Harvest Blog

by Tim Rowland |

Dan and Kimmy Rivera started out to solve a problem. If all goes according to plan, they may wind up solving several. In middle age and feeling the effects of a decade of farm labor, the owners of Triple Green Jade farm in Willsboro began shopping around for a succession plan that would protect their 80 acres and their successful baking business while using its value to support their retirement somewhere down the road.

Typically an easement would be the answer, but the Riveras wanted something a bit less restrictive. Something that would allow more people to live on and work the land, and be flexible enough to factor in future unknowns, notably climate change.

Following leads provided by Cornell Cooperative Extension’s in-depth succession planning resources and other New England agencies, Dan Rivera said he finally was connected with the Food & Farm Business Law Clinic at Pace University, which offers legal services and advocacy projects in support of the transition to a just and sustainable food system. 

When Dan contacted the center, which was founded in 2017, they told him that other farmers were starting to ask the same sorts of questions. “They said they were getting a lot of requests from people who own land and are trying to figure out a way to share it more equitably,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Riveras had come across a solution that seemed to make the most sense: cooperatives. 

Cooperatives in the North Country are not entirely new, and there have been successes and failures. A planned affordable housing co-op in Lake Placid failed to launch, but Ward Lumber in Jay successfully transitioned to a worker-owned model.The first job was to find out if the multiple-housing model would work from a legal standpoint, particularly in the Adirondacks, which has strict limits on housing density.

Pace University assigned Triple Green Jade a student who looked at farm cooperatives through a legal lens and indicated the plan was workable. This is because of a preexisting exemption to APA zoning for clustered farm housing inside the park. Thus, the Triple Green Jade farm cooperative project was born.

As envisioned, it exists at the intersection of three struggling Adirondack sectors: agriculture, labor and housing. About six families or individuals would each buy a share of the farm and baking business for $70,000. That would entitle them to build a home and work on the farm, and share in the company profits. It would be designed as an intentional community, with participants sharing common values of food equity, communal work and resource conservation.

Homes might be similar to a small community in Keene developed by the housing advocacy group Adirondack Roots, which have been made more affordable through shared land and utilities. And cooperative shareholders might also help build each others’ homes.

The business, over time, would help them recoup their costs.

“People would join this cooperative, and they would all own everything — not only the barns and the land, they would also own the business,” Dan said. “So the wood-fired bread oven would also be theirs. My stone mill would be theirs. They would have a whole commercial kitchen on a farm to make use of.”

Rivera said he expects the farm production would grow beyond what two people are currently able to produce. Owners might grow vegetables, raise more animals and make value-added products like cheese and charcuterie . More local food would be available to local supper tables.

“There are definitely ways we can grow it, and the (commercial) kitchen helps center all that, and becomes like a nice hub of activity for all those value added things,” Rivera said. “The idea is to kind of grow a community around that, and have people live here, hopefully affordably. The idea behind the affordable aspect is that we would try to help build together in kind of an eco village setting.”

Ryan Demers, cooperative business developer for the Cooperative Development Institute, said that while business co-ops are more established, farm co-ops have been shown to work elsewhere in New England. The cooperative structure offers support and stability, both for the occupants and for the farm. “People support what they help create,” Demers said. Cooperatives are also a stepping stone for people who might otherwise face headwinds when trying to start a business based on income, race or gender. 

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are at least 30,000 co-ops in the country, pumping an annual $700 billion into the economy. While co-ops sometimes have the reputation for “sandals and candles,” Demers said it in fact takes hard work, social flexibility, and business acumen to make it all work.

Investors in Triple Green Jade would not necessarily have to farm. For example, someone with accounting skills would have something of value to contribute to the overall enterprise.

Those new to farming would have another advantage that others might not: Since the Riveras will continue to own a share, they can tap into Dan and Kimmy’s expertise in sales, marketing, production, and negotiating government programs.

“One of the challenges for intentional communities is that when a bunch of like-minded folks get together and find land, that’s the utopia moment; but after that, OK, what do we do to pay the bills?,” Rivera said. “So with the value that we offer, you can join a successful business right now. I’m not saying you’re gonna get rich here, but you can pay the bills and be gainfully employed by the fruits of your labor.”

A shared agricultural co-op would have another significant benefit that most farmers do not enjoy: time off. With other people to care for animals or mind the store, families would be able to take vacations and find it easier to schedule appointments. And tasks such as child care, which can be expensive if it can be found at all, is much easier in a cooperative setting.

Some communities have taken the sharing to another level, owning two or three cars that could be signed out as needed — and saving individuals a considerable transportation expense.

With such interdependence, participants are carefully vetted to help ensure they will thrive in an intentional community. “Communication is the key,” Rivera said.

