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OFFICIAL ULSTER PUBLISHING PROGRAM

HUDSON VALLEY

HARVEST FESTIVAL

September 20-21, 2014

Ulster County Fairgrounds New Paltz, NY

LAUREN THOMAS

Since 2009 the Rondout Valley Growers Farm to Food Pantry Program has gathered more than 150,000 pounds of fresh produce donated by local farmers and delivered to local food pantries with the assistance of Family of Woodstock, Inc. At the Harvest Fest the pantry was fundraising through the sales of corn chowder prepared by Depuy Canal House chef/owner John Novi. Pictured right to left are Fabia Wargin and Lynda Wells of the Farm to Food Pantry Program along with volunteer Katherine Gould-Martin.

GATE 1

PM !

B W CAR 9 .

92 IN A W

Event Parking Lot

Public Parking Entrance

Vendor Area

Accessible Parking

Poultry Barn

Pumpkin Patch

Children’s Fun Area

Farmers Market

Farmers Market

Music Tent

Tag Sale & Food Tent

Children’s Fun Area

Ticket Booth

Fes val Entrance

Welcome/Info Tent

- PLUS Baking Contests, Agriculture & Food Demos, Ag Photo Exhibit

Maple Co on Candy

Libertyville Road

Vendor Area

Farm Olympics / Sack Races (Saturday)

Photo Booth

ATM

4-H Snack Bar & Milkshake Booth

4-H Clubs & Animals

Horse & Oxen Barn

Musician Parking

GATE 3

Entertainment Parking Lot

Vendors/Staff

Staff, Volunteer & Vendor Parking Lot

Garage

Classic Car Show (Saturday) Touch-A-Truck (Sunday)

Access Road

Entertainment Hospitality

2014 2 | September Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

Map of site

Stage

September 2014 Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

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OFFICIAL ULSTER PUBLISHING PROGRAM

Schedule of Events

F

ARM OLYMPICS & SACK RACES: (Saturday only) Bring teammates or come alone to compete in the Hudson Valley Farm Olympics! Registration at the Main Gate Ticket Sales Booth from 10 am-11 am ($2 per person to register). Games begin at 11:30 am! Games include: The Great Corn Shuck Off!, Zucchini Javelin, Hay Bale Hurdles, Pumpkin Gutting, Greased Watermelon Relay. (Competitors must be 10+ years and those under 16 must be accompanied by an adult) CLASSIC CAR SHOW: Sponsored by Kingston Nissan (Saturday only 10am-3pm). Awards will be given for Best in Show, Best in Show Stock, Best in Show Modified and People’s Choice. Classic Car Show (Saturday Only 10am-3pm) TOUCH-A-TRUCK: (Sunday only 10am) Beep-Beep! Hey, kids, sit behind the wheel of your favorite service vehicle and learn more about what they do.

PICK A PUMPKIN! (Pumpkin Patch both days). Local pumpkins (Small $3 / Large $6) THIRTY-FAMILY TAG SALE: A vast variety of items from artwork, bird feeders, a library of books, 14-piece place settings, linens, glassware, exercise equipment, collectibles and so much more. Bargains galore!

CORNELL COOPERATIVE EXTENSION EDUCATORS: Demos and contests in the Harvest Building (Jane W. Barley Youth Building) SATURDAY EVENTS Apple Pie Contest Maple Cotton Candy Apple Sales and Education Wheat Grinding and Ag Display Guess the Vegetable Jam, Jelly and Pickle Contests Photo Display: Ag in Ulster County SUNDAY EVENTS Cupcake Contest (9am-1pm) Maple Cotton Candy Apple Sales and Education Apple Pie Sale Wheat Grinding and Ag Display Garlic Demo and Allium Sale Tortilla Making Photo Display: Ag in Ulster County Sack Races – as time permits

V

ISIT OUR YOUTH ACTIVITIES AREA FOR LOTS OF FUN ARTS

& crafts projects happening both days!

Fun activities hosted by Ulster County 4-H Youth Clubs (all on-going) SATURDAY Come visit the Rabbits, Chickens, Horses and Goats!

4-H Milkshake Booth/Snack Bar Pumpkin Painting (After you get your pumpkin from our patch, c’mon over and paint it!)

Live Owls and Hawks Demo Simple Crafts

Leaf rubbing/leaf creatures Paper bag puppets/paper bag pumpkins Ribbon dancers Friendship bracelets/origami Make your own juggle bags 10:00 AM Bubble Fun! 10:15 AM Balloon between the knees race 10:30 AM Sock Tails 10:45 AM Sock’n Pumpkin 11:00 AM Hula Hooping 11:15 AM Hula Hoop Hopscotch 11:30 AM Hot Pumpkin 11:45 AM Clean Out the Barn 12:00 AM Apples on a String 12:15 AM Apples on a String 12:30 AM Balloon between the knees race 12:45 AM Hoop Limbo 1:00 AM Pumpkin Race 1:15 AM Pumpkin Relay Race

1:30 AM 1:45 AM 2:00 AM 2:15 AM 2:30 AM 2:45 AM 3:00 AM 3:15 AM 3:30 AM 3:45 AM 4:00 AM 4:15 AM 4:30 AM 4:45 AM 5:00 AM 5:15 AM 5:30 AM 5:45 AM 6:00 AM

Sock Tails Sock’n Pumpkin Apples on a String Swat the Fly Clean Out the Barn Bubble Fun! Hoop Limbo Musical Hoops Balloon between the knees race Sock’n Pumpkin Pumpkin Race Swat the Fly Sock Tails Hoop limbo Hula Hooping Hot Pumpkin Clean Out the Barn Sock’n Pumpkin Dance

Two days of great music, from bluegrass to rockabilly!

