Our Programs

 

As farmers, we produce healthy, delicious food and we know the real value of our labor. We spend our scarce free time advancing programs and advocating for policy supporting sustainable food systems. A sustainable food system is one that both works to recognize the value of our hard work and to provision all people with nutrient-rich food. Small-scale, regenerative farming honors access to healthy food as a human right while benefiting from the ecological diversity of holistic management.

While we work toward system change, we do what we can within our own farms and communities, here and now. Please join us both in the short and long term struggle. Below are a few ways we are working to challenge food apartheid:

 

  • Secure land tenure is the foundation farmers need to build an equitable food system that lasts. In service of this vision, we are incubating a community land trust, West Branch Commons, that will offer long term affordable leases to underserved farmers on a former dairy farm in Hamden.

  • Star Route Farm (SRF) is a 15-acre, regenerative, diversified vegetable and grain operation in Charlotteville, NY. We utilize climate-smart, agroecological practices such as cover cropping, crop rotation, mulching, reduced tillage, and perennials to grow healthy food and soil. As a farm with a social justice mission, Star Route seeks to address food inequities by growing nutritious food, farming with integrity and responsibility to both land and people, providing produce to those who are food insecure, and crop-planning with the communities we’re growing for to ensure we’re growing culturally relevant food.

  • The 607 CSA is a multi-farm, full-diet CSA delivering food from Catskills farms to more than two dozen locations in The Catskills, Hudson Valley, and NYC. We strive toward more equitable food access in our communities by offering sliding scale pricing, accepting SNAP/EBT benefits, and never turning away anyone requesting food regardless of ability to pay. We also work with the Rural Health Network to send protein and CSA shares to people living with diet-related chronic health diseases and livitng at or under the poverty level. Beyond the conventional model of Community Supported Agriculture, we hope to strengthen that nourishing circle by creating opportunities for Agriculture to Support Community.

  • Our Farm to Institution Program partners with academic institutions to provide our youth with fresh, nutritious food from our network of family farms. Our participation in the school bid system allows us to consistently deliver organic produce, processed produce, meat, and dry goods to local school districts. We deliver food to upstate BOCES schools in our region and offer School Sized CSA’s to schools with the goal of serving locally grown produce and challenging kitchen teams to work with new product.

  • Our Wholesale Program identifies and strengthens wholesale markets for our farm partners to help ensure farm viability. We also provide third-party trucking for participating farms so they can take advantage of our expansive distribution radius. We deliver items both downstate and upstate from 50+ small family farms to restaurants, retailers, and mutual aid organizations.

  • Our Logistics Program creates viable markets for farmers and strengthens the regional food system with our network of hubs, trucks, and relationships. This includes The 607 CSA, our Wholesale and Farm-to-Institution programs, and distribution partnerships with Essex Food Hub, BK Packers, and Myers Produce. This network brings nutrient-dense food from rural farms to city residents, institutions, and food-insecure communities across New York State.