BY ANNE RAVER, PHOTOGRAPHY BY FREDERICK CHARLES
Preserving farmland is not enough if it doesn?t stay in the hands of farmers.
FROM THE DECEMBER 2016 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE
A gorgeous October morning in the Hudson Valley and people are out leaf peeping, but not Chris Cashen, a farmer.
Every week, on the outskirts of Hudson, 120 miles north of New York City, Cashen and his crew load about 1,300 pounds of organic vegetables?baby bok choy, salad greens, Japanese turnips, sweet potatoes, Tuscan kale?onto a truck headed for a food pantry hub in Long Island City.
The hot, dry summer meant they had to irrigate from the nearby creek, but the vegetables are beautiful and tasty.
A few miles south, Ken Migliorelli zigzags over the potholed roads between his hilly orchard in Tivoli and the flat sandy fields of his cropland in Red Hook. A Valentine?s Day freeze took out all his stone fruit this year?no peaches, nectarines, or cherries?and a hard frost in May reduced his apple crop by 30 percent. But Migliorelli, who manages 1,000 acres of vegetables, fruits, hay, and grains (there is a brewery here), and supplies 24 farmers? markets in the city, knows the power of diversity. Depending on the time of year, 130 different kinds of fruits and vegetables fill the Migliorelli stands, including the same strain of broccoli raab his grandfather, Angelo, brought as seeds from Italy in 1933.
In Copake, at Walt?s Dairy, David Kiernan milks 168 cows?a fraction of the herd of 400 r...