The Harvest Stage plays host to a great lineup of local acts Saturday, September 20 10:30am Harvest Festival Opening Ceremonies 11am The New Lazy Boys 12:15pm Whiskey Mountain 1:30pm Our Mountain Home 2:45pm Pitchfork Militia 4pm The Old Double E

Pitchfork Militia

Sunday, September 21 11am Kidz Town Rock 12:15pm RJ Storm & Old School Bluegrass Band 1:30pm 4 Gun Ridge 2:45pm The Gold Hope Duo Sound Production provided by ProSound Entertainment.

Sound Equipment provided by Planet Woodstock Music.

Gold Hope Duo

SUNDAY Come visit the Rabbits, Chickens, Horses and Goats!

4-H Milkshake Booth/Snack Bar Simple Crafts Apple Pie Bake Sale!

O

N-GOING FUN KIDS’ ACTIVITIES HAPPENING ALL WEEKEND!

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LAUREN THOMAS

2014 4 | September Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

Back to the soil There’s a lot of organic fertilizer these days, some of it in the form of written words

By Paul Smart

A

FOR CENTURIES, NEW Yorkers have carried in their hearts the dream of an honest bucolic paradise, one more imagined today for most than actualized. It’s been a persistent fantasy here in the Hudson Valley, so close to the nation’s most populous metro area. A new magazine or website celebrating the lifestyle of the new agriculturalists gets launched or rebranded every month. In their articles, citations to locavore this and sustainable that abound.

First to the Hudson Valley had come the Native Americans, clearing the rich lowland wilds and planting their fields of corn, beans and pumpkins.

The came the reality of patent estates, absentee landlords, and land not owned by their tillers for three lives. .After that were the yeoman homesteaders who carved their farms and orchards out of the great sweeping New York forests.

The residents of our growing cities have always been drawn to the dream of gentleman farming, perhaps even before those days when the old weekly publication Rural New Yorker was the guidebook by which many found their upstate estates. Then as now many New Yorkers made their money and built their reputations in the big city and then constructed an ideal complementary life in the countryside.

Later in the line of agricultural succession came, as in most of America, bigger-is-better agribusiness. And now, it appears, something else. Back to the future.

Betty MacDonald may have based her The Egg and I franchise of stories and books in the state of Washington, but it was city readers and moviegoers that made her a hit. Jay Sandler’s Green Acres, based on a radio program, caught the nation’s attention. And in 1939 The Wizard of Oz reminded all honest agrarians of the turmoil that could threaten if rural folks were swept too far from home: “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.”

T

H, THE FARMER’S LIFE.

LAUREN THOMAS

At the Harvest Fest, representatives of Maple Ridge Gardens were on hand selling chemical free naturally grown tomatoes, potatoes, cabbages and squash. The Ulster Park farm has been around for the past thirteen years and you can visit their farmstand off 9W at 10 Hellbrook Lane in Ulster Park.

Farm owner Ben Decker (top left) is pictured with sons Joel, Micah and Ben Jr (kneeling) and farm worker Perry Maendal.

18,600,000 acres, according to the 1940 WPA “New York, A Guide to The Empire State.”

That was then. In 2007 New York State had been reduced to 36,352 farms, with 7,174,743 acres in farming.

That precipitous dropoff has since slowed to a standstill, and in many places even been reversed.

Though New York State lost an additional 814 farms between the 2007 and 2012 agricultural censuses, the amount of land in farms actually increased in those five years by 8936 acres. The same neww trend has been recorded in many other states.

Ulster County still had 486 farms with 71,222 acres in farmland in the 2012 agricultural census, only a slight decrease from the previous agricultural census in 2007, when the county had 501 farms operating on 75,205 acres. Though still a negative number, the rate of farmland loss in Ul-

cusing on young and old farmers, garden styles, best practices and great pictures. Check out Pure Catskills, the big branding campaign sponsored by the Watershed Agricultural Council to mobilize community support for fresh-food products grown and raised in the Catskills region.

Cornell University’s Small Farms Program points out that its constituency, farms bringing in less than $250,000 a year, make up 32,700 or the state’s 35,538 farms. These smaller farms fed a total 235 CSAs (community-supported agricultural entities where customers buy shares in farm produce) within a 140-mile radius of Utica (taking up the biggest chunk of the state), with another 94 CSAs in the lower Hudson Valley. Add to this the big growth numbers in our region for organic farming, plus nearly 650 farmer’s markets across the state (138 in New York City alone). The geography of food distribution is changing.

HE AMOUNT OF REMAINING FARMLAND EVEN AFTER THE

Great Depression was worthy of note. Our state had become a paragon of industrial innovation, gateway to a rapidly urbanizing nation.

But New York still also remained a significant agricultural state. In 1850 some 170,000 New York State farms boasted 19,100,000 acres of farmland. In 1935, there were 177,000 farms with

Orchards Est. 1945

The word “locavore” was the word of the year for 2007 in the Oxford American Dictionary. The suffix “vore” comes from the Latin word vorare (to devour), and is used to form nouns indicating what kind of a diet an animal has. This word was the creation of Jessica Prentice of the San Francisco Bay Area at the time of World Environment Day 2005.