There are other challenges, such as lining up nontraditional housing financing and finding places for shareholders to live while their homes are being built. But early interest has been promising, Rivera said. So promising, in fact, that for the Riveras themselves retirement might not mean leaving the farm.

“After we’re gone, the cooperative hopefully has a life of its own, and it’s really going to be up to them to decide what it can be,” Rivera said. “We had been talking about this as a farm succession plan, like we’re going to leave and retire. But the more folks I talk to about this, I start to think like, maybe we would stay — maybe we can age in place and be that retired couple that helps out with little tasks here and there.”

by Tim Rowland |

 

 

Farm supply stores are normally noisy places in the early spring, filled with the chirps and cheeps of layer chicks bound for backyard coops. But often today the galvanized tubs where the peeps reside were empty, as the steep price of eggs put a premium on the little birds.

“We were going through hundreds (of chicks),” said a spokesperson for Runnings in Plattsburgh. “Every retailer in the area was noticing the same thing.” And local egg producers were noticing something too: For the first time in the collective memory, a local farm product retailed for less than the commercial counterpart, not only leveling the agricultural playing field, but also providing a blueprint as to how a locally sustainable food chain might work.

Unlike cattle or hogs, a small laying flock is attainable for many people in the rural North Country. And attain they did, as stores sold out or pushed spring delivery times back into the summer. These chicks will not begin to lay until late fall at the earliest, but when they do they will almost certainly produce more than one family can use.

That’s good news for North Country egg-eaters and for retailers such as North Country Co-op in Plattsburgh which buys eggs from local producers. “I had someone call the store and see if they could drop off 24 dozen eggs. And then I’ve had a couple other people bring in, like 10,” said grocery manager Aleah Tanriverdi-Klein. “The only large egg seller place that we’ve ever really gotten anything  from is Harmony Hill Farms. The rest is a network of hobby farmers with chickens, who have very, very small farms.” 

These backyard flocks producing surplus eggs — even a coop with just 10-20 hens in top production months will leave the owner with dozens of more eggs a week than they can use — are an antidote to an industry where the five largest producers provide nearly 40% of the nation’s eggs, according to Egg Industry magazine. 

This monoculture was rocked in 2022 when avian flu began to infect commercial flocks, eventually leading to the culling of more than 145 million laying hens. These hens were not immediately replaceable, as new chicks had to be hatched and raised to a laying age of about six months. (Meat birds were not similarly affected because they suffered fewer infections, and reach market age in just six weeks.)

So the price of large Grade A eggs, which according to the Federal Reserve were $2 a dozen in September 2023 spiked to well over $6 a dozen this past March, with some localized prices as high as $10 or more. Suddenly, local farm-fresh eggs were underselling the 60 commercial producers that supply almost 90% of the nation’s eggs — an unheard of phenomenon in the world of small-scale sustainable agriculture.

Given the chance to raise prices by a dollar or two from their typical $5 to $6.50 a dozen, most small producers and retailers in the North Country did not. Rob Hastings, owner of Rivermede farm and farm store in Keene Valley, said he is adding another 30 layers to his flock of 80 this year, but the price hasn’t budged.

“We don’t really care about the national price,” he said.

For local producers, the price is generally driven by the cost of feed, and if that cost doesn’t go up neither does the price of the eggs. Consumers noticed, and appreciated, that unlike mega-corporations, when the opportunity for price gouging presented itself, local producers refrained.

And they noticed something else, too. “They saw the color of that yolk,” said Hastings, referring to the plump orange of a hen raised on pasture or produce trimmings, in comparison with the runny, pale yellow of a commercial egg.

Hastings said his business tripled due to Covid and to a smaller degree, consumers responded to locally produced eggs, which were both cheaper and better.

Aleah Tanriverdi-Klein said the co-op had a similar experience. It posted its egg prices on social media, which drove customers to the store, motivated by the price but also their perception that big producers were taking advantage of the shortage to price-gouge.

Consumers might not realize it, but when they buy commercial eggs they are paying twice — once for the eggs, and again through taxpayer subsidies compensating agribusiness for infected hens and eggs. According to Sentient media, big producers have received $1.46 billion in government payouts compensating them for culled poultry and prevention measures. 

Stock of Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., the nation’s largest egg producer, reached an all-time high this year as the price it received rose by nearly 60%, according to Investing.com.

Cal-Maine’s second-quarter profits for fiscal 2025 soared 82% over the previous year, even as it received $44 million in taxpayer bailouts. Critics say compensation for poultry that has to be destroyed is intended to encourage companies to report infected flocks, but has in actuality given them little incentive to do anything about it.

“The way we do these things is unfortunate,” said Sue McGarry, who with her husband Tim produces eggs and honey at the Boquet Valley Farm & Apiary. “Our (national) agricultural model doesn’t make a lot of sense.” The McGarry’s have 53 “happy hens,” she said, that eat organic food and can grow old in peace without risk of getting culled when their production flags. McGarry said she knows she could get more than the $5 to $5.50 she charges per dozen, selling at roadside and through a pipeline to some families in New York City.

