Join us for a tour of the farm and some light refreshments! This event is free and open to anyone. Dan and Kimmy have some exciting plans for the future including an interesting farm cooperative project and a no spray vineyard that will be grazed and fertilized by the sheep. After the tour, we will talk a little about the role of agritourism at TGJF and share some snacks together.
Triple Green Jade Farm is a small organic, diversified farm on 80 acres bordering the Boquet River in Willsboro. Dan and Kimmy Rivera are millers, bakers, and farmers, turning local, organic wheat into fresh flour with a Vermont granite stone mill. They bake sourdough breads in a bespoke wood-fired oven and also produce fresh, bronze-die extruded whole wheat pastas. Their farm is centered around healthy soils and pastures.
Don’t let those bright spring flowers waving in the breeze fool you. Behind the lovely, carefree blooms is a serious ecological and economic engine that powers everything from tourists to tomatoes and deserves more credit than they probably get.
Meghan Kirkpatrick, manager of the Bark Eater Inn located in Keene sees it every day. She lives at the crossroads of hospitality, aesthetics and agriculture, and flowers are an essential part of all three.
“The guests that we have are traveling from more metropolitan areas that don’t have a lot of access to garden spaces, and they are just really struck by the beauty of the flowers,” she said.
Flowers attract native pollinators, and humans, too
Bark Eater Inn’s colorful gardens produce flowers for weddings and food for guests, some of whom are from urban environments in which they have not been taught, for example, that the funny spike popping up from the ground is what will show up later on their plates as asparagus.
“It’s kind of a gateway for many of our guests to learn more about local food, and what is available here, and kind of making that connection,” she said.
Pretty as they might be, flowers don’t just sit around and preen. They have an outsized role in the food system, developing relationships with pollinating insects and other plants.
Photo by Meghan Kirkpatrick.Photo by Jamie McGiver West.
Kirkpatrick intentionally selects flowers that attract pollinators, but also uses them in companion planting based on their ability to discourage pests. She chooses sunflowers that produce pollen (hybrids intended for use as cut flowers have been engineered for reduced amounts of the yellow dust so that they won’t wind up pollinating table tops) and leans toward red flowers that are better at attracting pollinators. These insects, like us, do better with a varied diet, so she chooses a wide array of flowers to act as a pollinator buffet.
This pollinator friendly policy extends to Bark Eater Inn’s meadows as well, which are mowed strategically and infrequently, accommodating both flowers and birds.
Minding the pollinators is an attitude that is now reflexive in the North Country, as their value to the ecosystem has been widely recognized for more than a decade.
Sawyer Bailey, executive director of AdkAction, said the nonprofit’s foray into pollinators began with heightened awareness over the monarch butterfly, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates has lost 80% of its population since the 1980s due to a loss of habitat, insecticides and climate change.
“We started by distributing milkweed seed packets exclusively with only a focus on monarchs, and then very quickly learned how integral all the pollinators that are native to this area are,” Bailey said. “And while milkweed is a keystone species for them, the interest then expanded to helping pollinators of all kinds, thinking about the types of specific habitat they would need, and the actions that we could promote to help them thrive.”
Rich Howard, Amanda Whisher and Shannon Wilkins of Rulfs Orchards. Photo by Tim Rowland.
Adirondack farms boost agritourism with help from local beekeepers
Larger farm operations, such as Rulfs Orchard in Peru, think in similar terms. Bees are the lifeblood of fruit trees, so considerable care is taken for their husbandry. The orchard contracts with local beekeepers who will move hives around in keeping with what trees are flowering.
As with Bark Eater Inn, Rulfs Orchard finds that beautiful flowers are good for business. When apples are in bloom, the North Country’s Champlain Valley is awash in a sheen of white frosting that attracts tourists and professional photographers alike.
“Everyone wants to take pictures,” said Rulfs Orchard Business Manager Shannon Wilkins. “And it’s such a short window when the trees are in bloom that photographers will be emailing, asking ‘how are the blossoms?’”
Rulfs Orchard, founded by Wilkins’ grandfather in 1952, began as a dairy. Then her grandfather began planting a few trees and basically never stopped. Today, the orchard has 35 acres of primarily apples, while also working to introduce trees to produce peaches, cherries and pears.
Although commercial apiaries do most of the heavy lifting, Farm Manager Richard Howard said the farm still depends on native pollinators as well. Due to the shape of the flower, blueberries rely on bumblebees, Howard said, and in the pumpkin patches native “ground bees” do much of the work.
