Eggs, honey, herbs and edible flowers
Ferdinand’s Farm will be headed by Lily Dougherty-Johnson, who has been farming in the Northeast for the past two years. She apprenticed at North Plain and Blue Hill farms in Western Massachusetts in 2013 and is currently at Great Song Farm, a diversified farm in the Hudson Valley that uses biodynamic practices. She was unable to attend the open house, but according to Stacy Dedring, Glynwood’s coordinator of farmer training, Dougherty-Johnson will pasture-raise approximately 40-60 chickens on the property, all heritage breeds. “She’ll produce eggs, honey, culinary herbs and edible flowers in this kind of wonderful range. Think of borage, nasturtiums… anything you can add to a salad for more color and flavor. She’s also thinking about adding goats, and value-added products, like mayonnaise made with the culinary herbs.” Dougherty-Johnson’s plans for what she’ll do after the Incubator program are still in the development stage.
A 150-member meat CSA and educational programs
Four Legs Farm is the business plan of New Paltz native Leanna Mulvihill, who’ll keep 30 lambs and 24 pigs on the property. She’s planning a 150-member meat CSA (community supported agriculture) endeavor in which people will pay in advance for a weekly portion of meat (half of a lamb or one-quarter of a pig). The former Glynwood livestock apprentice said she’d like to partner with existing vegetable CSAs so that she can drop off the meat at the vegetable farms where people are already going to pick up their share of produce. She’ll also provide education so that people will know what to do with their large quantity of meat once they get it. “That can be a little intimidating,” she said.
Currently in her fourth season of farming, Mulvihill has also worked at Tantre Farm, an organic vegetable CSA in Michigan; Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York; Fatstock Farm, a startup meat CSA in Stuyvesant, New York; Phillies Bridge Farm in New Paltz and Obercreek Farm in Hughsonville, New York.
Future plans include moving into meat aggregation. “I would buy live animals from other small producers in the region and take care of the logistics involved in going to the slaughterhouse, getting it processed, and marketing and distributing the products to home cooks in the Hudson Valley.”
As for why she’s participating in the Incubator program, Mulvihill said, “I couldn’t start my own business without having access to land and access to capital, and have this support system. I’ve run the numbers, and if I wanted to save up enough money to get my own operation started, I would have to quit farming and come back to it later. They’re providing a lot of things I didn’t have.”
Compost
The Community Compost Company was initiated last spring by New Paltz resident Eileen Banyra, offering a collection service that picks up organic waste from local residents and businesses and delivers it to the Four Winds Farm in Gardiner to be composted. Recently Banyra took on a business partner, Noa Simons, also a longtime resident of New Paltz, who was introduced at the Incubator’s open house along with the company’s marketing director, Ariana Basco.
Simons grew up on a farm in Ghent and currently maintains a small farm. She has worked in international venture capital and small business consulting for the past ten years.
“Our business model has two parts,” she said. “One is collecting food scraps and two is actually producing compost. Generally when people produce compost, they do it on a big scale at big sites that involve a lot of capital. We’re exploring a different kind of a business model. One of the reasons we’re really excited to work with Glynwood is because they’re really giving us a platform to explore this model where we’re working with local farm sites within a small geographic region.”
They plan to use the Incubator as a test site for different mixes of compost, said Simons, refining and testing their business model and products. “We really have a lot of opportunity here on this property to explore a lot of different avenues. It’s really exciting to have the resources, the people, and hopefully we’re going to prove this model here, and take it and plant it around the tri-state area, and become a regional provider for collecting food scraps and creating compost.” Glynwood’s access to other land will be very helpful to them, as well, she added.
Banyra, a city planner by profession, has worked in both public and private sector planning providing land use and zoning guidance to rural communities and cities throughout northern New Jersey.
For more information, visit www.glynwood.org or www.osiny.org.
