Adirondack Harvest

Farm Fresh Foods, Local Producers and Adirondack Farmers' Markets

Local Foods

Successful summer programming with the Power of Produce Club

POP Club gives kids a chance to engage with local producers and growers within Essex County.

By Ellie Hoffman | Local Food Educator

Kids gather around the POP Club booth's table to assemble apple owls.
Kids gather around the POP Club table.

The Power of Produce Club, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County’s flagship youth program, offers a hands-on opportunity for free activities and a chance to engage with local produce. The program has wrapped up another successful year, expanding its number of locations, participants, and types of featured produce. In total, educators logged 600+ interactions with youth, a 20% increase from the 2024 season. 

Essex County is home to nine summer farmers’ markets, and POP Club was proud to make an appearance at all of them. Elizabethtown, Lake Placid, and Saranac Lake Farmers’ Markets all welcomed POP Club back for another consecutive year, while markets that hosted POP Club for the first time included Schroon Lake, Willsboro, Crown Point, Ticonderoga, Keene Valley, and Port Henry. At all markets, POP Club’s mission was to spread excitement for farm fresh produce and expand kids’ knowledge of and access to locally grown foods.

Each week, the POP Club table featured ways to learn about farms and food through hands-on activities, scavenger hunts, and veggie-themed jokes and trivia. After completing an activity, the participating kids received $5 to purchase any local produce item of their choice from a vendor at the market that day. 

“My five year old son was thrilled to receive a $5 bill after he completed the activity. It was a nice surprise! He enjoyed buying peaches from a local farm,” said one Schroon Lake Farmers’ Market attendee.

An owl made from apple pieces and chocolate.
Apple owl model for POP Club.

Thanks to produce donated from local growers such as Northern Orchard and Harvest Hill Farm, POP Club was also able to pilot new activities such as sculpting apple critters and carving zucchini boats. The latter proved attractive not just to kids, but to market shoppers of all ages, as kids, parents, and grandparents stopped to try their hands at creating a seaworthy squash. Many adults also came over to hear from CCE Essex’s Master Gardener Volunteers, who teamed up with POP Club on several occasions to give up-to-date and on-the-spot horticulture advice to budding gardeners.

Photo shows kids assembling POP Club owls
A child named Nolan is posing next to his zucchini boat afloat in the tub of water.
Nolan’s zucchini boat is staying afloat!

Tourists and locals alike remarked on the influence that POP Club had on their experience at the market, with one grandparent noting that “[the kids] were so proud of their Farmers Market purchases…the activities at the market were among their favorite things from [our time in Lake Placid].” POP Club’s role in establishing connections between families and farmers was also mentioned.

“[POP Club] always gives my kids a fun activity that gets them to directly interact with merchants at the farmers market,” said one attendee. Another agreed, saying that “[POP Club scavenger hunts] made them go over to vendors they might not have otherwise.” And with the $5 they received from POP Club activities, kids were empowered to participate in the local food network by buying directly from the market vendors.

“We love seeing kids use their POP money to buy blueberries from us. Often, they walk over with their $5 bills in their hands and make the purchase mostly on their own. POP is not only promoting healthy foods, but also life skills for our young people: the future generation of consumers,” said Laura Cook from The Cook Farm

Connecting families to food and farmers is ultimately what POP Club is all about, and we’re proud to work with so many dedicated growers, producers, and community members to make that happen. We’ll be back in 2026 with fresh ideas and ingredients; stay tuned for a schedule in the spring!

For more information on POP Club, and the Farm to School program, please contact Ellie Hoffman at emh257@cornell.edu or 518-962-4810 ext. 405.

Photographs taken by Ellie Hoffman.

Farmstands, Local Food Retailers, Farmers’ Markets and Grocery Co-Ops Open During the Winter

Farewell to summer: Thank you for supporting Adirondack farmers’ markets

By Isabella Susino | Adirondack Harvest Program Lead

Taken by Isabella Susino.

As autumn colors are painted across the Adirondack Park, we say goodbye to another amazing season of the summer farmers’ markets. Each week, our markets have been more than a place to buy food – they’ve been community hubs where neighbors connect, farmers share their stories on the growing season, and visitors discover the freshest local foods.

