Last Saturday I went to Fishkill Farms out in Hopewell Junction, NY. I recieved a warm welcome from the staff, first receiving a bit of history about the farm from their business manager Mark Doyle. The farm was started by Henry Morgenthau in 1914, a man who also participated in public service and government under the FDR administration. For a long time the farm mostly grew apples on their 150 acres of usable farmland, peaking in size in the 40s with the development of refrigerated transport. However, in 1965 Fishkill Farms turned towards a pick-your-own CSA model to adapt to the changing demand. Today they grow a variety of fruits and vegetables and sell produce at farmers markets in Brooklyn and local grocery stores in addition to CSA members. While only one third of their orchard is certified organic, the farm’s vegetables are grown completely organically and the farm prides itself on being an ecologically sustainable farm, taking the NOFA’s “Farmer’s Pledge” (National Organic Farmers Association) and continuously working to minimize the need for chemical sprays. Like many organic farmers they also emphasize the importance of maintaining healthy soil and a connection to the local community.

William McCaffery, Fishkill Farm’s Orchard Specialist, generously walked me about the farm property and explained some of the differences between fruit and vegetable farming. William grew up on a cranberry farm in Massachusetts and went to the Cornell school of Agriculture. He described fruit and vegetables as entirely different beasts. Veggies tend to go hand in hand with organic practices because they grow in the same way whether that’s on the farm or in nature. Fruit, on the other hand, is designed to be eaten by animals to spread seeds and pollen, and so naturally attracts insects and other non-human consumers. To grow fruit is inherently fighting against nature from the start, which makes organic fruit growing difficult. William pointed to the now flowering trees and said this stage of the season is critical, because it is when the orchard is most vulnerable. The current main threat is actually from fungi, and while research is going into a beneficial fungus that will block harmful fungi from growing on their trees it is still too experimental to risk a whole year’s yield. For now Fishkill Farms has to use fungus sprays, using nature as a template as much as possible by keeping to natural chemicals. The 80 acre orchard is made up of 56 acres of apples, 4 acres of pear, and 20 acres of stone fruits (fruits with a pit) and berries. William has been with Fishkill Farms since February after working at Red Jacket Orchard for two years, and plans on eventually starting his own orchard in the future.

I found the economic dynamics and politics of organic farming at Fishkill Farms particularly interesting because they started with conventional practices and began committing to organic farming later on. The way in which they grew seemed very important to them, but the farm still needs to profit and that informs their practice as well. William revealed how international the competition can be when he talked about a website called FAOSTAT. There you can find the statistics of everything from market price to production quantities of every type of agricultural commodity from every country in the world. He described how it’s advantageous to have “China-proof”crops, meaning crops that aren’t mass-produced and sold cheaply from overseas. This is especially important when a farm decides to try a new crop, because this will partly determine whether it will be profitable or not. I think it is very interesting that local farms aren’t only competing with industrial farms within the US, but on an international scale as well.

On a sunny Thursday afternoon (the first of its kind) I traveled to McEnroe Organic Farm in Millerton, New York. My tour was led by two workers named Lauren and Sean and, unlike most of the organic farmers we have met this semester, Sean actually has a bachelor’s in Environmental Science! Lauren studied art in school, but she still knew her stuff about the science behind the farm. The farm started as a conventional dairy farm but is now a 1500-acre production site. It has been run over four generations, with two of the McEnroe boys currently working on-site and the original owner, Ray, showing up now and then. Since it is certified organic, their pest control methods are limited to natural modes such as sulfur. They grow a plethora of vegetables, herbs and spices, raise cows, pigs and chickens for meat, and run a composting unit to create their own soil­– they even brew compost teas. However, not all of their land is used for profit. They keep a lot of woodlands, meadows and ponds intact in order to keep natural habitats in check.

The most “economical” part of their farm is the vast number of tomato plants. McEnroe Organic Farm uses both heated and unheated greenhouses to ensure that they can grow their “Hot House Tomatoes” year-round. We got to take a look inside at the massive, ceiling-height plants, and it really was remarkable! The farmers here use a very unique method when growing their tomatoes; it is something I had never heard of, yet understood easily because of my biology background. They call it “splicing”, and it helps the tomatoes grow big and red without any inorganic compounds being added. This splicing process simply involves them slicing the root-stalk of the tomato and adding fruiting and rooting fertilizers (completely organic, of course). The point of this is to completely line up the vascular tissue of the plant, making for some really huge, really tasty produce! “Tomatoes are a great plant to grow,” said Lauren, “because they’re so economical. You can grow them year round in a heated greenhouse”. So they do. Unlike Monkshood Nursery, where the tomato plants were barely past the seedling stage, McEnroe Farm’s plants were already climbing the twine to the ceiling and being picked and sold daily. It’s amazing what can be done with a bit more space and a few more hands on deck.

Another noteworthy part of the farm is the composting site where they mix local garbage, manure and leaves into completely organic soil that farmers from all over the area buy for their farms and gardens. McEnroe uses most of the compost we produce in their greenhouses, cold frames and fields in attempt promote healthy soil and strong plant growth. We didn’t spend much time at the compost site, but I did learn a fair amount about how smelly, and helpful, this composting facility is for farmers who raise so many plants and animals.

McEnroe Organic Farm is much larger than all of the other farms we have ventured to in #es291. Its impressive production gets it into wholesale mediums like Whole Foods and they also keep up a great farm store on-site which sells both on-farm and off-farm products. You can learn more about McEnroe Organic Farm by following this link!

