Passivity was plowed under like last year”™s corn stubble in Copake recently, when a pair of agricultural forces teamed in the name of farming sustainability.
They will do so again July 30 with an even bigger, public-invited Hudson Valley Food Lovers Festival.
The Copake Country Club barbecue June 23 featured local cheeses, breads, a full dinner, wines, whiskeys and even spicy goat-milk caramel from Sharon Springs. The co-sponsors, were Friends of the Farmer and Hudson Valley Bounty, embracing five counties on both sides of the Hudson River. When they partner again July 30, also at the Copake Country Club, the event will feature a farmers market, kids tent, food, drink and live music and a dinner (dinner tickets at friendsofthefarmer.com).
The barbecue (also an agricultural scholarship fundraiser) drew a crowd of 110 and included Ronny and Cathy Osofsky, whose 500-acre Ronnybrook Farm Dairy straddles the Dutchess-Columbia county line. The Osofsky”™s products ”“ dairy legends in markets from Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan”™s East Village north into Westchester ”“ must also compete as a business and value-added products are part of the equation. Cathy cited ice cream, yogurt, heavy cream and “a lot of green markets” as part of modern life on the farm.
The barbecue was as much about marketing strategies as about the weather. Certainly no farm festival in decades past had a graphic designer; Phoenicia-based Todd Spire is responsible for the public face of the festival and of Friends of the Farmer. Sporting an appropriately field-tested sombrero, he attended with his wife, Jennifer.
Andrew Turner, executive director of Cornell Cooperative Extension for Columbia and Greene counties and an event sponsor, said, “I see an agricultural renaissance in the Hudson Valley ”“ from farmers to chefs to consumers, a complete circle of the food system that”™s working on a whole new level.”
Agricultural sustainability is integral to the July 30 festival and to the overarching missions of Friends of the Farmer, founded by Tessa Edick, and Hudson Valley Bounty, which is sponsoring the July 30 dinner to benefit agricultural scholarships ($10 of every $75 dinner ticket goes to the fund).
Kristin Roca serves as Hudson Valley Bounty”™s program director. A California transplant and mother of two small children, she said she is “passionate about the mission of local food” and for the last year has labored toward Hudson Valley Bounty”™s five-year vision. “We”™re working to keep local farms from going under.”
Todd Erling is executive director of Hudson Valley AgriBusiness Development Corp., a Hudson-based nonprofit that serves farmers in Dutchess, Orange, Ulster, Sullivan and Columbia counties and is parent to Hudson Valley Bounty. “We”™re the only regional nonprofit that focuses on agriculture as economic development.” He ticked off a list of tasks, including developing agricultural business plans, market and feasibility studies, and help with access to capital.
“We also interact: How to better get the product to market at a fair price to the farmer,” he said, citing successes so far with whiskey, beer, dairy equipment and even frozen-food packaging via Farm To Table Co-Packers in a 21,000-square-foot kitchen at Tech City, the old IBM campus in Kingston.
“When locals unite with New Yorkers to share the love of food and the rich farm bounty that surrounds us, together they form the core of farm-to-table movement and community,” Edick said. “Commerce results from this union among farmers, chefs, growers, producers and consumers, which secures a livelihood for the next generation of farmers in the Hudson Valley. Friends of the Farmer Festival aims to promote succession in family farming as we all opt out of the processed-food chain. We all benefit by becoming friends of the farmer.”
