Chris is a New Baltimore native.  He grew up on Reservoir Road, and worked on the Kriel Farm from the time he was 10 years old, all the way through his time in college.  When Mr. Kriel passed away, Chris agreed to stay on and manage the farm while he was working towards his baccalaureate degree at SUNY Albany.  We met during that time.  He raised dairy replacements, made hay, grew corn, and got to know the neighbors.  He studied and rushed off to class after chasing cows back inside fence.  Then, the opportunity came for him to get a “free ride” to a graduate degree, so Chris took it and left the farm.  We bought a house in North Greenbush.  He worked as a soil scientist for the USGS. 

But the farm was calling us back.  Chris was reading.  Reading a lot.  Books about soils and minerals, books about raising poultry, hogs and beef.  Books about rare breeds of animals and heirloom vegetables.  Books about building your own greenhouses and extending growing seasons.  Books about Genetically Engineered Foods, herbicides and pesticides.  We started to realize the importance of eating locally and organically for several reasons. First and foremost, the food readily available in supermarkets is questionable in its quality and safety (i.e., food recalls and non-labeling of genetically engineered products).  It is shipped in from all over the world, which is ridiculous in the use of petroleum products that are used both to raise it and then to ship it, and results in inferior value anyway – the produce goes bad in a matter of a day or two and does not have the nutritional value it should.  So, we started to buy all of our food that we could directly from local farmers.  This did increase our food budget substantially.  The amount of money we were spending on food each month was almost equivalent to the amount we spent on our mortgage and taxes.  We came to the conclusion that once we started a family, we couldn’t afford NOT to farm.

We looked at property and farm management opportunities all over New York for several years.  Time and time again, those situations fell through, but we kept on reading and planning.  During the summer, Chris still helped out occasionally with the haying on the Kriel farm and their rented land.  One day, he was brush-hogging on the Pflegl farm, and stopped to visit with the owners, Betty and John Nickles.  He told them about some of our ideas and our hope for a farm of our own.  A couple of days later, we got a phone call.  “If you’d like to try out some of those ideas, you’re welcome to use our property.”  It was the start of a beautiful thing.

Last year, we had a 12-member CSA.  It was our first try at growing vegetables on a large scale, and it was a success.  We had more than enough; some of our shareholders asked us to cut back on what we gave them!  The produce was delicious, and we had a lot of fun raising it.

This year, we are increasing the CSA size to 50 shares, and will be selling produce at the Farmers’ Market in Wyche Town Park.  Back in January, we gave a presentation at the New Baltimore Conservancy’s meeting, where we showed off pictures from last year’s harvest and talked about our farming methods.  Between that presentation, word of mouth, and our listing on the Local Harvest website, 15 of those shares so far have been sold to local families and will be picked up at the farm.  In the coming years, we will increase the CSA size to 100, and hope to sell all of the shares to people in the New Baltimore/Coxsackie area.

We grow a broad variety of vegetables, without the use of any chemical fertilizer, pesticide or herbicide.  This year we will be trialing over 50 varieties of tomatoes and over 30 different potatoes.  In each week’s share, there will be 7-14 different kinds of vegetables, depending on availability within the season.