Continued on page 7

Mrs. and Mr. Schwartz weigh their Hakurei turnips at the first CSA distribution.

NewsletterJune 2014 Issue 3

Rows of bouquet sunflowers line our You-Pick beds of herbs and flowers.

CSA Vegetable ListLook for these itemsin your share this week

(from Cody Creek Farm)

Free-range EggsSugar Snap Peas

Young Lettuce HeadsBroccoli Raab

Red Russian KaleRocambole Garlic Scapes

Hakurei TurnipsSpinach

You-Pick Sunflowers

Coming Attractions:Giant Snow Peas

Rainbow Swiss Chard

Whirligig Farm will be selling their sustainable produce at Clearwaters annual festival of music and the environment the weekend of June 21-22! The musical farm crew will also be performing and leading participatory singing of their spirited worksongs and other farming songs throughout the weekend - see the performance schedules for the Circle of Song stage and the Artisanal Food and Farm Market.

While Whirligig is the new farm on the block in the historic Hurley Flats near Kingston, New York, which has been farmed continuously since its agricultural origin as the corn fields of the Esopus indigenous people, its connection with Clearwater has deep roots. Some of the seeds of Whirligigs sustainable community farm philosophy sprouted when I came

to the Hudson Valley 25 years ago to join Clearwaters public ecological mission, first as a volunteer for the Pumpkin Sail festivals, then as the bosn, or ships carpenter, and winter maintenance coordinator, then as an on-land educator, and finally as a volunteer coordinator for the festival (initially for the Childrens Area, now for the Artisanal Food and Farm Market). I am proud to be one of many, many people who in some small way continue the work and vision of Clearwater organizer Pete Seeger. Specifically, Whirligig Farm hopes to use the vehicle of farming and harvest celebrations to bring people together to celebrate and better understand their beautiful, unique piece of the planet - especially regarding stewardship of the land for

By Creek Iversen

Farmers Note: If The Clearwater Was A Tractor, It Would Be At Whirligig Farm!

Pete Seeger is joined by farmers Creek Iversen, Walker Rumpf, Dan Moon and Lori Gross to perform for an audience at our 2013 farm location.

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1375 Hurley Mountain Road, Hurley, NY 12443

Fast Facts: CSA 2014Sign up at anytime during the season!

You will receive 22 weeks of fresh, seasonal, sustainably-grown vegetables.

The weekends of June 13-14 through Oct. 31-Nov. 1

(note that the distribution on June 20-21 will be a small box pickup only.)

READY TO SIGN UP? Fill out the form on page 5,

email us at CSA@whirligigfarm.com, or call us at (845) 331-0316 with questions!

Two Share Sizes:

1. Duo Shares (for one to two

people)

2. Family shares (for three to four

people)

Student Shares:

Available for 11 weeks,

August 21 & 22 to October 31 & November 2. We offer sliding scale share prices, so

you pay what you can afford.

Our CSA members have the opportunity

to immerse themselves in

our vibrant farm community

with monthly music jams,

weekly Saturday coffees, regular

work parties and potlucks,

farmhouse concerts,

seasonal harvest celebrations

and educational workshops!

Friday Evening Farm Social from

4 to 7 p.m. at Whirligig Farm

Saturday Morning Box

Pick-up at Tweefontein

Herb Farm (4 Jenkins Rd,

New Paltz)

Saturday Morning Coffee from 10 to

11 a.m. at Whirligig Farm (or just come

pick up a box we pack for you at any time

over the weekend)

You choose your pick-up time and place:

On the farm:Community Harvest

SuppersThursdays, June 26 and

July 244 to 8 p.m. or come

earlier!

Music JamsSaturday, July 5

Sunday, August 35 to 9 p.m.

potluck at 6:30 p.m.

Farmstand Grand Opening

Saturday, July 5 9 a.m. farmstand open1 p.m. grand opening

celebration begins

Off the farm:Woodstock

Transition GatheringSaturday, June 14

Woodstock1 to 5 p.m.

