The chime of clinking glasses and agricultural banter echoed through the verdant hillside at the Glynwood Center in Cold Spring, as the facility honored a national cross section of farmers and served up a feast of regional fare cooked by chef Jeff Rader of The Valley Restaurant at the Garrison.
“We started the Harvest Awards to focus on people who were doing extraordinary work in various places around the country and to honor them and bring attention to what they were doing,” said Judith LaBelle, president of Glynwood Center. “But also to inspire other people to take action in their own community.”
Among the 2007 Glynwood Harvest Award winners were Organic Valley Family of Farms from Wisconsin, Grow Montana from Montana, Community Food Security Center from Arizona and Added Value and Herban Solutions from Red Hook. All of them promoted the same message: Support your local farmers.
“We”™re very lucky in this region that we have relatively small farmers,” said LaBelle. “The average farm size is 150 acres, so farmers really know their land and we”™re very blessed that farmers in this region tend to be very good stewards. So, this means they”™re contributing to the water quality, the quality of the air, the habitat and the biodiversity that we all enjoy,”
“The Glynwood Center does some really neat things with getting people aware and it”™s right in line with the way we see things, so it”™s great to be involved with people like that,” said Paul Knapp, Organic Valley farmer and Glynwood Harvest Farmer award recipient. Knapp and his wife, Maureen, another Organic Valley farmer, came to Glynwood to receive their award on behalf of the 1,200 Organic Valley farmers in the country. “It”™s a great honor for us to be here to represent all the farmers.”
When it comes to preserving local farms, Knapp said there are a lot of different reasons why it”™s important. “There”™s no simple, one explanation, but more and more of the farmland is getting housed or developed and as the land gets developed it”™s never going to be returned to farmland; the chances are slim,” Knapp said. “Farmers are being pushed out. People also need to know where their food comes from and as you get further and further away, you lose sight of how important the farmers are.”
“One of the results of the shrinking number of farms is the rural infrastructure that supports farmers also disappears,” added Maureen Knapp. “So there needs to be a critical mass of farmers in the area in order for a business to support farms to be there.”
The 2007 Glynwood Harvest Award recipients aren”™t the only leaders who have graced the picturesque landscape at the Glynwood Center.
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“One of our favorite times was when President Gorbachev stayed here and had dinner,” said LaBelle, referring to the former Soviet leader. “We went through the farmers and the story about supporting the small farmers and he was so excited. He said, ”˜I”™m a farmer, I want to meet the chef who cooks the food from small farmers!”™”
That growth in attention to small farmers is at least partly due to Glynwood”™s work. The 225-acre farm was once owned by George and Lynn Perkins and fell in into the hands of multiple private and public partners who preserved it after they died. Today, the facility not only serves as a farm, but also as an educational center on agriculture.
According to LaBelle, Glynwood uses the farm to “introduce people to good-growing techniques and responsible agriculture.” In addition, the farm runs a Community Support of Agriculture group, where people can buy a share of the farm.
“Our main focus is our own programming and our own programming has always been about community conservation and trying to help communities take better approaches to protecting their agricultural and natural resources, while still achieving economic well-being,” said LaBelle.
The great push to support farmers came five years ago, when Glynwood recognized the growing concern for preserving farmland.
“We didn”™t think there were really good programs to help people understand what the resource was at the local level and what they could do to protect it,” said LaBelle. “So we started focusing on that and five years ago we had the first series of seminars in the Hudson Valley on what is a regional food system, what is the shape of the Hudson Valley regional food system and how can we strengthen it.”
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