The Stone Barns Center Grows a New Crop: Farmers

Tracy Sutton
Zone Editor

POCANTICO HILLS, N.Y. — On a beautiful late autumn day, approaching the rolling pastures and statuesque turreted stone barns built in the French Normandy tradition, winding past perennial beds, manicured orchards, and a few stray chickens wandering about, you might have the notion that you’ve been a good farmer who has died and gone to heaven.

This former Rockefeller estate transformed itself into the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in May 2004 and has been on a mission ever since to excite and educate the public about sustainable farming.

History
Since the 1890s, beginning with John D. Rockefeller, Jr. this verdant 80-acre parcel of land in Westchester County has been a working farm. Rockefeller expanded the farm in the 1920s and 30s building the impressive stone barns that are the Center’s namesake today. It was a gentleman’s farm until  just after the Second World War.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s son David Rockefeller and his late wife Peggy revived the farm, Peggy Rockefeller being an ardent breeder of Simmental cattle (which are still raised on a neighboring farm, Hudson Pines). Mrs. Rockefeller was a devoted advocate of small farms and farmland protection and a founder of the American Farmland Trust. When she died, her husband  and their daughter  Peggy Dulany dedicated the farm in her memory as the Stone Barns Center.

“My daughter and I decided the best way to commemorate my dear wife Peggy’s commitment and passion to farmland protection was to create a center on this land that she loved, where threats to farmland and food supply could be discussed, farming methods could be improved and farm policy could be explored,” said David Rockefeller in a statement announcing his recent $25 million bequest to the Center’s endowment.

Stone Barn Center operates entirely as an educational  nonprofit,  with the farm, barns, farmers’ market open to the public. The Center's partner is the award-winning restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Hosting lectures, workshops, and most recently a young farmers conference, Stone Barn Center is about “helping people make these farm-to-table connections,” according to their mission statement.

The Farm
The Center has ambitious public programming, with an afterschool program, summer camp, farm apprenticeships and internships.

It is also very much a working farm. Of the 80 acres, 6.5 acres are dedicated to produce and 23 to livestock in pasture. The remaining farm is woodland, although 12 acres of woodland are used to raise Berkshire pigs who farrow in the forest underbrush and heritage Bourbon turkeys who roost in the trees.

All of the farm products are raised for food, which is either sold to the cafe and restaurant onsite or at the farm market. In addition, the farm has recently begun a venture to sell compost to Whole Foods. According to marketing and communications manager, Rebecca Sherman, keeping it “revenue diversified” and self-sustaining is a farm objective.

Visitors to Stone Barns Center expecting an agritourism petting zoo will be disappointed. Visitors expecting a farm experience that mirrors conventional agriculture in the U.S. will also be taken aback.

Stone Barn Center is a grand (and well financed) experiment in sustainability.

No pesticides or chemical fertilizers are used. The animals — Dorset sheep, poultry and Berkshire pigs — are all pasture grazed. Sherman points out the remains of an heirloom variety of “eight-row flint” corn. “We used the Three Sisters method,” she explained: planting the corn along squash, to retain moisture and shade the ground, and beans, which climb on the cornstalks and fix nitrogen in the soil. The delicious  heirloom crop was then used to make polenta in the restaurant.

The Stone Barns Center, said Sherman, is about “saving lesser known varieties.”

That goes for livestock as well. “You’ve got to eat them to save them,” said Craig Haney, livestock manager at the farm. Haney was a breeder of Berkshire pigs before he came to Stone Barns Center.

Berkshires, he explained, have personalities. He likes the look of them, their disposition. “If you’re obliged to take care of an animal, you’d better like them.”

Haney keeps the Berkshires in the woods, in groups of five sows where they root around not unlike feral pigs.

And those New York winters? “Conventional breeds wouldn’t do,”  said Haney.

After they’re bred, the sows raise their young naturally and everyone mingles until the piglets are weaned at 8 weeks. The piglets live together until slaughter.

Conversely, some of the sows are happily ensconced in a barn where they root around, shredding and snarfing recycled cardboard.

The best part about his job?

“I like the educational outreach — farmers, camp kids, apprentices— it’s a blessing to have young people who are interested,” said Haney.

Raising Farmers
Exciting people about farming as a career, either as a young person or a second career is the latest outreach effort of the Stone Barn Center. Last week the Center hosted a sold-out conference dedicated to young farmers (see story on A1), attracting folks from across the Northeast.

The conference, said Nena Johnson, public programs director at Stone Barns Center, was a way for young people to connect, network, and “not feel isolated” when choosing farming as a career choice. It’s not an easy career path to navigate and after the success of this year’s conference, the Center hopes to host them every year.

Stone Barns Center has the space to welcome aspiring farmers and works as a “visible project” of what can be achieved in sustainable ag.

“In our region,” explained Johnson, people “don’t have a history of farming, the background. We’re losing that traditional knowledge.”

Stone Barns Center hopes to change that.

“It’s important to look at the message — replicability.” Johnson wants participants to go home  from Stone Barns Center “feeling connected to the land” knowing they can farm this way too.

It’s an ambitious crop — farmers — but Stone Barns Center has a vision, and a nice large endowment, to see that they grow.