This summer, dozens of local farms and small businesses filled market tables with seasonal produce, farm-fresh meats, artisan cheeses, maple products, baked goods, and other local products. So many hamlets and townships gather together for outdoor market season: Lake Placid, Old Forge, Bloomingdale, Saranac Lake, Ticonderoga, Plattsburgh, Glens Falls, Schroon Lake, and more. We’re sure the farmers markets near you were alive with energy and local pride for their farmers, and we are so thankful for your support.

Now, as the summer market season ends, we want to let you know that some markets transfer inside for the wintertime. Every purchase you made supported farms in Upstate New York, helping preserve the region’s agricultural traditions and strengthen our local food system. Let’s keep the ball rolling and ensure we’re giving back to our local producers through holiday season and into the colder months.

Find winter markets and producers near you

The local food system in the winter continues through farm stands, winter markets, and CSA programs. Be sure to find year-round opportunities to shop local and to stay connected to the Adirondack food community.

Thank you for making this season special by supporting your local farms, celebrating the locally produced foods, and keeping the Adirondack Harvest mission in mind while shopping. We can’t wait to see you at the markets next summer!

Find winter markets near you

Agritourism, Buzzword or Bust? 

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, and working with a team to bring food, fiber, and flowers to life to share with their community. 

In some instances, agritourism has been viewed as merely a marketing strategy by enterprises that don’t genuinely engage in agricultural practices. For example, there are many “farms” being built and purchased to be used as full-time wedding venues with a certain aestheticbut without any real farming activities. Some working farmers see this as diluting the value of genuine agricultural practices and creating a false narrative that farmers are simply entertainment providers rather than skilled caretakers of the land and animals.

The concept of “Agritourism” has been a part of the Adirondack Harvest program since its beginning in 2001, but we have reinvested in learning more about the opportunities it can offer our members in 2020 when we took on the administration of the Adirondack Cuisine Trails, joined an international effort to build an agritourism network connecting the Adirondacks to Quebec, Ontario and Vermont, and began making more meaningful partnerships with regional and statewide tourism organizations. 

Through interactions with farmers and various partners, it became clear that supporting growth in agritourism could support local working farms and bring the Adirondacks closer to a more equitable food system. However, we heard a healthy amount of skepticism about the idea that local farms should shift their focus toward visitor management, marketing, and concierge services.

The feedback we gathered clearly showed that if we were to invest more time, resources and effort into supporting growth in agritourism in the Adirondack region, the primary goal should be to sustain and support working farms in their core operations, farming, rather than diverting their efforts into the tourism sector. We found that the emphasis should remain on agricultural practices that ensure the production of locally grown and harvested food and products rather than on creating off-brand tourist experiences.

The USDA defines agritourism as: “a form of commercial enterprise that links agricultural production and/or processing with tourism to attract visitors onto a farm, ranch, or other agricultural business for the purposes of entertaining or educating the visitors while generating income for the farm, ranch, or business owner.”

While not legally considered agritourism, off-farm activities, like farm-to-table dining and farmers’ markets can also be considered agritourism. 

Local, small farms diversify their income in many ways to remain agile and resilient in the face of economic and environmental challenges. Givenshrinking year-round populations, seasonal tourism is a major sector in the Adirondacks. With roughly 7-10 million visitors each year, tourism offers local farms a larger customer base to sell to.

Some agritourism offerings can support local working farms by extending their season and providing cash flow during times of the year that are usually quite slow. For example, farms near popular ski destinations may choose to offer special experiences, farm tours, and dinners to take advantage of the out-of-town traffic.

Agritourism also increases awareness and appreciation of local agriculture. People seeing how things are grown, raised, and processed offers a deeper appreciation of local farms and their products, and of the Adirondacks themselves. People travel from all over the world to experience the natural landscape of the Adirondacks, and the food that grows from itssoil, waters, and climate.  The Adirondacks has its own terroir that is ripe for appreciation along with High Peak’s views. 

So, how do we collectively tap into this?