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ster County was much less steep than it had been in previous federal censuses.

Though the acreage may be much diminished form earlier eras, New York State farms are not done yet. Our agriculture ranks 28th in the nation, and the state still remains in the top five for apples, maple and sour-cream production, winemaking, milk, onion, sweet corn and several other categories, and first in cabbage and cottage-cheese production.

The profusion of active farm markets, ag-oriented magazines and websites, and overall backto-the-land awareness seem to be increasing every year. Where are these trends likely to take us?

R

EAD SUCH PUBLICATIONS AS THE HUDSON-BASED MODern Farmer, the newer Organic Hudson Valley, or the genre’s 16-year-old stalwart, The Valley Table, and there are plenty of stories fo-

Is it an influx of Green Acres-like gentleman and madam farmers, as sometimes seem imagined and/or proposed in the beautiful photo spreads and advertisements that fill the new ag publications and websites? Or might it be just the imaginative style sense of idealistic young writers at play?

There are also the likes of MBA/Wall Street emigre Donna Williams and her hard-working Field Goods start-up in Athens in Greene County working with dozens of farms to supply healthy foods to regional corporations and their employees in an updated CSA format. And former filmmaker and advertising maven Carol Clement’s hilltop farming enterprise and weekend café at Heather Ridge Farm in the Catskills. And planning veteran Deborah DeWan’s move to the Rondout Valley Growers Association, a cooperative organization

September 2014 Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

was perceived in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when The Whole Earth Catalog. Mother Earth News, and Foxfire books made the do-it-yourself phenomenon almost mainstream, and countered the big suburban consumer push of the previous quarter-century.

Perhaps we need to go back to Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, the great supporter of the yeoman farmer as the backbone of our agrarian democracy, to get a sense of where this new elan for the dirty-handed and muck-booted now returns us. “Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness,” wrote our grandest and most thoughtful gentleman farmer. “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth.”

Sam Simon

S

AM SIMON, A RETIRED MEDICAL DOCtor and fourth-generation dairy farmer, is co-founder and managing partner of Hudson Valley Fresh, a cooperative of ten dairy farms in Dutchess, Columbia and Ulster counties. Each member farm has its own breed of cattle.

“Milk from all is blended at Boice Brothers Dairy in Kingston,” Simon says. “They accept no milk except ours.” In addition to bottling the milk, Boice Brothers produces yogurt, chocolate milk, sour cream, half and half, cream and specialty ice creams.

The cooperative numbers 2000 actively milking cows. The cost of milk production to the cooperative farms is $2 a gallon, Simon says, noting that some farms could not function if not bound together in the cooperative.

The cooperative prides itself on achieving “from our cows to your store in 36 hours.” Simon and his wife, Gail, whose Kingston grandparents were fruit farmers, have five grown children.

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Sam Simon.

www.ulsterchamber.org of orchards, vegetable stands, maple-syrup providers, and old farm entities which are rebranding the role of agriculture in central Ulster County.

And there’s Hudson Valley Fresh, a cooperative of ten dairy farmers in Dutchess, Columbia, and Ulster counties who process all their milk at Boice Brothers Dairy in Kingston.

And there are other such initiatives.

The starting up of a major new farm-hub initiative, with major foundation support, is another sign of the times. There are rumors of investments in area agricultural start-ups by regional investment and venture-capital groups.

A

NEW HUDSON VALLEY AGRIBUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Corporation, founded in 2007, augments all that the Cornell Cooperative Extension has been doing. HVADC strives to enhance the bottom line of farm businesses and strengthen the agricultural industry as a whole. The list of assisted projects includes processing facilities and value-added initiatives, analysis and start-up assistance for new ventures and enterprises, marketing assistance, market expansion and improvement of distribution networks. Specific projects have included work with various entities on biofuels production and refining, micro-industry lobbing and support (including pushing for new state laws encouraging beer production on farms, new distilling enterprises, and more farm-to-market and farm-to-chef incentives.

These initiatives go well beyond fancy muck boots, holistic suntan unguents, and personal lifestyle products advertised in the new magazines. It is cimforting to know that farming is hip again.

We recognize a big shift in the way agriculture

TASTE REDS, WHITES & CRAFT BREWS!

WINE FESTIVAL SAT • OCTOBER 4

SHOWCASING AN AMAZING VARIETY OF WINES PRODUCED BY NEW YORK STATE’S BEST VINTERS!

CRAFT BEER FESTIVAL SAT • OCTOBER 11 FEATURING AN ECLECTIC SELECTION OF FINELY CRAFTED REGIONAL BEERS & CHILI COOK-OFF!

ON STAGE: MARAH & EMISH

ON STAGE: Dan Brother Band & LizA Doolittle

15 Plattekill Ave New Paltz, NY 12561 (845) 255-7706 Vacations, Tours, Cruises New Business Travel Division www.newpaltztravel.com

Tickets at BethelWoodsCenter.org Bethel Woods Center for the Arts is a not-for-profit cultural organization that inspires, educates, and empowers individuals through the arts and humanities.

All dates, acts, times and ticket prices are subject to change without notice.

2014 6 | September Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

PHOTOS BY FRONT ROW DAVE

Not by grass alone The best flesh is fresh, our reporter maintains

By Dan Barton

Y

OU MIGHT RECALL THE MOST RECENT MOVIE

version of “Last of the Mohicans” — the one that came out about 20 years ago or so with Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe in it. The film opens with Day-Lewis’ Nathaniel and his two Mohican pals chasing a deer through the forest primeval and finally bringing it down with musketry. When they get to the just-slain game, they rather movingly (but who knows how authentically?) cut out the deer’s heart, apologize for killing it, and thank it for giving its life so they and theirs could live.