Music, vegetable and info table

Clearwater FestivalJune 21 and 22

Croton-on-Hudson10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Festival of Music and Celebration of The

Environment

FARM EVENTS

d

Got CSA?rr

1. The farm crew proudly poses in front of our first official harvest of the season. 2. Young Chinese cabbage and Hakurei turnips. 3. Creek Iversen entertains CSA members with his banjo and Shay Otis organizes the evening pick-up. 4. We also offer free range farm-fresh eggs from our 50+ hens at our CSA distribution as well. 5. Our front porch was brimming with veggies!

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Filling The Demand and Feeding Families: Community Supported Agriculture

It has been only within the last half-decade that small town demands for sustainable and safe farming practices have led to a movement in support of local farms across the globe.

Community Supported Agriculture programs, or CSAs,exist to provide clean, local food to families, while families provide local support and a willing community to farms. The kind of CSAs that we are familiar with now, actually originated in the 1960s in Switzerland and were introduced to the United States in the 1980s. In response to the large-scale farming by corporations, consumers in Europe sought a way to safely source their food while farmers sought to find a stable demand.

There was a slow but steady increase in interest through the 1990s and in the early 2000s. The CSA saw a renewed interest and a wave of farm development.

Today, countries and regions participating in CSA programs include Australia, Hungary, India, Hong Kong, Holland, England, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, France, Denmark, Germany and Japan, according to Steven McFadden of the Rodale Institute. In Japan, millions participate in a well-established CSA movement called teikei.

Typically, a CSA farm offers shares to consumers, the cost of which help finance the operation of the farm for the season. Some invite shareholders to contribute labor to the farm efforts. These shareholders receive a supply of the farms yields, which may consist of vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers, eggs and meat. The farms goal is to reach its ecological potential by engaging the community and developing itself on the land.

By Gianna Canevari

Continued on page 7

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C O M E S I T A T O U R W E L C O M E T A B L E 1375 Hurley Mountain Road, Hurley, NY 12443

www.whirligigfarm.com CSA@whirligigfarm.com

2 0 1 4 C S A S H A R E S I G N U P

Names of all adult shareholders: ___________________________________________________________

Names and ages of child shareholders: _______________________________________________________

Address _______________________________________________________________________________

Phone ___________________________ Email(s) _____________________________________________

P I C K U P T I M E & L O C A T I O N Select one pickup date for cool season crops and culinary herb and herbal tea garden shares: Fridays, 4 to 7 pm at Whirligig Farm, 1375 Hurley Mountain Road, Hurley, NY 12443 Saturday, 10 to 11 am at Whirligig Farm, 1375 Hurley Mountain Road, Hurley, NY 12443 Saturday / Sunday anytime at Whirligig Farm, 1375 Hurley Mountain Road, Hurley, NY 12443 Saturday morning (time TBA) at Tweefontein Herb Farm at 4 Jenkins Road, New Paltz, NY 12561

(New Paltz assuming sufficient interest; checks will not be cashed until drop off finalized) V E G E T a b l e s h a r e S Vegetable shares are limited and are available on a first come, first serve basis. Type Sliding Scale Price Your Price Total Family Share $700 - $1000 Duo Share $400 - $600 Student Share $325 - $425 Farm Service (Choose one from below): I / we commit to working 32 farm hours (for family shares) OR 16 farm hours (for duo shares and student shares)

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In lieu of working farm hours, I / we would like to make a financial contribution of $______ to the farm intern program. Please choose amount a

In lieu of working farm hours, I / we would like to contribute a different gift or service to the farm. Please describe:

-

S E E D L I N G s h a r e S Seedlings are only available this year a la carte beginning the first weekend in May while supplies are available. Cool season crops are available first and warm season crops will phase in. Please visit Whiriligig

T O T A L P A Y M E N T Grand Total: Current Payment: (Min. $100 deposit required. Full payment required by May 15 for incentive quart of sugar snap peas or snow peas. Full payment required by June 8. Please contact CSA@whirligigfarm.com if you would like to request a special payment schedule.)

Remaining Balance: ________________________________ ________ Signature Date Please indicate your payment method:

Read

y to

sign

up? T

ear t

his p

age

right

out

of y

our n

ewsle

tter!

