Somma said.

The Dairy Trailer is part of the school’s Agriculture Housing Program, which will house 50 students across campus as of Fall 2024. In exchange for 20 hours of unpaid work each month, students live at their respective agriculture units—poultry, dairy, swine, plant sciences and more—and they only pay about $500 a month in rent.

In the small-town San Luis Obispo housing market, students consistently scramble to find safe places to live among decades-old apartments crumbling with termites and mold. One house’s lease can attract more than 50 groups of applicants, and some students choose to live in their vans to avoid the headache of renting.

While California pours millions of dollars into the county’s affordable housing projects, Cal Poly’s College of Agriculture (CAFES) has its own solution: let students live where they work, saving them a commute—and thousands of dollars on housing.

It’s not without responsibility. Lea Thomas, an animal science senior who lives in a house near the equine unit, stressed that the work comes before the living convenience. 

“You’re applying for the job first,” Thomas said. “If the housing is open, that’s the second part.”

Cal Poly has housed students in agriculture units since at least 1936. Now, they’re expanding—two more houses are being built on Via Carta road to hold another dozen students.

The housing units are sprinkled through the fields at nearly a dozen agriculture units. Some are wide ranch-style houses with crackling paint, while others are white trailers with wooden porches. 

Most are decades old, built between the 1970s and ‘90s, but some have stood for 90 years.

Miles from the crowds at the Rec Center and Vista Grande, it’s still Cal Poly out here—just not the Cal Poly most students know. 

Luke Somma’s 35-year-old trailer sits at the back edge of the dairy unit. A chicken named Tiffany pecks around in the front yard.

Inside the cozy space, there’s a sprawling black couch and a television with its back stuffed up to the edge of the kitchen counter. A banjo hangs on the wall.

“Even though you’re on campus, it doesn’t really feel like you’re a part of campus,” Somma said. 

Last year, he lived in the Avila House, a ranch above the Yosemite Towers with a mix of students from various units.

“I like it a lot better out here,” he said. “I keep dirt bikes in the backyard. I have a barbecue out back. It feels a lot more like a house.”

One day, when a gate was left open, Somma came home to a herd of cattle milling around on his front lawn.

Somma and his roommate, who he’s known since high school, pass their free time at the trailer playing cornhole and the banjo—and practicing a sport Somma invented called “RipStik roping,” in which they try to rope a homemade metal cow while balancing on a rotating skateboard.

But living at the unit is a commitment. Cows have to be fed and milked daily, and many of Somma’s work hours aren’t scheduled.

“Weekends are not a thing,” Somma said. “You don’t know when a calf’s gonna pop out, you don’t know when a water trough is gonna break, when a tractor’s not gonna start. There’s always something that’s gonna pop up and keep you on your toes.”

“Even though you’re on campus, it doesn’t really feel like you’re a part of campus.”

Luke Somma

Most of the units are tucked among the fields—away from stray eyes except for a few students, teachers and passing runners—the Environmental Horticulture Unit, up by the school’s Leaning Pine Arboretum, is buzzing.

Sabrina Correa, a plant science junior, lives in a yellow house in front of the unit. Strangers sometimes confuse it for the plant shop next door.

Decades ago, the house was located where the Red Brick resident halls currently sit; the entire building was eventually transported to the current plant science unit on Via Carta Road.

“The house is old; it has its quirks,” Correa said. The windows don’t open sometimes. The doors don’t open sometimes. The mice. There’s no insulation. But it’s really fun. We’ve made it into a home.”

Correa is a student assistant at the greenhouses behind the house and is “best friends” with her roommates and coworkers. She plans to live there again next year. 

“There’s a very good sense of community,” she said. The unit is social and usually buzzing with students and teachers from her major.

Despite the fun Correa has living there, she says the job is her first responsibility.

At least one student in every agriculture unit has to stay during school breaks. The stakes are high—animals have to be fed, and plants have to be tended to. Students worked throughout the entire COVID-19 pandemic.

And on top of the 20-per-month requirement for Ag Housing, most students work additional (paid) hours to keep the units running.

“The rent is fairly cheap but it comes with a lot of responsibility,” Correa said. “Someone has to be in this house every day of the year, no matter what.”