“Wow,” I thought when I first saw it, “that’s a

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really wonderful way to acknowledge and show respect for another living thing after shooting it dead.” Second thing I thought was, “Wow, I bet

that tasted good, once they got it back to the longhouse and cooked it up.”

Being a modern-day person growing up in the

September 2014 Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

Vendors Angela’s Funnel Cake Angelo’s Sausage & Peppers and Burgers BOJO’s Fried Dough & Funnel Cakes CKH Industries Devon Management El Danzante on Wheels Mexican Cuisine Honeybrook Farms Jamaica Choice Caribbean Cuisine Kalleco Nursery Corp.

Kettlecorn Hut Kids on the Go LLC. Lad Crafts Local Economies Project – The New World Foundation Meadowland Farm Mobile Pie Truck NYS Senator Cecilia Tkaczyk Osborne Books Pazdar Winery Peter’s Fine Greek Foods Reggae Boy Café Renewal by Anderson Silverleaf Resorts, Inc. Tastefully Simple The Tipsy Turtle Henna Tonshi Mountain Studios Ulster County Regional Chamber of Commerce Verengo Solar

semi-suburbia of Poughkeepsie in the closing decades of the 20th century, I didn’t have a lot of personal experience with eating meat that was killed within hours, as opposed to days, weeks and even — during this weird phase in high school my friends and I went through when for several weeks we bought and ate surplus Vietnam-era Crations from the Hyde Park Army-Navy — years.

We were not hunting people, so fresh venison and other types of game never crossed my plate.

(I don’t have room here for a story I tell about a venison burger, from a deer slain in a decidedly non-James Fenimore Cooper way, I ate at a party in college in New Paltz some years ago.)

The foodie/locavore revolution has resulted in a lot more options for meat-eaters beyond the shrink-wrapped offerings in the supermarket meat case. Famously in Kingston, Fleisher’s GrassFed and Organic Meats offers all sorts of locally sourced beef, pork and poultry. While not freshkilled, their dry-aged steaks are hooves-down the best meat I have ever eaten in my life.

The days when the pigs are brought in to their Wall Street shop to be butchered offer a tableau to make vegetarians retch and remind the rest of us that we are in blunt fact eating dead animals.

My friend Kiki tells me Fleisher’s recently reinstated its “pig-to-pork” classes, where attendees gather at a farm and get acquainted briefly with a pig, which is then killed before their eyes. They then get to observe the whole process of butchering and processing the pig into any number of porcine delights. Megan Labrise wrote about this class back in 2010; check out her account at bit.

ly/1qjIBAm …

The bird is the word My own tale of how exceptionally good freshkilled animal flesh can taste is also an account of my thoroughly locavore relationship with a farm in my new neighborhood. B&L 4E Farms, 561 Old Indian Road in Milton, sits atop of a mountain in that bucolic southern Ulster community. The winds whip in the mountains of Marlborough, so much so that a windmill’s been put up on nearby Mount Zion. The barns, the livestock, the sky, the trees — this truly legit full-farm experience is so appealing that at least one couple I know had their engagement pictures taken there.

Farmers Lynn Faurie and Barbara Masterson raise cattle, pigs and poultry for food for sale. They also have eggs. There’s a small building on the left as you drive up to the farm. The door’s open, and

there’s a cooler where everything is.

The chicken kills are twice a year, Lynn Faurie tells me, in June and July. “Everything is done here on the farm so there’s less stress on the chickens,” said Faurie. “They don’t have to travel except from the fields to the processing area.” This may be some of the reason why they taste so good.

Stressed animals release hormones that are said to damage the flavor of meats.

The chickens are put into cones and exsanguinated with a cut to their jugulars — “they just bleed out and go to sleep,” Faurie said. After that, they’re scalded and plucked. Post-plucking they are eviscerated and then put into ice baths for two hours. “They’re rotated through four different ice baths,” Faurie said. “The temperature drops very quickly so there’s no bacteria, and then after that they’re drained and packaged and put into coolers.”

Rotary Club of Kingston Presents

Fall Family Fun Day & BBQ

2014

Sat., Sept. 20th • 11 am - 4 pm Rotary Park, Kingston (Next to Kingston Point Beach)

Chicken BBQ meals $12 • Noon - 3 pm

FREE ADMISSION Vendors & Exhibitors; Arts & Crafts; Touch-A-Truck; Field Games; Fishing; Music

The Rotary Club of Kingston thanks our Community Sponsors: Sickler, Torchia, Allen & Churchill, CPA’s, PC Dr. Somsak Bhitiyakul & Dr. Saharat Bhitiyakul Herzog’s True Value • Kingston Plaza Catskill Hudson Bank • Rondout Savings Bank Erdman Anthony • WKNY 1490 AM

Proud to Support the HUDSON

VALLEY HARVEST FESTIVAL

CHICKEN SOUP for the Holidays!