“[Ground bees] actually look like a honeybee, but they’re not. When we cultivate the pumpkins we try not to disturb the ends of the field because they don’t really have hives, they live in all these little holes in the ground.”
More environmentally advanced pesticides, which Howard said “used to be pretty harsh,” have also been embraced by the orchard.
“It’s amazing, because sometimes you go down there and look at the pumpkin blossoms, and there will be 10 or 15 bees on a blossom,” he said. “So we’re very careful with our pesticides. We don’t want to hurt them, obviously, so we try to use stuff that’s bee-friendly.”
Mossbrook Roots Flower Farm’s high tunnel, an outside perspective. Photo by Katie Kearney.Inside the Mossbrook Roots Flower Farm high tunnel. Photo by Katie Kearney. Photo by Katie Kearney.
Flower growing is a budding industry for Adirondack farms
Mossbrook Roots Flower Farm and Florist evolved from something else — the landscaping company owned by Jackie and Jim Wheelin wasn’t using all the land at its Keeseville location, so something had to fill the void.
“We were like, ‘well, we have all these great farm fields, what are we going to do with them?’” Jackie Wheelin said. “And I said, ‘well, let’s grow flowers,’ so that’s kind of how that all started. It was really that simple.”
Flowers proved to be good business for them. Wheelin’s operation has expanded its reach, from fresh-cut flowers at its farm store, to CSAs, farmers’ markets, weddings, and a floral shop in Plattsburgh.
Flower farms may have a different products than vegetable farms do, but Wheelin said she deals with a lot of the same issues. Such as constantly worrying about the weather and dealing with pests. Similarly to traditional farms, crops must be rotated, fertilizers managed and soils tested. Mossbrook Roots doesn’t sell to distributors, so their customers are the end-user, whether it’s a bride or someone wanting to fill a vase on a dining room table.
Morning at a Mossbrook Roots Flower Farm event. Photo by Katie Kearney.
Flowers are also a year-round business. “We grow tulips hydroponically all winter, and we grow specialty tulips, so that is always a big hit for us,” Wheelin said. “We’re just kind of coming off the tail end of those, and then now we’re going to be switching into ranunculus. We grow those in our high tunnels because they’re pretty delicate.”
Fresh flower bouquets are dropped off by Mossbrook Roots at Green Goddess Market & Cafe in Lake Placid. Photo by Isabella Susino.Peonies are offered seasonally at Mossbrook Roots Flower Farm.
Then it will be on to peonies, lisianthus and dahlias as the season progresses. Successional plantings extend the season, and by December it will be time to plant seedlings, which means bachelor buttons and matricaria will be flowering up to six weeks earlier than with conventional planting.
In the north, local flowers are limited by the growing season, but they have distinct advantages as well. They last longer, have a more robust fragrance and do not have the environmental costs associated with being shipped in from another continent.
“They are as fresh as they possibly can be,” Wheelin said. “There are no preservatives, the smell is as true as it can get, and the colors are as true as they can get. It’s just raw natural beauty that will hopefully bring whoever you’re getting them for — or if you’re getting them for yourself — as much happiness as they can for the time that you have them.”
Of course, people aren’t the only ones invested in the blooms. A beekeeper maintains hives on the farm, and the honey has a bit of a floral taste, Wheelin said. The farm is managed for the bees’ wellbeing, too, “We leave a lot of things up for the pollinators,” she said. “We don’t cut things down right away. We have a lot of things planted specifically for them, keeping all the pollinators in mind.”
At Bark Eater Inn, introducing guests to beautiful flowers, and local food, means returning clientele and word of mouth advertising. Visitors get the benefit of a peaceful place to relax at their lodging. It’s a relationship that pays mutual dividends, Kirkpatrick said.
“I have guests that come back again and again during flower season just to simply sit out there and watch the hummingbirds and the butterflies flit from flower to flower,” she said. “And there’s a certain amount of awe and appreciation that we can experience when we slow down and sit in a place that has beauty and flowers and pollinators and food — and my garden is certainly an intersection of all of those things.”
Two hundred years ago, Merino sheep wandered the North Country like they owned it, and hundreds of small family cabin “factories” turned out warm, woolen mittens that sold for 50 cents a pair. They were worth every penny.
Sheep may not dominate the landscape like they used to, but there are echoes of the past still present. From the ancient farm stone walls that appear like ghosts in the regenerated forests, to a modern network of knitting groups where yarn skeins, coffee and laughs are shared in equal proportion.