 

But she and her husband are retired, so, like many other small producers, the price reflects little more than compensating for feed costs. The recent egg shortage, she said, gave consumers a taste of what it really costs to produce food. The big producers “have always been subsidized, and the price of food has been artificially low,” she said.

As farms in the region add hens and more people invest in a backyard flock, more eggs will enter the local food supply, sold at roadside stands, given to friends and family or dropped off at local food banks. 

“These small farms are really important,” McGarry said. These producers, like herself, want a wholesome food from birds that are treated with respect.

As the big producers’ flocks return to normal, the price, already off its highs, is likely to come down more. But after trying a dozen farm-fresh eggs, producers hope local consumers will never go back.

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 stores on country roads to hamlet storefronts to, yes, online sites where you can order by mail or in some cases arrange to meet producers who don’t have regular store hours for a personalized visit.

When shopping for locally produced products it also pays to remember the eternal truth: In more ways than one, food is a gift.

“Jams and jellies sell well for stocking stuffers, apple crumb pie is a favorite and our pumpkin pie is top-notch,” said David Conway, a jack of all trades at Rulfs Orchard in Peru. 

Orchards are typically thought of in the season of ripening apples and autumn leaves, and that is indeed their busiest time of year. But they also ramp up for the holidays, not just with gifts but with trees and wreaths, along with decorated Christmas cookies for holiday parties.

Conway said it’s a good venue for shoppers, but also a chance for producers to connect with old friends. “We have a lot of tourists, but we definitely have our regulars,” he said.

Some communities have winter farmers markets and others have farm stores open even when the snow flies.

A challenge, said Cherie Whitten, owner of the Whitten Family Farm in Winthrop and the Adirondack Food Hub in Tupper Lake (open Thursday through Saturday in winter), is that people tend to stop thinking about locally produced foods when summer wanes, even though greenhouses and a warming climate have extended the season. 

In mid-November Whitten was still selling cauliflower and home-grown tomatoes, but the enthusiasm was nothing like the first days of July when people would walk over hot coals to get a fresh juicy heirloom tomato in lieu of the rock-hard supermarket version.

“As soon as the season gets cold, people stop thinking about local food,” she said.

Changing that mindset would be a boon not just to producers but the seven-county North Country economy, which the Whitten farm website says loses $1 billion in wealth a year because of food choices. And local food doesn’t end on Labor Day.

Whitten said a pork loin with winter vegetables like squash and carrots is an excellent holiday meal, and of course pumpkins are at the ready for pie duty. For under the tree, the Food Hob sells products from local makers, including mittens that are handmade with recycled materials, wooden bowls, painted vases, maple products, honey and tea.

The holiday table can also feature local pork, beef, lamb or poultry from producers across the region, many of whom can be found on the Adirondack Harvest directory. 

Gifts can also include some that you might think of, such as maple syrup, specialty cheeses and locally crafted beers, spirits and wine. But digging around can turn up some great but lesser-known gift ideas.

At the Mountain Weavers’ Farm Store in Port Henry, clients of Mountain Lake Services make beautiful reed baskets that can be purchased from the shelf or even custom-crafted. The Weavers’ Guild was started in 2008 and currently includes 14 weavers. The program is used to teach job readiness skills to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The farm store also sells interesting products from other producers in the community, including the Dorr Homestead Creations, including Alisha Dorr’s popular line of Christmas jewelry, herbal muscle rubs and ointment and tallow soaps. “The soaps fly off the shelf and they smell amazing,” said Steve Lewis, senior director of Community Services for Mountain Lake. “People do a healthy amount of Christmas shopping here.”

And if a four-footed friend is on your list, you might want to check out Bechard’s Sugar House and Farm Store in West Chazy where, said Tammy Bechard, “I can’t tell you how many maple dog biscuits I’ve made.”

Popular items include maple candies, maple-glazed nuts, maple cream and coffee, as well as, of course syrup, some in holiday bottles and even vintage, “cute little tins that take you back to the day,” Bechard said.

Maybe best of all is the Christmas vibe present at the gayly decorated stores of small, North Country producers.

“It’s a busy time,” Bechard said, as she decorated a large order of gift baskets. “It’s not going to slow up until right before Christmas.”

Not all North Country producers will have busy storefronts. Some operate exclusively through websites and social media, and have gifts that are unique and worth hunting around for. “All my products are one of a kind,” said Dina Garvey, owner of As You Wish Signs and Gifts. Garvey paints on locally harvested timber and reclaimed barnwood, gifts that “offer a touch of the Adirondacks all year round.” 

