Agriculture and Art
Food and farming come to life in a new exhibition “Agriculture in the Hudson Valley” at the Cornell Creative Arts Center in Kingston (129 Cornell St, Kingston, NY 12401). A set of aerial photos of the Farm Hub (taken by Chris Rahm of Oceans 8 Films) are being displayed along with a number of other pieces by artists and photographers in the Hudson Valley region. Highlights include an extensive series of seed packages from the Hudson Valley Seed Company, drawn or painted by artists; the pack for Black Futsu Squash was created by Andrew Casner our field crops coordinator. The exhibition opened on March 6 and closes on April 30 and is free and open to the public.
Youth Crew Runs Pop-Up Restaurant
The Kingston YMCA Farm Project Youth Cooking Crew ran a successful pop-up restaurant in March. The dinner, held at The Upstate Table in Kingston, included a four-course meal featuring produce, beans, and grains from the Farm Hub. Dishes included butternut squash mac and cheese with sauteed kale, black bean tostadas with green rice and roasted sweet potatoes, and a dessert plate of chocolate beet cakes and vegan/gluten-free chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches. The 11 members of the Youth Crew spent months planning the event which sold out quickly.
New York Grown & Certified
The Farm Hub is now New York State (NYS) Grown & Certified through the State’s Department of Agriculture and Markets. Product packaging and marketing materials can now include the NYS Grown & Certified logo. The Farm Hub is United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) certified organic through NOFA-NY.
Farmscape Ecology at NOFA-NY
In January Anne Bloomfied, Applied Farmscape Ecology Program Manager, along with Conrad Vispo and Claudia Knab-Vispo of the Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology program, presented at the NOFA-NY Winter Conference. The workshop, Considering On-farm Wildness: Service Provider or Spiritual Underpinning? explored questions such as how do habitats we intentionally and unintentionally create on farms attract a variety of wild plants and animals?
Tractor Intensive
Later this year the Farm Hub’s Ag Education & Training Program plans to host a series of tractor intensive workshops targeting new and beginner farmers in the region. The workshops, which launched last fall, have been well received. Instructors will include Sarah Groat, a farm mechanic who runs her own farm equipment repair business in the Hudson Valley, John DiMarco, Jayne Henson of TransGenerational Farm, and the Farm Hub’s Jesus Gonzalez and Jesus Gonzalez Jr. To learn more about Ag education and Training click aquí.
Double Feature at The O Zone
The short films “Farmscape Ecology” and “The Wonder of the Bobolink” screened at The O Zone in Red Hook, NY. “Farmscape Ecology” tells the story of the research work conducted under the Farm Hub’s Programa de Ecología del Agro-Paisaje Aplicada. The event was followed by a panel discussion featuring Farmscape Ecology Program Manager Anne Bloomfield, filmmaker Jon Bowermaster (whose Oceans 8 Films produced the film) and researcher Conrad Vispo of Programa de Ecología del Agro-Paisaje de Hawthorne Valley. “The Wonder of the Bobolink” also screened at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival and the One-Reeler Short Film Competition.
Language Justice and the Broadway Bubble Laundromat
In January, Liliana “Li” Sierra and Jenifer Gonzalez Negrete of our Language Justice Program were invited to offer an intro to Language Justice workshop for the youth at the Kingston YMCA Farm Project. The youth had been working on the redesign of the Broadway Bubble Laundromat with the intention of converting it into a mixed-use community space, and were very interested in incorporating a language justice approach into their design. Participants were able to learn about the different ways that language justice can be practiced in our day to day lives, even for those who are monolingual language speakers; as well as about the importance of incorporating a multilingual participatory process into the design of a community space. KayCee Wimbish, the Project Director of the YMCA Farm Project, said, “Liliana and Jenifer’s workshop provided the youth with a foundation in understanding what language justice is and made them really think about how to meaningfully engage speakers of many different languages in the community outreach process. The language justice workshop gave them (youth) concrete ideas specific to the Broadway Bubble project and provided them with a lens through which to look at all kinds of community projects and institutions.”