Sareen and David had been selling their produce separately at NYC farmers markets for years before Marissa Codey from the Columbia County Land Conservatory brought all three of them into an unlikely partnership through the Farmer-Landowner Match Program.

David began his career in agriculture in the UK in his early teens. He moved to the US following his ex-wife, and settled into conventional farming here, until his family situation went sour and he grew sick from his exposure to conventional pesticides. He decided to continue doing what he knew and loved, but this time, on a small scale and organically. That’s when he started Monkshood Nursery.

He had previously interacted with the CCLC in purchasing the 80 acres of land his organic vegetable farm sits on now, just outside of Hudson, NY in Columbia County. Monkshood Nursery, Marissa says, is the last project the CCLC funded solo. The CCLC looks to conserve land for use as open spaces and for agriculture. They now couple with other organizations to get Land Easements on properties, so that they cannot be sold or used for development. This lowers the monetary value of the land, but the CCLC and other land conservatories invest in paying the difference to the farmers upfront, so that they can pay off loans or expand.

Sareen comes from a very different background. A college-graduate, she took a farm internship in Vermont and fell in love with the lifestyle. She was keeping her small herd of organic, Animal-Welfare approved cheese goats, under the name of Ardith Mae Farmstead Goat Cheese, in Pennsylvania when he own life went awry. She had decided she really liked the Hudson Valley, and that’s when she ran into Marissa, who helped her find a place to keep her goats. Marissa, who had helped David with his land easement, knew he was looking for someone to share his space with, and so, with much coaxing, Sareen moved her herd to the farm at Monkshood.

Over the past months, the two farmers have been finding interesting ways in which their businesses work together, not just in sharing the land, but in sharing resources and waste products. Sareen’s goats now live in a recovered outbuilding David was using for storing equipment. Crop byproducts make perfectly good goat fodder, and the manure from the goats helps rejuvenate the land that David farms for vegetables. They collectively can afford to pay a full-time farm hand intern, who can work part-time cheese making and part-time in the fields. Working together, they only have to send one person to the farmers markets they both use as a dominant source of income from their businesses.  As Spring dawns on the two local farmers, David is so satisfied with the sharing of his land that he repeatedly tells us he’d be happy to find another business to utilize the rest of his unused farmland.

Last Friday we went to see our first vegetable farm. Hearty Roots, an organic CSA farm, approaches farming in a manner that feeds the soil rather than the plant, according to Ben Shute, one of the farm’s founders. We met Ben outside in a light afternoon drizzle as he told us their journey from a one-acre mobile production to an established seventy acre farm in just ten years. Unlike many farmers, Ben didn’t grow up on a farm but became interested in farming after getting a liberal arts degree at Amherst College. He worked part-time in Oregon for a time and ten years ago decided to start his own organic farm and work full-time. Aptly naming the farm Hearty Roots, Ben and his wife Lindsey chose to follow a CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, model in an attempt to avoid financial exploitation from the bank or agricultural corporations, an issue many farmers struggle with. In the CSA model, members of the community invest in shares of the farm’s produce, paying a flat rate for a portion of whatever the farm can grow that year. This way, during bad years the farmer doesn’t lose capital because they are supported by the community, not a loan they have to pay back, and during good years the community benefits by getting more bang for their buck. Their first year Ben and Lindsey sold shares to friends and family and did everything themselves and by hand. Ben said it was the perfect time to get into CSA farming, as there was a lot of growing interest in the community. Hearty roots double in size every year, and currently they now grow for 200 families and employ ten people year-round.

Ben took us inside some of the greenhouses where they were growing sprouts for the planting season, where we were welcomed by fresh oxygenated air and shelter from the ensuing downpour. There Ben described the process of organic farming, saying, “running a sustainably diverse farm requires your mind to be in fifty places at once.” He said how in order to be successful organic farm you have to be in it for the long run. Most of the effort goes into making the soil healthy and sustainable, which takes time. Before Ben owned the land they currently grow on they were able to cheaply rent land from other farms, but the investment they put into the soil really started to pay off once they were able to grow on a permanent location. Over the course of a year, Hearty Roots grows around fifty kinds of vegetables, many of which do more than just get harvested. In the winter Ben plants barley and other cold-weather crops which continue to put nutrients into the fields during the non-growing season. In early spring he described a specific type of radish they plant that affects the soil in a way similar to plowing, reducing their labor. During the main growing season, Hearty Roots uses natural pesticides and plants particular flowering crops to attract predatory insects that eat the numerous pests that plague crops, rather than using unhealthy pesticides and chemicals. Ben told us that many of these practices are not traditional but have been recently discovered through scientific research. In this way Hearty Roots is using cutting-edge techniques in order to make organic farming a more feasible venture. They also raise chickens and are currently experimenting with raising pigs to help nourish the land they grow on. The pigs were also pretty adorable.

Ben is also the founder of the National Young Farmers Coalition, a movement for farmers to support each other via lobbies to change harmful policies as well as a forum to share information. Farmers, small and large scale alike, are generally taken advantage of, and the coalition works to change that. Ben also emphasized the importance of being close to one’s customers on the small farming scale. Being close to a population center like New York City has helped Hearty Roots build a more robust customer base, and the benefits go both ways. Ben has experienced that what people seem to want is a connection to their food—a story or some kind of meaning—and CSA farming can bring them that. We certainly felt the effort that Hearty Roots puts into connecting to people about the importance of quality organic produce, and that effort has certainly paid off.

To learn more about Hearty Roots, check out their website here!