This paper identifies the epistemological values of novice students and their lecturers in terms of a "farming" metaphor. It argues that each occupy essentially different kinds of epistemological "farms", involving different "crops" and "methods", and lecturers often fail to provide effective access to their disciplinary communities because they do not recognise or respond to this fundamental epistemological disjuncture. This issue is explored in relation to a first-level Political Science module in a South African university. Using Discourse Theory as the primary means of interpretation, the project identifies the students' home, community and school-based discourses which construct their values and ideas about learning and knowing and therefore their ways of reading and writing in the academy. The data was collected in four workshops in which the students employed a variety of media to explore their past and current experiences of learning. The multiple perspectives afforded by this mode of data collection generated rich, ethnographic descriptions of the students' social epistemologies. Their values are contrasted with those that may be considered normative in a Social Science like Politics. (Contains 4 notes.)