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FOOD ACCESS One of the main goals we have for our farm is to make the high quality food we grow more accessible to people who can't come visit a farm.
We started our CSA with a food access mission: we wanted to distribute CSA shares and simultaneously use the CSA delivery as an opportunity to donate to local food pantries. So now when CSA shares are not picked up they get donated immediately to a food pantry near the CSA pickup. This allows us to make a meaningful donation without making a separate delivery from the farm and hopefully reduce food waste. This year we are expanding our Beacon CSA to include a Newburgh dropoff location and so we will now be able to make donations to a Tiny Food Pantry in downtown Newburgh. In the future, we hope to obtain grants from local non-profits that will allow us to make more and larger donations so that more of our produce goes to support food access organizations in the Hudson Valley. |
HOW WE GROW FOOD We currently lease 5 acres of land from the Chester Ag Center in Chester, NY. We only plant about half of our land with edible crops every year, and the rest is cover cropped to improve fertility, reduce weed pressure, and lower the populations of insects that damage our crops.
We grow everything according to organic practices, minimize plastic use, and never spray pesticides (organic or otherwise). Because we are small, we are able to focus on a lot of crops that need to be hand-picked. Some people think we're crazy but we love to pick strawberries, peas, beans, cherry tomatoes, ground cherries, and other fruiting crops. |