Organic free-range

Soup Chickens $10/bird • 2 for $15 Chickens 3–3.5 lbs Brookside-Farm.com | 895-7433 1278 Albany Post Rd, Gardiner Sat. & Sun. 10 - 5

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845.336.4444 MHVFCU.com

2014 8 | September Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

a i b m u l o C

CO S T

MOUNTAIN LAUREL WALDORF SCHOOL

NT UMES FOR SALE OR RE

Twenty pounds of feed “These are certified organic, as well as pastureraised ‌. You have to say ‘pasture-raised’ because they get grain — chickens can’t live on grass

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Faurie said that about 180 chickens per kill are sold. The crew starts at dawn and usually has everything packaged by noontime.

EDUCATION for a WHOLE life 1 6 S O U T H C H E S T N U T , N E W PA LT Z , N Y W W W. M O U N T A I N L A U R E L . O R G

At Hudson Valley Hospice Foundation’s Fall Event

September Sep S pttem mb berr 2 27 7 Duchess Farm Duch Duc che ch hess h esss Fa e F arm m Equestrian Center Equest Eq trian n Cente C er High F Hi Fallss

Sunday, October 19, 2014

ttickets: ickets: t RondoutValleyGrowers.org Rondout R d ut utVa tV ll lleyG yGrowers.orrg & ffarmstands: fa armstands: d $25 5 ppe er ad dult, d l $5 5 kids kid ids per adult, 6-12 66 -12, un und under der 6 ffree der de ree re eeee ($ ($30 30/ /$$10 10 a att ga ggate) te) te) te

2:00 - 6:00 pm The Grandview, Poughkeepsie Live Music by “Little Creek�

BBQ ~ Bourbon ~ Beer

To benefit

Live & Silent Auction

SERVING DUTCHESS AND ULSTER COUNTIES

For tickets and information, call Hudson Valley Hospice Foundation at 845-473-2273 ext 1109

FALL HARVEST FUN!

Major Sponsors

Pumpkin Mountain & Spooky Tunnel!

OPENING ON SAT. 9/27:

Corn Maze & Pick-Your-Own Pumpkins!

Decorations, gifts, carving supplies Homegrown & Local Produce Bakery • Jane’s Homemade Ice Cream Local Cider & Our Delicious Cider Donuts!

Hardy Mums & Asters

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OPEN 7 DAYS 9 - 6:30

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DATES

THEME

WEEK ONE

9/22 - 9/26

Stuff the Truck Week

WEEK TWO

9/29 - 10/4

Customer Appreciation Week

WEEK THREE

10/6 - 10/11

We Value your Business Week

WEEK FOUR

10/13 - 10/18

Teen Week

WEEK FIVE

10/20 - 10/25

Children’s Week

WEEK SIX

10/27 - 11/1

We Care For The Community Week

Friends.

Family.

Community.

We’re all in this together.

State FarmÂŽ has a long tradition of being there. That's one reason why I'm proud to support the 3rd Annual Hudson Valley Harvest Festival.

Jim DeMaio, Agent 246 Main Street New Paltz, NY 12561 Bus: 845-255-5180 www.jim-demaio.com

Get to a better StateÂŽ.

Jim DeMaio – State Farm Agent

888-SSB-1871

www.sawyersavings.com 1211009

State Farm, Bloomington, IL

September 2014 Hudson Valley Harvest Festival alone,” Faurie said. “They eat about a ton of feed per hundred birds” during their seven-and-a-halfweek lifespan.

Even in that short time upon the earth, predators are a threat — besides the Mount Zion windmill chopping the air and the rumble of an occasional Army C-17 transport plane flying low in its final approach to landing at Stewart, the yips and howls of coyotes echo eerily along the ridgeline some nights. “Coyotes, fox, raccoons, hawks .…

The biggest predators are the raccoons. They try to reach under the [chicken] houses and grab a leg or a wing. We have special electric around the houses — it seems to have taken care of that problem.”

Chickens weigh about four and a half pounds apiece; some under, some over. “If you come the day that we harvest, you’re getting a fresh-killed chicken, and there’s no other taste like it. There’s no comparison.”

I’ll say. The bird I bought was big — more than seven pounds, and cost the price of a pretty good bottle of sippin’ whiskey. Handling it, it somehow looked more vital, felt firmer. We cut it with a pair of antique poultry shears and the biggest knives in the house to get it into pieces for the grill. (It was too hot to put the oven on.) I found it to be very good — juicy and flavorful beyond any chicken ex-

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perience I’d ever had.

“We love doing it because we know how the chickens are raised,” Faurie said. “We know it’s done in a healthy and humane manner. The chickens have a short life, but it’s a great life.”

B&L 4E Farms can be reached at 795-2207 or 532-6657. Other area fresh-meat options include venison-ranchers Highland Farm, 283 County Route 6, Germantown; 518-537-6397 or eat-better-meat.com; Four Winds Farm, 158 Marabac Road, Gardiner; 255-3088 or e-mail jarmour@ bestweb.net; and Northwind Farms, 185 West Kerley Corners Road, Tivoli; 757-5591 or northwindfarmsallnatural.com.

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2014 10 | September Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

The marketing guy His father sold chickens to the neighborhood and in Kingston. “The older ones became soup,” remembered DeFalco.

Jude DeFalco personifies the new outreach at CCEUC

By Geddy Sveikauskas

J

D

DEFALCO IS AN EXTROVERT, SO IT’S GOOD that his job involves working with others. The marketing and public relations manager at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County works with many others. “My role here is to let people know who we are and what we can do for them.”