It is, said Sue Young, owner of Young’s Studio & Gallery in Jay, a culture for cold-weather climates around the world.
“It was part of the family tradition,” she said. “My mother was an avid knitter. Both of my sisters are avid knitters. My mom would knit mittens and gloves for people every Christmas, and certain items got handed down from my oldest sister, who’s 15 years older, to me, and then to my daughter, my niece and so on.”
Young, an acclaimed North Country potter, carries a line of yarns and garments in her gallery. They’re more for the tradition and love of the craft than they are for profit. She maintains thick binders filled with sample fibers and dyes for those interested to peruse.
Despite significant financial and logistical headwinds, fiber art persists. Merino sheep are famous for having the softest wool, but to balance their books, North Country farmers need larger animals that can also produce meat more profitably.
Most textile mills have moved overseas, so after the sheep — or alpacas or even a breed of dog — are fleeced in the spring, the raw product is sent to specialty mills downstate, or to Vermont to be spun into yarn.
While synthetic or cotton yarns can cost less than $10 a skein in chain hobby stores, quality wool can top $30. A skein is only enough to make a small product, such as a pair of fingerless gloves. Of course, that’s not counting the time it takes to craft the yarn into its final form.
The advantage is that a hand-made woolen garment is practically bulletproof, and quite capable of providing loving warmth through generations of users.
Taylor LaFleur (left) and Kirsten Liebl (right) in the greenhouse at Wollecru. Photo by Katie Kearney.
Kirsten Liebl, with her partner, Taylor LaFleur, owns Wollecru in Westport. Specializing in wool blankets, Kirsten uses her loom, made in the 1980s, to make the hand-woven heirlooms start to finish. A few weeks before lambing season in the spring, their sheep are shorn, the wool is sorted by color, processed at a nearby fiber mill, and returned to them in large cones of yarn for weaving. This yarn is either left in its natural colors or dyed by Kirsten using plants that grow on and around the farm.
Liebl first learned to weave in college, and had her first experience grazing sheep for Essex Farm. In 2016 she took the plunge into fiber, largely on faith.
“I just bought two sheep off of Craigslist,” she said. “I didn’t own property, but I was interested in producing my own fiber, and seeing what the whole process from a raw fleece to a finished woven item would be like.”
Crafting beauty one thread at a time. A person skillfully operates a traditional wooden loom.
Spinning proved to be too time-consuming, but the rest of the model worked, and the Wollecru blanket — and farm — was born. “I would say my real goal from the beginning was always to make a product that people would use, whether that’s blankets or maybe sweaters or socks — but blankets are kind of what I’ve landed on,” she said. “Customers are going to use it for the rest of their lives, or they’re going to give it as a gift for a wedding or a birth — something that’s really meaningful.”
Wollecru breeds about 30 ewes each year, and grazes up 80 to 90 animals through the summer, including the rams that will be fattened for slaughter. In the spring, the flock produces about 250 pounds of raw wool.
With a background in vegetable farming, Liebl is also adept at growing natural dyes on the farm — Japanese indigo for blue, madder root for red, and onion skins for golden yellow. “And then there’s also a ton of wild plants that I don’t have to grow, but that we can harvest to get color,” Liebl said. “There’s sheep sorrel, which is like a little weed that grows in the pastures; goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace all make really nice natural dyes as well.”
In some ways, home-grown dyes and small-scale spinning and scouring (wool cleaning) operations are returning the world of fiber to its colonial roots. Organizations such as the Hudson Valley Textile Project and the New York Textile Lab are advocating for fiber in various ways, from helping with production to matching designers with small, Northeastern farms.
“For a long time, the story was that all these manufacturing places are shutting down, and the long arc of textiles has been declining since the 1800s, which probably overall is still pretty true,” Liebl said. “But I think there are more small-scale avenues popping up, and ways to have fiber that is produced locally available for sale.”
At Blue Pepper Farm, located in Jay and known for sheep’s-milk yogurt, shearing day has the qualities of events-gone-by, like corn shuckings or barn raisings. About a dozen people provide help or conversation or both, as legendary Vermont shearer Mary Lake runs electric clippers over the ewes, producing one, intact “blanket” of fleece.
As the sheep are vaccinated, the blanket is passed to a table, where dozens of human fingers comb out dirt and pasture debris. Farm owner Shannon Eaton, said she and her husband, Tyler, are sending fleece from their 50 ewes to the New York Textile Lab this year, which matches environmentally conscious fabric designers with sustainable farms like Blue Pepper.