Why Whir ligig CSA?Top 10 Reasons:

Meet One of Our Farmers: Shay OtisHometown: New Paltz, NY

Favorite Vegetables: Kale, Lettuce, and Carrots

First farming experience: Phillies Bridge Farm when I was a little kid; my dad helped start the farm with Dan Guenther. What made you want to work at Whirligig Farm? I worked with Creek and Dan last year at Brook Farm Project, and when I saw what an amazing place they were moving on to, I knew I had to be a part of it! Whats the future of farming for you? I love working outside and growing my own food, so I know that will always be a part of how I want to live my life. I am hoping next season to focus more on working towards being an outdoor educator and leading backpacking/wilderness excursions.

What do you love about working at Whirligig Farm? I love the people here; we honestly have the BEST crew ever. We all get along so well, and its great how much everyone cares about supporting eachother.

Shay Otis

Shay Otis taste tests sugar snap peas before

the farms first CSA distribution.

1. Save Money: Pay less for your vegetables than farm stand or local organic supermarket prices.2. Beyond Organic: Our Northeast Organic

Farming Association of New York designation as a Farmers Pledge farm is our guarantee of accountability for practices that are sustainable on many levels, far beyond the exclusion of unhealthy chemicals.

3. Build Local Economy and Local Food System: Support the development of local farmers. Our entire farm crew is hired from the mid-Hudson Valley, and spend their paychecks in your community. Help our region transition to a more local, sustainable, and resilient food production. 4. Maintain Farming Heritage: Help our neighborhood retain its small working farm history, aesthetic and character.5. Friends and Neighbors: Weekly farm share pick-ups gather smiling people of all ages who

care about healthy food, local farms and a sharing community.6. Education: Learn new recipes, garden know-how and a better understanding of sustainable farming. Support our work bringing farm experiences to students and community groups.7. Music, Arts, Culture, Fun: Evolve the local artistic culture around the celebration of the land - the beautiful and unique Hurley Flats between the Esopus Creek and the Catskill Mountains - and its bounty.8. Grow Food Justice: Help us make healthy local food accessible to everyone in our communities. From donations to food pantries, to work-for-vegetable barters, to subsidized prices for lower income communities, to community harvest suppers, all may Come sit at our welcome table!9. Participation: Be a part of the growing of your own food in joyful community with others.10. Taste and Health: Delicious farm-to-mouth vegetables all season.

Sign up at anytime during

the season!

TM

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Ready to sign up? Tear this page right out of your newsletter!

sustainable community food production.Along this journey, I have been fortunate to absorb some

of Petes ideas through diverse interactions: maple sugaring with him at his home, helping him to build a stone chimney, swimming across the Hudson to raise money for a floating riverpool, singing with the Hudson River Sloop Singers, co-organizing a coffee house with music performances at the Beacon Sloop Club, volunteering at the BSCs seasonal harvest celebrations, participating in a community Weed Wallow to rid the harbor of invasive water chestnuts, etc. These experiences, combined with crewing on the Sloop Clearwater, have given a richness and direction to my life which has been flavored by the creeks and rivers and mountains and farm fields of our Hudson Valley Home. Just a few months before he passed away, Pete came out to the Brook Farm Project, which our Whirligig Farm team was managing at the time, to give a family performance benefiting our community farm and the work of a student Oxfam group. Im told it was our sweet watermelons that clinched his farm appearance! His daughter wrote to us afterward: I have not seen my father so pleased with an afternoon of music in a long time. The afternoon was such a relief for him. He loved seeing so many local singing young people, and is enthusiastically in support of all of you. Thanks for having him, and for letting him see what you are

doing first hand. Being there for a songfest is worth a million words.

