If you farm vegetables for a living in California or Florida, you have the advantage of being able to grow and market fresh produce year-round. When winter arrives in the
We live on an old dairy farm which still has a functional barn. The lower part of this barn (once the milking parlor) has always been a favorite spot for
Old farmers never die. They just hoe away.” So said the message in a birthday card sent me by a former employee. On the front was a cartoon-like rendition of
NOT SO LONG AGO, the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) by many accounts was the most prized and plentiful tree in our eastern forests. It was said that a squirrel could
FIFTY YEARS AGO, organic farming was, at best, laughed off as a joke by the agricultural establishment (the land-grant colleges and federal and state departments of agriculture). At worst, it
IN ANY SOCIAL GATHERING WITH PEOPLE I know who don’t make a living growing vegetables, I’m invariably hit with a few gardening questions: What’s causing the dark spots on the
HAVE YOU NOTICED? It’s getting warmer: 2016 was the hottest year on record for planet Earth—2015 was the next hottest, and 2014 the next. Three in a row! Where I
ON AVERAGE, WE HAVE about 20 chickens living on the farm at any one time. Most are hens, though we always keep one or two roosters to maintain the natural
A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, I was invited by the head gardener at Mohonk Mountain House, just outside of New Paltz (Ulster County), to talk to the hotel’s guests about heirloom
AFTER AN ABSENCE OF FOUR months, spent mostly in Ohio, George has come back to the farm for another season. We are glad to have him. His sprightly manner, boundless enthusiasm
A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO, I paid a neighbor with an excavator to dig a hole six feet deep in some fallow land behind the pond. Then, with grim resolve,
WHEN MY GIRLFRIEND AND I set out to buy a farm 23 years ago, we had only a vague notion of what we were looking for—having lived in New York
IN DECEMBER, JUST BEFORE THE GROUND froze, we started building our second high tunnel. It will be an imposing structure: 96 feet long, 30 feet wide and over 13 feet
ONE OF THE NICE THINGS about owning a piece of land is that you can plant trees on it. When the work is done, you can stand back and conjure
THE MORE I FARM, the more I appreciate cover crops and green manures. Though they don’t go to market with us and are therefore never seen by our customers, these
IN MARCH OF THIS YEAR, I was invited to be a speaker and panelist at an Urban Agriculture Conference hosted by the Horticultural Society of New York. At first, I
AFTER A CHALLENGING SUMMER with surprising fluctuations in weather and too many hungry deer, we were banking on a congenial fall with plenty to harvest and bring to market. We
GARLIC IS OUR SIGNATURE CROP and it has been for 20 years. It is, to a large extent, the crop on which our farm’s identity and reputation rest. Because we
Hudson Valley Restaurant Week is back this April 8-21!