The Hudson Valley takes enormous pride in its deep agricultural heritage. Ever since it was the bread basket of the seventeenth-century Dutch colony of New Netherlands, the region has been known principally for its farming. And of course the first settlers of Wiltwyck, the third white settlement in the Hudson Valley, built their stockade overlooking the rich alluvial soil of the Esopus Valley where the Native Americans indigenous to the region had grown corn, maize and squash for many centuries.

The CCEUC has been the organizing heart of the local agricultural community for the past century.

But its mission brings it to different places these days than when agriculture was farming was the dominant occupation in Ulster County, as it was throughout the entire Hudson Valley. And that’s why the affable DeFalco is good at his job as the marketing guy at CCEUC, a role that the 44-yearold has performed for the past seven years.

He’s from a farm background himself. But he has more than a passing familiarity with some non-agricultural pursuits, particularly music and art.

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Jude’s father, Salvatore, was a poultry farmer near Bloomington who kept 2000 to 3000 chickens and delivered eggs on his route on Saturdays.

Jude grew up spending his Friday nights bringing the baskets of eggs up from the basement and feeding them through a machine that cleaned, candled, weighed and sorted each egg. “We still have the machine,” he reported.

EFALCO STARTED playing the drums at the age of five. His mother bought him a snare drum set from Abrams Music, and he followed his dream. He hasn’t looked back since.

Almost 40 years later, he currently plays with two local bands, Mister Kick (they played on the Strand on July 4) and Feast of Friends, a Doors tribute band that he describes as “really taking off.”

Recently, Jude’s two-year-old son said his first word, his father related proudly. It wasn’t ‘mom.’ It wasn’t ‘dad.’ It was ‘drum.’

Graduating from Kingston High School in 1987, Jude got an associate’s degree from Ulster County Community College, majoring in graphic design and photography. He did the design work for Not Fade Away Graphic from 1991 to 1994 at a time when that business was exploding. The Grateful Dead supported the Lithuanian basketball team of the time, which wore the shirts DeFalco had made. He couldn’t have been happier.

He scuffled around Kingston for a while, living in Stone Ridge. DeFalco got married in 2003, and started a family. He is now divorced with joint custody of his three kids, nine, six and two years old. He recently moved into Kingston.

In the late 1990s DeFalco got involved in orga-

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September 2014 Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

Compete for “Best in the Hudson Valley” Receive a prize at one of the various contests taking place at the Third Annual Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

H

ERE IS A LIST OF THE CONTESTS TAKING PLACE. ENTER

one contest or all four. Prizes will be awarded!

Apple Pie Contest: Saturday, September 20 Adult and Youth categories. All entries must be received on Saturday, September 20 by 11:00 am.

Judging begins at 11:30am.

Pickles & Jams Canning Contest: Saturday, September 20 – Both Pickle and Jam entries must be received on Saturday, September 20 between 10:00 am and 11:00am. Jam judging begins at 12:00pm. Pickle judging begins at 4:00pm.

Cupcake Contest sponsored by King Arthur

Flour: Sunday, September 21 - Adult and Youth categories. All entries must be received on Sunday, September 21 by 11:00 am. Judging begins at 11:30am.

Photo Contest & Exhibit: Agriculture in Ulster County - Exhibit will be on display September 20 and 21 at the Festival. Entry deadline is Thursday, September 11. Select entries will be featured in our 2015 wall calendar.

We’re seeking a judge for our Photography Contest/Exhibit next Sat. Sept. 20 in the afternoon. I have one professional photographer and I’m looking for one more, possibly someone who is an amateur to intermediate level photographer. The time/ location wouldn’t be as much a factor. Judges receive 2 free admissions into the festival, and get to judge some really beautiful, quality work by local artists, of agriculture in Ulster County. If interested please call Carrie 340-3990 ext. 311 or email cad266@cornell.edu.

| 11

farm operators still report farming as their primary occupation, only 61 of 486 reporting farms reported farm sales of $100,000 or more. The other 425 reported less. The average age of the principal operator of Ulster County farms was 58.2 years, about a year older than the state average.

Should the very recent trends of younger farmers and new outlets for farm produce continue, it is possible that farm income will increase in the next few years. But it also seems likely that dual occupations will persist as well. Farm spouses will supplement family income from other jobs. And partnerships between agriculturally and non-agriculturally oriented enterprises such as between CCEUC and Family of Woodstock will probably accelerate.

Though there will be plenty of entertainment and plenty of education at this weekend’s third anLydia Reidy nual Hudson Valley Harvest Festival at the Ulster County Fairgrounds, these won’t be the main thing.

The goal, explains Jude DeFalco, is a family event at a reasonable price. The emphasis will be on activities: the farm Olympics, baking contests, pumpkin patches, and pickles and jams cheek by jowl with a car show and a greased watermelon relay. Now that’s the New Agriculture in action.

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executive director, thought to herself, “Jude would be great for the marketing position.”

The rest is history.

. . t h e ha 32.

1 9 2 . . . t he 3 e 1 9 . 2 1 15 79

HREE-QUARTERS OF

NEW YORK FARMERS PRODUCED $50,000 or less in market value of agricultural products in 2012, according to the federal Agricultural Census. A little more than half the farm operators in New York State reported farming as their primary occupation.

In Ulster County, where about two-thirds of

s

nizing the art gallery scene of the time. He started painting in 1999, and started galleries first in Midtown Kingston, then Uptown on Wall Street and finally the Skybox Gallery on North Front Street.

Involving himself in the business end of art, the young entrepreneur accumulated acquaintances from all walks of local life. One of his friends was Bob Reidy, a watercolor artist and poet, who helped him organize poetry and live music events at his art gallery.