Id like to invite everyone to come out and see what we are doing firsthand - Come Sit at Our Welcome Table is our motto! And what is it we are doing? We are farming in a way that improves the soil, harmonizes with natural ecological communities, makes good food available to all segments of our community, centers the evolution of local artistic culture around our land and food, and builds an improved public stewardship - and even a reverence - for the land. Whether it is to support the farm by joining the CSA (program of weekly fresh produce pickup) or shopping at our farmstand, to volunteer to work and sing with us in the fields, to join us at a Community Harvest Supper (next on June 26 and July 24), or to come to our monthly farm music jam, barn dance, or other special harvest event (next Open Farm is July 5), please come visit our beautiful, musical farm just 3 miles from the Kingston NY Thruway exit, at the edge of the Catskills along the Esopus Creek, at 1375 Hurley Mountain Road in Hurley, New York.

See you down on the farm!

CreekFor more information, go to clearwaterfestival.org

Farmers Note continued

History of CSA continued

Suzanne DeMuth, author of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): An Annotated Bibliography and Resource Guide, writes that CSAs allow growers to focus on land stewardship and still maintain productive and profitable small farms.

Community building is the basis of CSA efforts, and local sourcing, below-market pricing and transparency about farming practices are simply the wonderful bi-products.

According to a 2004 United Nations report on the state of global economics: There is overwhelming evidence that efficient (industrial) agriculture is not only mining the natural resource base but also influencing other parts of the environment in ways that are detrimental to the well-being of humankind.

Programs like CSAs are rising in popularity because

they provide partial answers to the questions surrounding the relationships among food, the economy, environment and public health. Concern is raised now more than ever by those who wish to purchase food they know is efficiently grown and free of harmful chemicals.

Shared values and commitment on the part of local communities are necessary components for CSA programs to

survive, as well as an awareness about the benefits that come from supporting local farms. Acknowledging that sustainable agriculture is the key to a sustainable future is the message that will be spread by the continual growth and success of Community Supported Agriculture.

For more information, read The History of Community Supported Agriculture by Steven McFadden.

The front porch of our beautiful farm house packed with vegetables for our CSA members last Friday.

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Pro u e Per ecti nOE L

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1. The farm crew weeds beds of onions (2) on a cloudy afternoon. 3. This aerial photo, taken by Dan Moon, shows a great deal of our beds of vegetables as they soak up a recent rainfall. 4. Sugar snap peas were among the first veggies we harvested on the farm. 5. Whos ready for kale chips? 6. Rows of Winterbor kale grow beautifully in our rich soil. 7. Red Russian kale, a tasty addition to salads, soaks up the late afternoon sun. 8. The farm crew plants scallions that we started from seed just weeks before. 9. Young Chinese cabbage and Hakurei turnips were offered in our first CSA distribution last Friday. 10. Shay Otis, Dan Moon, Phil Erner and Jasmina DeLeon-Gill harvest giant red mustard, a wonderfully spicy and versatile green.

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You and the Whirligig Farm crew are new members to join the farm community in Hurley. What is your history with farming in other locations?

I am a newcomer to farming. My interest in farming grew out of a sense that the terms security and yield, - so pervasive in the world of investing and wealth management - have a more profound meaning in the world that we are coming to know.

What is true security? Is there such a thing? Philosophically speaking, the question is moot. But speaking practically, the best answer I can come up with is that true security may be found in the sustainable production of wholesome foods, in the preservation and tending of our lands and waters, and, most importantly, in the connection and interdependence of us, each of us, as a caring community.

As for yield, well, the land speaks for itself. Just take a look at what Creek and Shay, Dan, Nina, Phil and Jasmina, Greg and Kelly have brought forth from the soil at Whirligig in our first season on the farm. Its beautiful!

What is it about the Hurley Flats, as this part of the Esopus Valley is called, that made you interested in purchasing this land?

I first moved to this area in September of 1997. I bought a small house in Lake Hill, New York, and quickly made friends with a woman named Grian MacGregor, who has a wide variety of aptitudes, not the least of which is vegetable gardening. I think observing Grian had a lot to do, on a root level (if I may), with my decision to purchase farmland.

