Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture

This past weekend, myself and seven other Colgate students visited the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. The center is basically an agricultural research nonprofit facility that focuses on a food movement that emphasizes land-based permaculture, sustainable agriculture, and sourcing local. To break it down even further, Stone Barns uses the land a foundation for farming. They look at soil fertility and composition, regional climate, terrain, and flora and fauna ecological diversity, to determine sort of vegetables to grow on the land, how often they should be grown, and what sort of farming practices will give back to the land, both in soil nutrients and in the physical landscape.

This may seem pretty straight forward, but because of the path that agricultural has taken across the American landscape over the past two hundred years, these methods are actually pretty revolutionary and innovative. And the forethought that goes into a single growing/farming season is incredible. In the field they are planning seven years down the road, and in the greenhouse they plan for 10 years in the future! This type of mindset contributes to the overall productivity and efficiency of the farm.

 

Despite, some pretty rainy and cold weather, we were able to tour the farm, hear a little bit about their food education programs, participate in workshop classes, and observe their partnership with Blue Hill, the restaurant and hospitality program that operates on site.

On the farm tour we learned that they use three main organic practices for their vegetable farming, which increase longevity of the land, soil, and produce the best, pest resistant vegetables: crop rotation, cover crop, and sequential grazing. They grow seven families of vegetable, which is why they plan for seven years in advance. Because every family has a different effect on soil nutrient, rotating what family of crops is planted allows certain locations of soil to not be depleted in certain nutrients. Rotating families of crops also starves out any pests that might be plant family specific. Bugs will lay their eggs where they eat. So if you plant the same crop in the same location, then the bugs will hatch and not have any challenge in trying to find their food! If you are constantly changing the location of a plant family, ideally you are making it so the pests can't keep up. However, plants aren't growing in ground year round. During periods of time when land isn't being occupies with plants, cover crops will be planted. They all have different specific purposes, however, their main purpose to protect the land against erosion. Basically, they are planted in place of vegetables so there isn't bare ground exposed to rain and wind. Some cover crop plants actually return certain nutrient to the soil. Cover crops also have different life cycles, so depending on when you are going to plant in that area next, 1 month/3 months/6 months, there are different cover crops that will have an ideal growth period to match it. This is where planning seven years in advance is really helpful.

They also had cows, sheep, and chickens on the farm, rotated on different pastures. The sequence begins with sheep, who graze off the top of grass. The chickens come through next eating deeper, as well as scratching their feet in the ground, which helps to spread the manure evenly. They have 500-600 chickens, currently. They used to have more, but learned that the land couldn't support that many chickens. In the same grazing space, having too many chickens resulted in very lumpy and uneven terrain, which makes vegetable growing more difficult and nutrients don't spread out as evenly. After the chickens, the land is used for vegetable growing. However, to keep up with organic practices, a certain amount of time must pass before vegetables can be grown for health reasons. This can take anywhere from half and year to a full year depending on the crop.

 

We also learned how to test soil fertility and pH and about the heritage sheep varieties they were breeding, which are better for meat and for mating. They also showed us the polenta corn variety they have been growing recently called Oto Fellis (spelling uncertain). This variety is apparently something that came from this part of the country and was grown by Native Americans. Over time, mainstream corn varities out-competed it and so it dissapeared from the landscape. An ear of corn was mailed to Stone Barns by an Italian chef who, claimed it was the most flavorful variety out there and the best for making polenta. Somehow the variety had made its way to Italy and they have been growing ever since.

We ate lunch at the Blue Hill Cafe. And at the end of the day we circled back to the Cafe to try their fresh out of the oven chocolate chip cookies. Someone said it was easily the best cookie they had ever consumed.  

http://www.stonebarnscenter.org