Harvest Blog

By Mary Godnick, Adirondack Harvest Program Leader | Agritourism can be considered a dirty word to farmers who really just want to care for their animals, grow their crops, make their products, and make a living. Most farmers are farmers because they love farming- the day-to-day operations of growing and selling products, managing a business, […]

Christmas shopping doesn’t have to be a dutiful trudge to the mall or a soulless lonely crawl through endless shopping websites promising that if you just spend another $10 you’ll be eligible for free shipping. The North Country has dozens of local producers that can be found in all manner of unlikely places, from farm […]

By Tim Rowland | A genre of 20th century agrarian artists loved nothing better than a pastoral scene with a stream tranquilly meandering through a neatly clipped meadow. But today, with the onset of a changing climate, farmers are understanding that the ideal was not ideal. Streams need the shade of trees to protect cold-water […]

By Mary Godnick, Adirondack Harvest Program Leader | Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who made our 2024 Adirondack Harvest Festival a success! This event would not have been possible without the hard work of over 81 businesses and organizations, 42 volunteers, and 21 staff […]

There is no sugarcoating it: a locally raised turkey will cost more money than the big birds at the grocery store. So why spend more on something you can get so cheaply? The average grocery store turkey cost around $1.27 per pound last year, according to the American Farm Bureau. The unbelievably cheap turkeys sold at […]

Food labels and certifications such as “natural,” “organic,” “cage-free” and “pasture-raised” are time-consuming for the producer and confusing for the consumer — so are they worth it? Like the labels themselves, the answer is confusing. It was 85 years ago that J.I. Rodale, building on a British theory of farms as living “organisms,” founded the […]