Stones is what they mostly grow in Lake Hill, however, so I had to look a little further afield. First I looked

w e s t w a r d , towards Andes and Delhi, but the area seemed too remote. Then I heard from Grian that a friend of hers was selling a farm near New Paltz. I took a hard look at that farm. After doing my due diligence, I realized with considerable disappointment that it was not a good fit for me. Just as I was reconciling myself to the loss, my realtor with whom I was working, got word that the Paul Farm may be coming up for sale. I went to see it, walked the land, saw the great barns and the historic farmhouse, and entered a bid on the spot. It was a much larger purchase than I had intended originally, but the land itself - the soil quality and depth, the surrounding waterways, the accessibility to markets - all gave me a sense that I was on to something incredibly special.

So far, CSA members have some amazing produce, so the food does speak for itself. Can you speak about the quality of the soil as it relates to the success of The Paul Family Farm?

When I entered into negotiation for the farm in February, John Gill, the man who had been tenant-farming for the Paul family for some years - and who I hoped would continue to do so for me - took me on a tour of the fields. We got out of the truck at several places to feel the difference in the texture of the soil loam. At one point, John stopped the truck and looked out across the upper fields, where were now fencing in a 16-acre parcel for mixed vegetables, herbs and flowers. God, this is a beautiful piece of land, John said. He was preaching to the converted at that point. I just nodded. The land speaks for itself. Theres not a stone in it, and the Unadilla Silt Loam is among the finest soil you can find in New York State.

Q&A With The

Whirligig Farm

Landowner

Michael Rogers

Pictured here with

his

fiance, Mina Koyam

a

True security may be found in the sustainable production of wholesome

foods... in the connection and interdependence of us, each of us,

as a caring community. Michael Rogers

What is it about the industry of agriculture and the environment that is changing the way we grow, purchase and consume our food?

As a consumer, Im keenly interested, and thoroughly invested, in eating local foods. Theyre fresher, they dont arrive coated in oil, and they are inherently sustainable. Its important to know where and how food is grown. What methods are employed? What are the inputs? The land has such abundance to offer to us if we tend her with respect. Why interfere?

It was my great good fortune to meet Creek Iversen (I want to express my gratitude to Laura Kellar for suggesting the meeting.) Over the course of many months, Creek and I talked about a vision for Whirligig

Farm, about the farm model, and its intention. I found that we had a lot in common as regards our vision. What Creek has that I do not, however, is the experience and know-how to bring that vision to life. If we are successful in realizing our vision, Whirligig will be a farm that produces excellent food grown in strict compliance with the Farmers Pledge designation. It will be a farm that encourages community through participation in educational and artistic events. It will be a farm that teaches respect for the land and its natural history by living that respect day-to-day. Good work is a deep form of respect, and thats what we aim to do here.

Pinxter: This springtime religious holiday was

brought by Dutch settlers to North America

in the 17th century; it was a day to rest

and gather with friends. Pinxter comes

from a variation on the Dutch word for

Pentecost, Pinksteren. By the 19th century,

this celebration was practiced mostly by

African-Americans, in which many African

traditions were incorporated in a three-to-

four-day holiday to dance, sing and spend

with family and friends.

Greg Cerne, Nina Petrochko, Lisa Mitten, Jasmina DeLeon-Gill and Shay Otis harmonize with the other singers.

Mr. Moon, Cecelia Hernandez and Shifty (bottom) join Creek Iversen and the rest of the musical group (top).

Q&A with Michael Rogers continued.

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Follow us on Facebook!And go to

whirligigfarm.com to learn more about the farm, our CSA

program and other opportunities.

Photography and layout by Gianna Canevari.

We Are Beyond OrganicWe strive to provide our community with healthy farm products grown ever-more-

sustainably, to improve the soil and to encourage direct participation of the people in building the local culture around their food and the celebration of the land.

1. (Top left) Dan Moon, Creek Iversen, Greg Cerne, Nina Petrochko (bottom left) Jasmina De-Leon-Gill, Phil Erner and Shay Otis pose for a shot in front of our farm house during our Pinxter celebration. 2. Jasmina and Nina plant rows of scallions. 3. Jasmina and Shay taste test the sugar snap peas, not a bad gig! 4. Dan Moon and Phil Erner enjoy their time triple-washing spinach that was harvested that morning.

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