Because the tourism part of agri-tourism can be lucrative, there is a chance that businesses with a farm aesthetic can co-opt the concept and dilute opportunities for working farms to offer authentic agritourism experiences. Is a lake house rented on Airbnb with three horses in a meadow a farm stay? Does it matter what they call themselves?

Some farmers and small business owners LOVE agritourism. They love to host on-farm events, tours, and welcome visitors to the Adirondacks to get a taste of the landscape and their life. Agritourism can be a solid retirement plan, a resource to turn to during hard financial times, and a way for farms to market their products to a larger audience.

Our view is that we will continue to support our local farms in ways that help keep them farming. And, more people having exposure to small, sustainable, working farms supports the long-term goal of rebuilding a global food system that prioritizes local producers.

If having an Airbnb rental on their property supports farmers’ income, allowing them to afford to keep farming, that is a good thing. We want to keep farms in the Adirondack region farming and cultivating food, fiber, flowers and wood products for their communities.

Agritourism in the Adirondacks Looks Like:

Farm-Focused Markets and Festivals 

Farmers’ markets and events that emphasize locally grown products are primary retail outlets for many small farms and producers. Tourists and seasonal second-home owners are the primary customers for many small farms, and farmers’ markets help remote farms connect with these higher-income customers in a centralized location. Efforts to keep the farmers in farmers’ markets are becoming increasingly important in maintaining them as an important part of the local food system, as well as an authentic and high-quality experience for visitors to buy locally grown food and products.

Wholesale Sales

Some farms indirectly participate in agritourism by selling their products wholesale to businesses that directly serve tourists such as restaurants, co-ops, and resorts. By sourcing locally, businesses can attract conscious customers looking to enjoy local and seasonal cuisine. Large regular orders from repeat wholesale customers also help the farmers’ bottom line so they can invest in things like sustainable farming practices and improving conditions and wages for employees.

On-Farm Lodging, Farm Stores & Experiences

Research shows that most tourists want to travel “like a local”. They seek authentic experiences that give them a connection to the landscape and culture of the people who live here. Farms are uniquely positioned to offer such experiences to tourists through on-farm lodging, tours, and special events. These experiences also offer education about sustainable agriculture and eating local. 

3 Ways the Adirondack Harvest Program at CCE Essex is Currently Supporting Sustainable Agritourism:

  1. Boosting awareness of agriculture and sustainable agritourism across the Adirondack region, fostering stronger support for sustainable farming and forest practices.
  2. Working with collaborators to increase the visibility of agritourism and agricultural producers in existing tourism promotions. Working with the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism, many local chambers of commerce, I Love NY, and other partners encourage friendly partnerships that enhance resource sharing and collaborative marketing efforts.
  3. Using events, communications and outreach we bolster agricultural literacy among youth and adults alike, nurturing an appreciation for the region’s natural resources.

If you’d like to stay connected to our work on this topic, check out the Adirondack Cuisine Trails, and sign up for the Adirondack Harvest Weekly email newsletter here. 

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

Plan or Improve Your Food Business Series

Registration is open for the Plan or Improve Your Food Business 4-part series that kicks off February 13th. This includes a session dedicated to getting recipes approved (who, when, where, how) which is a popular topic. Once registered, folks can attend one or more of the 4 online sessions. There’s also an optional in-person meal and tour at the close of the series.

Each webinar focuses on a particular facet of managing a food business. While it’s impossible to cover every unique circumstance, these sessions tackle the most common questions Extension fields from entrepreneurs considering value-added production. Sessions are held online 6:00-7:30 pm and each includes a presentation, activity for the group, plus resources to learn more after each session including recorded conversations with other small NYS food entrepreneurs. The course is led by M. Flip Filippi, who is the Harvest Kitchen Manager and Local Foods Program Leader at Extension. Her focus is offering custom advice to entrepreneurs looking to create value-added products. Flip strives to create a welcoming learning environment while simplifying the multi-layered regulatory and financial planning aspects of food entrepreneurship. She has completed Food Safety Manager’s Training, Better Process Control School for Acidified Products, Holistic Financial Planning, FSMA Regulations for Small Food Producers, Produce Safety Alliance Grower Training, and Master Food Preserver trainings.