According to a horticulture unit employee who lived at the house in the 1970s, the program has a history of prestige. Department chairs would select the best (or their favorite) students for the housing spots.

Gordon Vosti, a Cal Poly agricultural sciences major from 1966-1970, remembers paying $37 a month for a spot in a 14-person, two-story Crops Unit house.

There were just a handful of agriculture houses back then, including the still-standing Herdsman Hall and the Horticulture Unit’s house.

“It was totally quiet out there,” Vosti said. “Except for the train. And the swine unit.”

They made their peace with both: after about a month, they got used to the sound of the trains—and a house resident from Hawaii would pit-roast pigs in the yard.

The then decades-old house was surrounded by orange, lemon and avocado trees that the student workers sustained themselves on.

“As far as the experience goes, I would not trade it for anything,” Vosti said.

It was competitive to get a spot in the house, but residents weren’t required to work, according to Vosti.

Regardless, he worked other jobs, like breaking down greenhouses and moving them across campus and lighting heaters in the middle of cold winter nights so the fruit trees didn’t freeze.

Vosti said his roommates would hold baseball tournaments, sell deep-fried artichokes at the Poly Royal Rodeo, and dive in Cayucos to catch rockfish.

And one of them kept a red-tailed hawk as a pet. 

“His name was Hawkman,” Vosti said. “Never knew his real name—all we could do was call him Hawkman.”

The Crops House was demolished in 2009. 

“It’s a sad thing to not see the house here anymore,” Vosti said. “But time goes on.”

“These are employees… They are essential workers.”

Michelle Haka

Down the hill from the horticulture unit lies Herdsman Hall, the equine unit house.

Four students live there, including animal science senior Lea Thomas and her emotional support dog, Doc. They have a white picket fence and a sizable backyard where they sunbathe and play volleyball. There’s a rope swing, horseshoes and well-kept grass—with plenty of room for Doc to run around.

Like many of the old ag houses, there’s also a locker room and stalls in the bathroom.

“It’s a fun little quirky ranch house,” Thomas said. “Our bathroom is something you’d see if you walked into the main science building.”

Herdsman Hall has stood since the 1930s and has housed hundreds of students. Sometimes, Thomas has answered the door to see alumni and former residents who want to relive the old days.

This was Thomas’ second year in the house. She’s a three-minute walk to work—she said she basically lives at the equine unit—and five minutes from most of her classes.

Thomas immersed herself in her Equine Unit job, which she said “fell right into” her animal science course load.

“[I’m] not even just living in my house, [I’m] actually living at the equine unit itself,” she said.

One of her responsibilities as a Herdsman resident is to be on call after dark in case of horse emergencies.

“That part is very tiring,” she said. “You’re on edge, you’re prepped.”

Living so close to the unit paid off during her foaling class last year, in which students have to spend a weekly night shift on-call from 2-6 a.m. in case any horses are born.

“We’re working students,” Thomas said. “We’re going to hear alarms at 1:45 in the morning. It’s no big deal—just a mutual understanding between all of us.”

Looking to the future

Two green and yellow ranch houses sit across a horse pasture from Poly Canyon Village. With a total budget of $2 million, they’re the first new agriculture houses built by CAFES in decades. 

The houses each have six bedrooms, two bathrooms and lots of natural light. When they’re finished this fall, they will hold 12 total students from a mix of agriculture units. 

“These are not dorms for students—these are employees,” CAFES’ facilities director Michelle Haka said. “They are essential workers.”

CAFES plans to build a veterinary clinic next door—replacing the old clinic on Mt. Bishop Road—by Fall 2026. It’ll free up bedroom space out in the fields for a Cal Poly Rodeo student to live near the team’s facility.

Haka said the houses are built to lodge students for more than 50 years.

“But they’re probably going to last 100-plus years,” Haka said. “These houses are modeled for the future with materials that will last.”

Officials from CAFES stressed that the program is essential for students’ learning experiences and for the agriculture units that rely on live-in students to keep functioning.

“It’s been a part of our college for a long time and it’s played an important part for the students who have come through,” Ann Marie Cornejo, the CAFES communications director, said.

And aside from the work and learning experience, the cheap rent doesn’t hurt, students said.

“Best deal in SLO,” Somma grinned.