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Kingston Eats Veggies Campaign
This past fall we joined in the Kingston Eats Veggies campaign by donating carrots and peppers (both featured as vegetables of the month). The initiative led by the City of Kingston’s Creating Healthy Schools and Communities team aims to get the public to have fun with vegetables through events and activities such as gardening, cooking demos, and tastings. The Kingston City School District, community organizations, local restaurants, and the Kingston Farmers Market also participated in the campaign.
Soul Fire Farm Harvest
Farm Hub staff attended a September sacred amaranth harvest at Soul Fire Farm. The event was led by SEED Travels and hosted by our friends at Soul Fire. In addition to participating in the harvest, we learned how to clean amaranth seeds and make amaranth snack bars. Our Language Justice Program co-organized the event, providing interpretation and leading an in-person interpreter practice session. Six interpreters-in-training gathered before the event for a dedicated workshop and later joined the harvest as shadow interpreters.
Spanish Computer Classes
This fall our Agricultural Education & Training Program hosted a series of Spanish computer classes for farmworkers. The six two-hour sessions were held at the Farm Hub in the early evenings and led by instructor Elva Corbaton. The class covered basics of online communication, navigation, and function with the purpose of helping workers with better access to information and communication tools.
Turtle Symposium
In July 2023, AFERC (Applied Farmscape Ecology Research Collaborative) collaborator, Jason Tesauro, presented at a Conservation Symposium for Wood, Blanding’s, and Spotted Turtles, and related Emydine turtles. Emydine refers to a freshwater turtle taxonomic subfamily Emydinae, which encompasses the “pond, box, and marsh turtles” including, Glyptemys, Clemmys, Terrapene, Emys, Actinemys, and Emydoidea. The symposium, at Juniata College in Pennsylvania, focused on population assessment and genetics, illegal trade and repatriation, spatial ecology, habitat management, conservation planning and implementation, biology, and headstarting/population augmentation. Several of the conference presentations, including Tesauro and Erik Kiviat’s AFERC research, Habitat Use of Three Wood Turtle Populations on Active Farmland in Eastern New York, will appear in a special issue of Northeastern Naturalist journal in 2024.
Kingston YMCA Farm Project Winter Farm Stand
The Kingston YMCA Farm Project’s Winter Farm Stand runs on Thursdays from November through February. This is our sixth year partnering with the YMCA Farm Project with an assortment of vegetables including salad greens, spinach, kale, potatoes, carrots, and onions. The proceeds benefit youth employment and empowerment programs. For details on the winter farm stand click here.
Ecology Students
Our Applied Farmscape Ecology Program and Agricultural Education & Training Programs recently teamed up to host ecology students from SUNY Ulster. The visit, led by Farm Hub staff members Sara Katz, Teresa Dorado, and Anne Bloomfield, included an introduction to the Applied Farmscape Ecology Program as well as activities intended to help students observe and consider the relationship between agriculture and ecology. Students visited the vegetable field to study sweet corn and the Native Meadow Trial plots where researchers are studying the interactions between planted meadow habitat, crops, and biodiversity.
Language Justice at the Y
In October, youth and staff from the Kingston YMCA Farm Project engaged in an immersive Language Justice workshop held at the YMCA of Kingston & Ulster County. Attendees learned about Language Justice (using translation and interpretation to increase the presence of multilingual spaces) through discussion and a series of games that highlighted the importance of multilingual space.
“Learning about language justice can empower them to create change in their schools, community, and here at the Kingston YMCA Farm Project,” says KayCee Wimbish, Project Director and Farmer at the YMCA Farm Project. The workshop was facilitated by Adriana Pericchi and Wendelin Regalado, Spanish language interpreters and translators in Kingston who frequently work with our Language Justice Program.
Agricultural Mechanics Training
Los Fundamentos de Mecánica Agrícola (a Farm Hub program that offers training on tractor operation, basic maintenance and repair in Spanish) took place for the second year in late November. The course consisted of eight daylong sessions in our machine shop led by our experienced field staff and bilingual agricultural facilitator Shane LaBrake. Our English language program will start in mid-January 2024; while registration for the program is full click here to check for future opportunities.
Colorado State University Presentation
In November Teresa Dorado, Program Coordinator for the Applied Farmscape Ecology Program, delivered a virtual presentation to graduate students at Colorado State University. She spoke about Farm Hub programs, including the ecology program and a variety of research initiatives at the Farm Hub.
We are hiring
Interested in joining the Farm Hub team? Check out our employment page where we list office and field-based opportunities throughout the year.
Click here to learn more about the open positions.
Click here to read previous In Brief Columns.