The series kicks off on February 13 and finishes March 6. The topics for each session are:
1. Understanding Food Business Types
2. Estimating Costs of Starting a Food Business
3. Recipe Approvals, Record Keeping, and Food Safety
4. Creating Effective and Legal Product Labels.
5. Plus, all participants are invited to an in-person closing event at the Harvest Kitchen at the Extension Learning Farm in Canton on March 13th to enjoy a meal together, connect with other food entrepreneurs, and experience a mock kitchen inspection.

An entrepreneur who took part in last year’s program shared, “The course was well-balanced in terms of presentation, group discussion, and shared resources for further work. I loved getting to meet the different producers and hear their plans. Having real life examples made all of the licensing requirements, etc. make more sense. The class was an appropriate amount of time to get everyone going in the right direction. Also, the interviews with the producers and NYS food authorities were such an awesome resource and really brought all the information down to earth in an easy, understandable way.”

The registration fee is $25 for the entire online course.
Learn more and register here: http://stlawrence.cce.cornell.edu/.

Earth Day 2023 -Support the Planet: What’s Your Food Print?

Learn how you & your family can reduce your “Food Print” at the Ticonderoga Natural Foods Co-Op this Earth Day!

Workshops & Activities include: * What’s Your Food Print? * Seed Starts for Kids * Worm Composting Demo * Local Farms Scavenger Hunt * Flower Starts for Adults * Story Hour & Up-cycling Craft * The Connection Between Food Waste & Climate Change

Sample Food from your Local Farmers: * Lillie Valley Farm * Crown Point Dairy * Crown Point Bakery * Daughters Five * Juniper Hill * North Country Creamery

Wood Fired Pizza Party

The hot flames, bubbling cheese, and a sourdough crust – all make for a memorable pizza!

Learn how to make delicious sourdough pizza dough with local whole grains, which includes many techniques to use at home in any oven.

It’s going to be party as well. Bring your appetite. As the dough rises, we will nosh and celebrate local food with a grazing plate from our friend’s farms.

Lots of hands-on fun from kneading dough to peeling pies of hot pizza out of the oven. In addition to classic Neopolitan style pizzas, vegan options and even a dessert pizza will be served.

Whole Grain Pie Class

Just in time for Thanksgiving, our whole grain pie class will give you the skills necessary to bake a nutritious pie crust using local wheat.

In this class, we will:

Stone mill some Sirvinta Winter Wheat (locally grown by Cedar Hollow Farms in Altona)
Then we’ll craft some flaky pie crusts and share recipes for:

Fruit Pies
North Country Quiche
Sweet & Savory Rustic Galettes
Plus everyone will receive 2 lbs of freshly-milled flour to take home
Tea, coffee and light refreshments will be served.

Whole Grain Pasta Class

Whole grain flour can take homemade pasta to a new level of nutrition and flavor complexity. Learn the tips and techniques needed to make rustic handmade pasta at home with local & organic wheat.

In the class, we will make:

Garganelli with Frederick, a soft white winter wheat
Ricotta Gnocchi, made with Expedition, a hard red winter wheat
Spelt Fettuccine
All attendees will receive:

2 LBS of Freshly-Milled Flour
Pasta Rolling Board for Garganelli/Gnocchi
And of course, we will eat and enjoy a bowl of our freshly-made pasta together with a salad, breads and refreshments.

Whole Grain Open House

Saturday, April 2nd: Taste local grains and learn all about the local grain movement happening in our region in collaboration with the Northeast Grainshed Alliance.

Learn all about:

– the farms we source our wheat from
– how we stone mill
– what the SQFT Project is
– grain quality and testing

We will talk about and taste local organic Rye, Einkorn, Hard Red Winter Wheat and Soft White Winter Wheat.

Free to attend but registration is required. Thank you!

Bringing High-Quality Farm-to-Table Dining to Malone, NY

Interview with Executive Chef & Operating Partner Jesse Badger at the Hearth of Malone

By Mary Godnick, Adirondack Harvest Communication Coordinator at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County

You may have already heard the buzz about the new restaurant in Malone, NY. A small town in the Adirondacks along the Canadian border. The Hearth of Malone opened the doors of its tastefully designed restaurant in May of 2021. Since then, it has become a staple in the surrounding community. The restaurant aims to offer unique modern-American food by sourcing the highest quality local ingredients. The focus of their process is to use traditional and contemporary methods to highlight the best possible ingredients. For example, they use a wood-burning oven and make all of the bread from scratch in-house. 

