A kinship with farmers
Benepe’s empathy for farmers and the food that they produce goes back to growing up on a farm along the Eastern Shore of Maryland. “I began getting my farm experience there,” he says, “and as I became a teenager and drove, I helped harvest the crops and get them into market. I got a sense of farming on the ground, and began to get a sense of the business of farming.”
The primary way of selling food at that time was at the auction block, and it was rigged in favor of the buyers, says Benepe. “They really didn’t bid against each other, but took turns buying from farmers struggling to make a living, and that kept the prices very suppressed. It made the farmers so angry sometimes that they would go home with their load and not even sell.” He describes his father as being “a gentleman farmer,” because he didn’t depend on the farm for a living, but says that his Dad still wanted to make the farm pay for itself. Benepe’s family owned that farm from 1938 until they sold it 20 years later.
Benepe’s affinity for history started on the farm, too. “I loved getting in touch with Indian culture through my arrowhead collection,” he says. Today Benepe is a member of the Historic Preservation Commission in Saugerties, and also involved with rewriting the local zoning laws to make them more responsive, he says, to environmental concerns, including farmland protection.
How it began
According to Benepe, it was Rickie Tamayo – then-proprietor of Café Tamayo along with husband James – who got the ball rolling to bring a farmers’ market to Saugerties back in 2002. “The actual concept was hers,” Benepe says, “and then she called me, and I got totally involved.”
At the time, Benepe already had a long background in promoting regional agriculture. In 1976, he’d been instrumental in starting the Greenmarket, a network of farmers’ markets in New York City that ultimately expanded to include 53 markets across all five boroughs. Greenmarket was a project of the Council on the Environment of New York City (now called GrowNYC), established under the tenure of Mayor Abraham Beame, says Benepe. “We thought the state of food in the City then was deplorable; and yet out on Long Island, it was wonderful,” Benepe says. “People were getting great foods at the farmers’ markets and farmstands there, but [people in the City] were unable to get those things because the stores weren’t carrying them.” Benepe ran the Greenmarket program for 25 years.
Initial plans for the Saugerties Farmers’ Market called for it to be located at the intersection of Market and Main Streets, says Benepe. “It was centrally located there, and visible to passing traffic; but the main drawback was that there was no nearby parking,” he says. “It was fine for people who were used to shopping in the village, but it was tiny and we couldn’t get as many farmers in as we’d like to get, so there was a need for expansion.”
Locating the Market in the parking lot at Cahill School was “a natural,” says Benepe, given that the area was only used by the staff there on weekdays and the markets would be held on Saturdays. Also, having the Kiersted House on one side connected the market with a beautiful place in the history of the village, and the “cow flop” on the other side provided a link with past farms. Protected by an easement that ran with the Cantine family deed preventing any trees being cut down or the landscape changed, the meadow now provides scenic beauty and gets put to good use for events like the annual Farm Animal Day at the Market: something for which they wouldn’t have the open space in another location, according to Benepe.
Returning favorites
The market plans to bring Farm Animal Day back this year on Saturday, September 1. The Tomato Taste-Off is another popular returning event, slated for Saturday, August 18. Anyone who grows tomatoes, professional and amateur alike, is invited to bring his or her bounty in for a blind taste test, with prizes for tastiest, weightiest and most unusual tomato.
The annual Men’s Cook-off is scheduled for Saturday, October 6, when amateur male cooks will compete for $100 in “market bucks” by wowing the public with their cooking skills using market products. “We don’t tell them what to do,” says Spektor. “They just have to use what’s in season at the market.” For those who plan to participate, reserving a spot early is important, she says, as space is limited. Art Lab will also return to the market every week this year, “so parents will always know there is something fun for the kids to do while they shop.”
Chef demos are another draw at the Market. “They’re educational fun,” says Spektor. “When the chefs come in, they’re using what’s peak of season to show what you can do with it, and they hand out recipes and talk you through the methods of how they’re doing it.” And of course, learning how to prepare healthy food is really part of the whole picture of food and farming.
“Jimmy Tamayo will do the demo on opening day,” says Spektor. “[Jimmy and Rickie] closed Café Tamayo last year after 24 years, and they’re really reinventing themselves. They’re redesigning the space in their building and creating a place where they can hold cooking classes and private dinners. And not having the responsibility for the restaurant now, Jimmy is able to put together the chef demo series for us, which is wonderful. Not only were Rickie and Jimmy part of the founding of the Farmers’ Market, but he was a chef from very early on who went to the farmers – who understood and respected local food.”
Most of the demos’ chefs will be from local restaurants, says Spektor, but sometimes the farmers get involved, too. “One of the best demos of all time was by [farmer] Joe Aiello, who did one with squash blossoms.” In the fall, there’ll be a demo on preserving food, too, “so that you’re able to carry forward that fresh taste into the winter. You do some work now, but you get the rewards over the winter.”