Dina says that one lasting effect of the pandemic is that people feel more comfortable buying local, and perceive more value in hand-crafted products. That makes it fun to have personal connections with her customers, particularly at Christmas. “It’s humbling and joyful that people want to buy something I created,” Garvey said. “And when the holiday season comes and the snow is flying it’s just magical.”

Make a festive day trip of it and visit many of the farmstores, producers and retailers that sell locally grown and made products year-round! Do a little shopping and have a nice farm-to-table lunch. Visit the Adirondack Cuisine Trails directory to plan a festival weekend in the Adirondacks.

Note: Many farm stores have different winter hours, so be sure to check before visiting.

Funding for this project came from a 2024 Special Programs Grant from the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership

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 fisheries. They need tough, shrubbery roots to hold sediment, floodplains to handle stormwater and buffers to filter animal manure that feeds algal blooms in warming waters.

Extreme storm events need to be mitigated, but so too do extreme heat and droughts. Animals need more shade, and soils need more water-holding structure. In all, climate change gives farmers a lot to think about, both in the form of challenges and opportunities.

“Climate resiliency is always a consideration as we work with agricultural producers through our Agricultural Environmental Management program to plan and implement best practices,” said Alice Halloran, district manager for the Essex County Soil and Water Conservation District. “Participating farms have completed a lot of water management projects in the past few years.  They’ve installed a variety of practices to hold water on the landscape for irrigation, as well as to prevent erosion and manage excessive water from heavy rain events.”

So too has funding opened up for climate resilience. New York allocated $33 million through its Climate Resilient Farming Grant Program to help farms increase sustainability efforts and resilience to extreme weather events. The programming aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect water resources, and improve soil health. Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the federal government is spending $110 million on conservation and climate resiliency.

Farmers are taking a look at better management or pasture, forestry and animals to make their farms more harmonious with nature and able to better withstand climate change. “There has been an increased interest in silvopasture as farms try to improve livestock access to shelter, sequester carbon, better manage their landscapes, and diversify their operations,” Halloran said.

Putting these ideas into practice is Alex Caskey, owner of Barred Owl Brook Farm along Lake Champlain on the Essex-Westport border. The basic principles aren’t new, he said, but were in fact standard procedure before many modern people lost connection with their food supply.

Conservation, biology and a sustainable food system “are all tied together, whether you lean into them or not,” Caskey said. “Agroforestry and silvopasture are new names for ancient practices for animal welfare and growth and tree welfare and growth.”

With careful attention to genetics, Caskey’s flock of Katahdin hair sheep are bred to thrive on a summer diet that encourages the animals to forage on trees and shrubs. “Genetics are a huge missing link,” he said.

More trees and leafy shrubs dotting traditional pastureland also provide shade for the animals, soak up excess water, provide wildlife habitat and sequester carbon. (As Caskey adapts the farm to climate change, he does so with both animals and humans in mind.) Honey locust and mulberry have high-protein leaves, and sheep don’t mind a diet of species like buckthorn and willow. “For silvopasture, trash trees are exactly what you want,” Caskey said.

Along with sheep, Barred Owl Brook sells nursery stock and experiments with trees that, prior to a warming climate, would not have thrived this far north, such as pawpaws  and northern pecans. This part of the Champlain Valley was once 4B, “now we’re solidly 5A,” Caskey said.

And perhaps an underappreciated aspect of climate change is its unpredictability. Rich Redman, a retired soil and water conservationist and author of the upcoming book series “Conservation Conversations,” said it’s not as easy as planting new, more heat-tolerant crops such as wheat, because there’s nothing to say that cool, moist summers and deepfreeze winters are entirely a thing of the past. “You can still get a real soaker that destroys the crop,” he said.

There are still ways farmers are adapting to make their farms and communities more resilient, Redman said, notably through more composting and manure management, increased reliance on cover crops, less tillage and tree planting along streams.

These practices help the farmer, and also the planet, said Cole Trager, Agriculture & Local Food Team Leader for the Cornell Cooperative Extension service in Essex County. “It’s really second grade science,” he said. “We’re capturing less carbon than ever — the whole earth is browning.”

Fields that are wintered over with only the stubble of mown grains and corn stalks are missing the value of carbon sequestering cover crops that stay green and can be grazed in the spring.

While cattle have gotten a bad rap for methane emissions, that misses the point that pastured animals (free of barren feedlots) are doing their part for the planet, as was the case when Texas was grassland and bison grazed the Plains. “Grazing animals are the engine that keeps things growing,” Trager said. “(Cows) are not bad, it’s just the management that’s bad.”

It is through good management that North Country farmers are reducing nutrient runoff, sequestering carbon, experimenting with new species and being mindful of creatures both domestic and wild. And in so doing, the line between farmer and conservationist and environmentalist becomes ever less distinct.

“So much of the way I farm has to do with climate change,” Caskey said.