Executive Chef Jesse Badger moved to Malone from Chicago in 2020 to open the restaurant with his partners Darren Gough and Michael Roesler. manager and owner Michael Roesler brought on Executive Chef Jesse Badger, who then moved to Malone from Chicago in 2020. Jesse has over two decades of experience in the restaurant industry, from wholesale distribution to the front-of-house management, to acting as chef de cuisine for Michelin-recognized restaurants in Chicago, Louisville, and beyond. His experience and attention to sourcing local and sustainable ingredients has allowed the Hearth of Malone to live up to its vision. 

While the farm-to-table movement is growing nationally, in the Adirondacks there are many hurdles that business owners, chefs, and restaurant staff have to overcome to make changes to sourcing their ingredients. 

Hearth of Malone Executive Chef & Operating Partner Jesse Badger, selections from their lunch menu, a look at the restaurant space

I sat down with Chef Jesse Badger after the Adirondack Harvest Festival Open Farm Week (where he hosted a long table dinner at DaCy Meadow Farm) to talk about how he has developed a vision and process that makes serving local from-scratch food simple and economical. 

MG: So, why does your restaurant buy locally?

JB: “Well, first off, the quality is usually higher than commodity products, and produce in season always just tastes better. It is also important to support farmers and producers who are good stewards of the land and help preserve crop diversity.”

MG: My understanding is that the profit margin for restaurants can be very thin. I’ve heard that it’s estimated that eighty percent of restaurants will fail in the first five years of opening. So it’s no wonder why restaurant owners and staff are cognizant of cost. It seems that there is a common misconception that because locally produced ingredients cost more per unit that they are more expensive. Do you think using local food is sometimes less expensive?

JB: “Especially here in the North Country, it is impossible to get a better quality maple syrup at a competitive price than what we can get from our local producers. In addition to the price of purchase just being lower, the flavor and sweetness are more intense so we also don’t have to use as much to achieve the same flavor.”

MG: Understandably, the lack of infrastructure at many restaurants for storage and preparation of whole foods combined with staffing shortages, thin budgets, and busy tourist seasons followed by seasonal closures can make buying, preparing, and marketing more local food feel like a big leap. Can you speak to these challenges and share how your team has made buying local food an asset to your work? 

JB: “The main challenge of buying local ingredients is just that you have to keep track of many more vendors than a traditional restaurant that probably gets all of their food product from one purveyor, maybe two. It is just the nature of the beast so we work through it by using very detailed spreadsheets for our order guides so we can keep track of what we need and where it comes from.”


MG: Is there anything that you did to design your kitchen space to be conducive to buying and using local ingredients? 

JB: “Since we make everything we possibly can in-house, we need more prep space than if we purchased a lot of prepared ingredients so the biggest element of difference for us is the very large wood butcher block prep table in the middle of our kitchen.”

MG: What are some things that have made the process of sourcing and purchasing local food easier for your restaurant? 

JB: “Northstar Food Hub and Regional Access aggregate local products from many sources that are too far away to realistically deliver to us as individual farms, but are still within just a few hours’ drive of us. This allows us to cast a wider net when sourcing. Also, we are fortunately at the point now where food producers approach us having heard about us either through some of the press we’ve received or word of mouth through other farmers that are working with us” 

MG: What has been the general reaction to your unique offerings in the larger Malone community?

JB: “Generally very positive although we did get some comments at the outset that our prices seemed high, that was mainly because those guests weren’t aware we were sourcing higher quality local ingredients and also incurring more labor cost by prepping them all from scratch in house.”

Thank you, Jesse, for sharing some insight into your passion and work! 

If you’d like support in buying more local food for your restaurant or business, visit our wholesale database, and find other resources for wholesale buyers here. You can find hours and contact information to make a reservation at the Hearth of Malone on their website at hearthofmalone.com.