Sheep shearing day at Blue Pepper Farm. Photo by Tim Rowland.Shannon Eaton, owner of Blue Pepper Farm. Photo by Tim RowlandSheep shearing day brings lots of joy to participants! Photo by Tim Rowland.
Lilly Marsh, founder of Lilly Marsh Studios in Glens Falls and founding member of the Hudson Valley Textile Project, is a weaver who has published scholarly papers on fiber art and culture in the United States, and works to strengthen fiber communities across the supply chain.
“We’re trying to make sure that wool that’s grown here is able to be processed here and made into finished items here,” she said.
Paradoxically, mills have been closing this century at the same time that interest in natural fibers is picking up — especially as chemicals and synthetic microfiber pollution are causing health concerns.
To answer this demand, smaller equipment, such as a line of Belfast Mini Mills and smaller mills are answering the call of small producers who would not have the minimum amount of fleece necessary for a standard-sized mill contract.
Natural fibers are showing up in more high-end designer product lines, as well as in groups that meet at local libraries to compare weaving and knitting notes.
“I’d say the first 10 to 15 years I was here, I only knew two other weavers, and I didn’t know any knitters,” said Kathy Kelley of Westport, who took up weaving after college when she became enchanted with a loom in a yarn shop. “But now we have a group we call Fiber Friends that meets in Westport, and we have close to 40 people on our contact list.”
Weavers, knitters and spinners meet once a month, sharing their work, getting feedback and solving problems.
“When we started it a couple years ago, there were just a handful of us, and we thought, okay, let’s meet — it’ll be fun,” Kelley said. “And then someone heard about it and asked if they could join. Before, you know, we have people coming from Plattsburgh, from Jay, from Crown Point. So [now] we have them from all over, and we meet at Camp Dudley.”
Weaving is magical, Kelley said. “I really love the texture, the feel of it, and the colors. And even with a simple, plain weave, there are so many different color combinations you can get.”
So, of course, she said yes when a neighbor asked if he could put some sheep up in her barn for the winter.
“His sheep have been hanging out outside my barn,” she said. “They don’t really like to go in much for the winter. And we’ve traded: rather than him paying me rent, I’m trading for yarn.”
Knitting & Fiber Art Groups and Resources
Information valid as of April, 2026.
Charity Knit and Crochet at Wells Memorial Library Upper Jay.
Wednesdays 5:30-7 PM. Call the Upper Jay Library for more information at 518-946-2644, or visit their website.
High Peaks Handcrafters
The third Sunday of the month from 12-3 PM at the Black Brook General Store from April through December 21. For winter location information, please contact: Sue Young, sue young@hotmail.com or Karen Keasler, keasler5@charter.net.
Knitting Upstairs at Keene Valley Library
Please contact the Keene Valley Library for more information: kvla@library.com, 518-576-4335, or visit their website.
The Knitting and Crocheting with Linda
The group meets in the Keeseville Library on Wednesdays at 10 AM. For more information, please call 518-834-9054 or visit their website.
Knitterondackers
The Knitterrondackers meet at the Saranac Lake Library, downstairs in the Crandall room, on Thursdays from 1:30-4:30 PM. For more information, please call 518-891-4190 or visit their website.
Spinners at the VIC
Paul Smith’s College Visitor Interpretive Center (VIC), typically meets on Tuesdays from 1-4 PM. For more information, please contact Carol Jones, knitnspin@outlook.com.
Fiber Collective
The Strand, Plattsburgh, Fiber Collective, 2nd Wednesdays of each month from 25 PM. For more information, please call 518-563-1604 or visit their website.
This self-guided summer tour centered around yarn and fiber is a yarn lover’s dream. Explore shops, visit working fiber farms, and find your new favorite fiber spaces across New York State from May 1 until October 31. For more information and to find stops on the trail, visit their website.
Adirondack Watershed Institute
Join a unique project showcasing scientific data and local fiber arts with the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute. The Wool and Water project is a data art project in which we are using knitting, crochet, weaving and other fiber arts to illustrate concepts and trends related to our waterways. This effort blends fiber art with scientific data to create visual representations of changing water quality conditions in the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain Basin. Find out more at their website.
Freed of the walled confines of AuSable Forks Elementary School, 19 second graders sprinted up a snowy hill to explore the sugarbush where 6,500 maple trees are tapped each year by Cornell University’s Uihlein Maple Research Forest in Lake Placid.