DeFalco has always been a self-starter, full of ideas, a good organizer with outreach skills, and gifted with contacts and connections. The marketing position at Cornell Cooperative Extension came open. Lydia Reidy, Bob’s wife and CCEUC

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2014 12 | September Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

Helping neighbors Harvest festival provides its organizers crucial support

By David Sterman

T

HIS WEEK’S HUDSON Valley Harvest Festival is just one of many fundraising events taking place across the county every year, from modest wine tastings to massive horse shows, You’ve probably attended a few benefit events this year yourself.

For some organizations, such events are the sole path to funding. Without them, the non-profits behind them might not exist. For other non-profits, fund-raising is crucial, though not necessarily the major source of revenue for an organization.

Take as an example Family of Woodstock, co-sponsor along with Cornell Cooperative Extension of the September 20 and 21 harvest festival at the Ulster County fairgrounds in New Paltz. Fundraising at key events accounts for less than one dollar of ev- Jessica Pierce ery ten of the organization’s annual budget, but “the money is critical in allowing us to pay for things that are not otherwise paid for by grant or foundation funding,” says Michael Berg, Family’s executive director. Festival revenues can be used to plug budgetary holes that otherwise couldn’t be plugged.

It’s not just about the money, though. “The outside events also play a critical role in connecting to the community and providing an opportunity to tell them what we do and answer any questions,” Berg adds. Such events typically require a small army of volunteers to help the event’s activities go as planned. Non-profits often find that such volunteers form a deep and lasting connection with the organizations they help. That loyalty, which widens the intensity as well as the amount of support, reaps dividends down the road. In that sense, Family is an extended family. So is Cooperative Extension, whose roots in the Ulster County community go back more than a century.

This year’s harvest festival will be using dozens of volunteers from SUNY New Paltz and New Paltz High School. If history is any guide, some of these students will become future volunteers, donors and even full-time staff members for Family

PHOTOS BY PHYLLIS McCABE

Merle Borenstein

Post HVHF CCEUC events Sunday, October 5, 10:00am Eat Smart, Live Well @ The Rosendale Farmers Market Tuesday, October 7, 6:00pm Food Canning & Pickling Workshop Series: Tomatoes Saturday, October 18, 10:00am Learning in the Garden Series: End the Season Right! Gardening and Tools Tuesday, November 4, 6:00pm Food Canning & Pickling Workshop Series: Orange, Cranberry Chutney Thursday, November 13, 5:00pm Growing Winter Greens & Tomatoes

Nicole Villani

of Woodstock and Cornell Cooperative Extension.

Pulling off such events successfully is n picnic.

Many employees and volunteers at both organizations have been working most of the spring and summer in preparation for the festival. Their efforts are above and beyond their regular work load. Special kudos for the festival go to Cornell’s

irrepressible Jude DeFalco, who runs marketing and public relations at Cornell, and to Family’s Jessica Pierce, program director for adolescent services, and Nicole Villani, who helps run Family’s life-skills services program.

These staffers also get a considerable amount of help from their organizations’ board members. Family, for example, has a dedicated set of directors who primarily focus on the planning and execution of key fundraisers.

Merle Borenstein, who runs Kingston’s popular Armadillo Bar & Grill in Kingston, is a key force behind annual Family’s Chocolate Lover’s Brunch.

Merle has deep roots in the county, having launched a soup kitchen in Kingston nearly 30 years ago. Over the years, Merle has supported a range of causes. She devotes much of her free time these days to Family of Woodstock.

“Michael Berg was a customer at Armadillo,” explains Borenstein, “and as I grew to know him I found all of the layers of society that Family touches.”

Becoming a board member was for her “an opportunity to make a difference in things that matter to me.”

The third annual harvest festival is expected to raise several thousand dollars for each organization. The $5 daily admission fee is a key source of support, though visitors are always encouraged if so inclined to give a little more at the gate.

Yet, as noted earlier, such events aren’t just about money. They are also a way to make deep connections with significant organizations that make a difference in the quality of life of thousands of Ulster County people. Staffers will be available at the site to chat about the wide range of valuable services the organizations provide. Beyond the cotton candy, live music and myriad events, you may just come away from the event with a dose of inspiration.

September 2014 Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

| 13

Family-friendly fun at 2013's Harvest Fest

PHOTOS BY FRONT ROW DAVE

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2014 14 | September Hudson Valley Harvest Festival

Pick the grants that fit The local Cornell Cooperative Extension learns to be nimble and selective

By Paul Smart

U

LSTER CORNELL COOPERATIVE Extension director of programs Mary Marsters says a lot of the changes in the local extension’s work have come as a result of shifts in funding.

“It’s tight and very different from when things started up a century ago,” she explains. “Where it used to be a triad of federal, state and county funding – right up into the 1990s – our overall budget has grown in five years from $1 million and change to $3 million and change, while the percentage of county input has stayed around ten percent of our total budget and the state and federal amounts have become relatively smaller. We rely more now on specific grants and contracts.”

Marsters talked about how the mission of the extension program has always stayed the same – showing farmers and their families how to apply research discoveries to what they do. But the means by which the Mary Marsters local extensions achieve that mission and keep up with changing times has shifted with the funding.

“We don’t get our money from the university, and even the university’s funding has shifted with the times, changing the research end of what we work with,” she adds. “Now we run programs that get funded individually, so when those programs’ funding stops so do the programs.”