Cornell University Uihlein Maple Research Forest. Photo by Isabella Susino.
The class was there as part of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County’s (CCE Essex) Rooted in Learning program, which explores local farms and foods, increasing students’ awareness of where their food comes from, and how positive food choices will help them lead healthy lives.
Second-grade teacher Liz Donahue said exploration of Adirondack forests also expands the children’s connection to the land and culture.
Thanks to a previous maple tree-tapping demonstration by CCE Essex Community Vitality Resource Educator Ellie Hoffman, the second graders understood the fundamentals of sugaring already. At the Uihlein Forest, they learned that it can be a long way from tree to pancake, with a lot of pipelines and big machinery in between.
“Farm field trips are where Farm to School programs come full circle,” Hoffman said. “Students might learn about agriculture in the classroom through hands-on activities and taste the products of that agriculture in their school cafeterias, but the farm or forest is where they discover how those products got to the cafeteria, and why knowing that matters.”
Director Adam Wild with AuSable Forks second grade students in the sugarbush. Photo by Liz Donahue.
Adam Wild, Director of the Uihlein Maple Research Forest, began by explaining how maple trees are identified in the forest by the color and texture of the bark. Maples were also identifiable by the blue piping affixed to their trunks, but that was cheating.
“These are natural, native forests,” Wild said. “These trees weren’t planted, so maple’s kind of cool in that we’re working in these natural forests in our Adirondack Mountains, and that’s where we get the sap from.”
These maples grow alongside other trees, such as fir and birch, and this diversity is good, he said, because it protects the forest as a whole against attacks from pests or disease that affects one particular species.
Uihlein Research Forest sap tubing. Photo by Adam Wild.A tap in the maple tree filled with sap. Photo by Adam Wild.
Thirsting for action, the kids cheered when the sap was clearly visible flowing from the tree through the tubing — 100 miles of it in the Uihlein forest — that would send it to the sugar shack below.
If this tubing looks fragile, though, it’s because it is, and leaks can develop by way of a falling tree or a critter gnawing through the plastic. Wild encouraged the students to consider what animals might do the most damage, and they took turns guessing:
Bears? (They probably would, but they’re still hibernating). Bobcats? (Not so much.) Snake? (Haven’t seen one, but you never know.) Werewolves? (Nice try. Squirrels are the correct answer.
Electronics are used to detect these leaks and pinpoint their locations, saving maple technicians hours of walking and guesswork.
Maple trees are tapped when they are about 40 years old or at least 10 inches in diameter. The weather is an important ingredient in the process, with nights below freezing and gentle warmups during the day being ideal.
Maple forest with buckets attached to trees in winter. Photo by Matt Barnard.
While a bucket hanging from a tree with a wooden tap might be a picturesque icon of the past, it’s not practical at today’s scale. “You tapped one tree, right? Imagine doing that 6,499 more times,” Wild said. “And imagine having to walk up and down this hill in the snow, carrying all those buckets of sap, would that be fun?”
There was firm and universal consensus that it would not.
Noting that he is a maple tree scientist – at which point a student wanted to know if he’s the “mad” kind – Wild said he’s always involved in research projects.
“I’m investigating and trying to find answers from the trees, so I’m measuring the amount of sap that comes from those trees; measuring the temperature using different probes in the trees; measuring the pressure [of the sap inside the trees]; and soil temperatures [surrounding the trees]. Collecting all this data is to get those answers.”
Those answers will help producers improve their yields.
“We’re a little unique here in that we do research to improve maple production, and then we share that with other maple producers, so they can be better maple producers,” Wild said. “Kind of neat, right?”
The AuSable second graders demonstrated a good classroom knowledge of science, understanding things like DNA and how trees are able to produce oxygen. The Rooted in Learning field trip with CCE Essex showed them how these concepts might be put to practical use.
They also offered up some burning questions for Adam about being a scientist: ● Second grader: “Do you create stuff when you’re a scientist?” ● Adam Wild: “Yes, sometimes.” ● Second Grader: “Like monsters?” ● Adam Wild: “No, no monsters yet. But maybe one day we’ll make a Maple Monster.” (General affirmation among the second graders that a Maple Monster would be a laudatory scientific pursuit.)
Uihlein processes up to 12,000 gallons of sap a day. The sap arrives at the sap house downhill from the forest, where separators create a vacuum effect by separating the sap from the air in the tubing.