CCE Ulster has been working on new initiatives.

Marsters talked about the New World Foundation’s farm hub in Hurley, a community farming network stretching up and down eastern New York, an expanding master gardener program, new international exchanges designed to bolster the 4H, a re-launch of the now-defunct Boys and Girls Club’s mentoring efforts, and a push towards Healthy Communities work.

“You take your mission and pick the grants that fit it while best serving the community,” she explains. “You have to be very selective.”

Something as effective as the extension’s longserving lab in Highland, so important in working with that part of the county’s orchards’ needs, is

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PHOTOS BY PHYLLIS McCABE

Liz Higgins

currently funded only through next year, Marsters says. “Which means we’re looking for a new model by which to keep it funded,” she adds. “And it appears local growers may help by stepping up to the plate there.”

T

HE COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SYSTEM HAS BEEN IN EVERY

state since the nation’s Smith-Lever Act established “a partnership between agricultural colleges and the US Department of Agriculture” a century ago with the purpose of transferring academic discoveries to farmers and their families throughout the nation. The authors of this groundbreaking legislation wanted to bring new knowledge into the most rural of pursuits, including foresting and homemaking. They also looked to improving and protecting the nation’s food sources and food supplies.

Along with the application of scientific methods came federal funding. The original act, which followed up on the establishment of land-grant universities throughout the nation a quarter-century earlier (when Cornell University began extension work on its own), promised that the federal government would provide each state with funds based on a population-related formula. The states agreed to match the federal funds.

That was the genesis. Changing need later dictated new methods of cooperation unanticipated by the original formula. As Marsters points out, new models of funding and new partners in cooperation are part of today’s reality.

The extension network became one of the keys to helping Americans survive the Great Depression. And in the years after World War II it kept our farming culture alive while simultaneously taking new inventions, and inventiveness, into rural homes.

How is rural initiative doing these days, in the form of New York’s Cornell Cooperative Extension right here in Ulster County? How is the system keeping up with new concepts of sustainability, the return of small farms, the locavore movement and climate change?

“The Cooperative Extension system is a nonformal educational program implemented in the United States designed to help people use research-based knowledge to improve their lives,” explained one federal outreach effort.

C

CE ULSTER’S AGRICULTURAL PROGRAM LEADER LIZ Higgins coordinates programs for local foresters and small farmers, providing linkages and recommendations to the region’s leading Agriforestry Center and model forest in Greene County and to Cornell University’s growing Small Farms Program. The head of the latter program, Cornell professor Anu Rangarajan, was just hired last week to run the ambitious new farm-hub activities in Ulster County. She will begin her new job later this month “For people interested in small farming – and there is definitely a great deal more interest and opportunity there than there was 20 years ago – we aid with technical assistance, from cropping recommendations to marketing suggestions, and do all we can to help people succeed,” Higgins says. She noted the increased competition in small farming, and the continuing growth of farm markets and CSAs these days.

“For foresters, we recently received a grant, tied to concerns regarding the emerald ash borer invasive pests, working towards better tree stewardship in more urban areas.”

Higgins first started working locally with the extension’s Ashokan watershed stream management collaboration with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and with Ulster County Soil & Water Conservation District, Was the extension was being more responsive to new trends or just doing what it could to keep up with shifting funding cycles? “For us, what we do will shift at the edges based on funding, but only to a certain extent,” Higgins replies. “We won’t be going after any big dairying or yogurt initiatives, given the emphasis on that in the western and central parts of the state. But we will know where to point those who come to us for help in those areas.”

She pointed to new programs involving small grains, aimed at health issues and obesity, and the growing of hops, enabled by new legislation out of Albany.

O

N A NATIONAL BASIS, THERE’S BEEN SOME CONSOLIDA-

tion among extensions in recent years.

Every county in all 50 states had a local extension office at one time. About 2900 exten-

September 2014 Hudson Valley Harvest Festival sion offices now exist nationwide. Greene and Columbia counties recently combined forces. There’s more regional program cooperation among Ulster, Orange and Dutchess counties these days.

There have also been consolidations in oversight and shifts in funding mechanisms on the federal level. Very recently, a new nationwide initiative called eXtension (pronounced “e-extension”), an Internet-based portal where citizens have 24-hour access to specialized information and education on a wide range of topics organized into “communities of practice,” has been established.

How will a move from block grants to competi-

tive program funding affect Ulster County? “It’s all pushing and pulling,” Mary Marsters explains.

“We’re working on childhood obesity issues and the movement to more local sourcing as a means of our mission regarding food-safety issues. We start working with flood-hazard mitigation issues with the Ashokan project but then find ways to expand what we’ve learned there into program developed for all our communities’ preparedness issues. We’re trying to stay as close to and ahead of the curve as we can.”

The federal bureaucracy has been stuggling to stay ahead of the curve. In 1994 Congress passed a Department Reorganization Act created the Co-

| 15

operative State Research Service and the Extension Service into a single agency. In 2009, this agency was reorganized and made into the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

The original agricultural mission continues to be broadened to meet newly recognized social needs, not the least in New York State. “Cornell Cooperative Extension puts knowledge to work in pursuit of economic vitality, ecological sustainability and social well-being,” reads a recent Cornell statement of purpose. “We bring local experience and research-based solutions together, helping New York State families and communities thrive in our rapidly changing world.”

A bounty of classic cars

PHOTOS BY FRONT ROW DAVE

2014 16 | September Hudson Valley Harvest Festival