Sap separators at Uihlein Maple Research Forest. Photo by Isabella Susino.Students watching raw sap flowing into the collection tanks. Photo by Liz Donahue.
The sap then transfers and collects in two enormous tanks, appropriately named Percy and Thomas. Wild watched the flow coming into the holding tanks and noted that it was good, but not as good as it could be. As the day warmed he hoped for an increase in sap volume. A good day will yield 150 gallons of syrup at Uihlein Maple Research Forest.
Percy and Thomas the sap collection tanks. Photo by Isabella Susino.
For the kids, it was a bit mind-bending to think that the droplets they saw seeping from the trees in the forest could add up to the gushers of sap filling Thomas and Percy.
They were also interested to learn about new terms, such as “reverse osmosis,” which has superseded much of the old process of boiling away the excess water. Sap now passes through filters that allow water molecules to flow through, while catching larger molecules of sugar and minerals.
Such sights make an impression, Donahue said, but students may also remember small, random details, like picking up a leaf, that will create a pleasant association with the forest.
“It’s nice for them to just get out and be outside for the day, doing something different,” she said. “Some of these kids may have family connections [to maple production] but some may not even go out on the weekends whatsoever — this lets them see what’s all around them in a different way.”
Tree tapping practice with Trever Sheehan, Technician II at Uihlein Maple Research Forest. Photo by Kim Chamberlain.Director Adam Wild serving sugar on snow at Uihlein Maple Research Forest. Photo by Liz Donahue.
After practice tapping trees with a drill and a hammer, the students followed the process to the sugar shack, where a gleaming, stainless steel machine awaited to finish off the concentrating process.
“This machine is called an evaporator,” Wild said. “It’s basically a big, fancy stove, and the maple syrup is cooking down inside there.”
The sap evaporator at Uihlein Maple Research Forest. Photo by Isabella Susino.
The evaporator can make a gallon a minute, and by the end of the season, Wild hopes to have produced 3,000 gallons of syrup. And just to make sure it’s good, he had 19 quality control volunteers at his disposal, willing to give his latest batch a try. It was a sweet way to end an educational morning.
“By supporting schools in bringing kids to a farm for the day, we give students a chance to engage with the places where their food was grown, raised, or produced, and meet the farmers who made it possible,” Hoffman said. “It’s a place-based educational experience that connects the three C’s of Farm to School — classroom, cafeteria, and community — in a memorably adventurous way.”
Gardening programs have been a staple of the WPBS schedule, with shows like From a Country Garden and The Gardener with Ed Lawrence. With almost 25 years since WPBS aired a show produced in-house, the station is very excited to debut the new program, The Home-Scale Forest Garden.
“It’s really been a labor of love,” said Tracy DuFlo, Director of Production and Executive Producer at WPBS. “We filmed eight episodes over the four seasons, and it was very fascinating to see Dani’s garden on Wellesley Island transform with each season. One thing I found really interesting is that there is something to harvest in a home-scale forest garden almost year-round.”
Based on Wellesley Island, NY, in the beautiful Thousand Islands Region, Baker and her partner, David Belding, own Cross Island Farms, where the Enchanted Edible Forest is located. Baker is the author of The Home-Scale Forest Garden, a practical guide to creating a low-maintenance, sustainable, perennial, food-producing garden, and is the original blueprint of the show. On the farm, they grow certified organic fruit and vegetables, and raise chickens, grass-fed beef. Agritourism opportunities for visitors include U-pick fruit, farm and garden tours, rustic camping and volunteer opportunities to gain hands-on experience in sustainable agriculture.
Baker hopes to inspire viewers to create their own beautiful, bountiful, edible landscape at any scale—from a few dozen square feet to an acre or more. “I am very excited and grateful to have had the opportunity to work with WPBS on a TV series about forest gardening,” said Baker. “My lifetime ambition is to inspire as many people as possible to establish this kind of planting, where we work with nature to create abundant healthful harvests, while reducing our labor and helping the environment. A gardening show that is nationally distributed through PBS is the perfect vehicle to inform and inspire a receptive audience.”
Following the premiere of the The Home-Scale Forest Garden series on WPBS, the show will be released for broadcast and streaming on PBS stations nationwide later this spring.
We’re participating in the Lewis County Open Farm Day. 14 family owned farms in Lewis County are having open house events on Saturday, August 12. We’ll have some goat kids to visit, their moms for viewing, feta samples, and u-pick sunflowers.
