On a warm May afternoon in Staatsburg, sheep grazed near a red barn as rolling pasture opened toward the green rise of the Catskills across the Hudson River.
The scene, on a 95-acre property owned by Kyla and Clifford Hart, was the backdrop for a Hudson Valley Farmland Stewards event designed to show how privately owned land can remain in agricultural use through relationships between landowners and working farmers.
Held May 16, the event was part farm tour, part panel discussion and part public classroom. The subject was livestock farming in the Hudson Valley. But the deeper question was simpler: How can people who own farmland help keep it in farming?
Hudson Valley Farmland Stewards, an emerging organization co-founded by Pine Plains resident Hélène Marsh and Eugene Kwak, does not farm land itself. It brings together landowners, farmers, service providers and advocates to work through questions of access, infrastructure, expectations and long-term stewardship.
The model can vary from one property to another, but the basic idea is straightforward: A landowner makes acreage available through a lease or other agreement, and a farmer gains access to land without taking on the full cost of buying it. The work often comes down to practical questions: what the farmer needs to make the land productive, what the landowner is prepared to allow, and how both sides can build an agreement sturdy enough to last.
Hudson Valley Farmland Stewards grew out of a broader effort that began with a 2022 pilot project led by American Farmland Trust and Glynwood. That project brought together farmland owners who were not farmers themselves, but who wanted to understand how their acreage could support agriculture.
At the Hart property, about 25 acres are now being farmed by Justin Seelaus and Lexi Berko, Hart said. The acreage is part of the land base for Wild Lea Farm, which Berko and Seelaus operate while living in Hyde Park. They raise sheep, rabbits, quail, geese and other animals in a region where buying farmland is often out of reach.
Marsh and Kwak continued the effort after the pilot ended, building what remains an informal but increasingly active network across the Hudson Valley. Its work comes at a time of mounting pressure on American agriculture: The number of farms nationwide fell by 141,733, or 7%, between 2017 and 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2022 Census of Agriculture.
The panel included Seelaus and Berko of Wild Lea Farm; Madeline “Franki” Franklin, livestock manager at Liberty Farms; and Jennifer Phillips, an associate professor at the Bard College Center for Environmental Policy and owner of Gansvoort Farm.
The Hart property offered a fitting backdrop. Clifford Hart, who had a successful career in marketing, said his land had been farmed for generations. He and his wife first bought 5 acres in 2004, later added 7 more and acquired the larger property in 2014, he said. Allowing farmers to work part of it, he said, was both practical and personal.
“Knowing that this land has been farmed for hundreds of years, I want to keep that,” Hart said. “I want to preserve it.”
For Marsh, the mission is not abstract. She owns land in Pine Plains that is grazed by Chaseholm Farm, an arrangement she said taught her that land access is not only a legal or economic question. It depends on trust, communication and a willingness to solve problems together.
“It’s all about relationships,” Marsh said.
Those relationships, organizers said, can make farmland usable again. But they also require landowners to understand what farming actually entails — not just open fields and pastoral views, but fencing, water access, equipment, manure, livestock trailers, hay bales, unpredictable weather and the daily urgency of animal care.
The event made clear why that education matters. Farmers described the precarious economics of raising livestock in the Hudson Valley, where the costs of land, labor, feed, processing, transportation and animal care can make even successful operations feel fragile.
“In farming, nothing’s ever certain,” Seelaus said. “You got weather, you’ve got disease, you’ve got crop issues.”
For farms that sell directly to customers, even a weekend forecast can affect whether the week’s work pays off.
“Rainy Saturday really makes you question everything,” Berko said.
For Wild Lea Farm, leased acreage is not an accessory to the business. It is the foundation that allows Berko and Seelaus to raise animals without first having to buy a farm. But that kind of access requires clarity. Farmers need to know whether they can store equipment, move animals, make improvements or count on the land long enough to justify investing in it. Landowners need to understand that a working farm may not always look like a manicured estate.
Patrick Grego / The New Pine Plains Herald
At Liberty Farms, Franklin said much of her work involves explaining the practical realities of farming to the farm’s owner, even in a supportive relationship.
“There is a certain level of communicating the nuances of every day as being a farmer to the owner of the farm,” she said.
The panel also turned to meat processing, one of the most persistent bottlenecks for livestock farms. Franklin said organic processors are especially limited and expensive. At times, she said, the math of raising, processing and selling meat can seem impossible.
“You do the math and you’re like, OK, I should be charging $300 for a steak,” Franklin said.
Berko put the tension plainly.
“I wish our food was accessible to everyone,” she said.
That tension — between the true cost of local food and what many customers can afford — is part of the larger food system pressure that Hudson Valley Farmland Stewards is working around. The group is not presenting landowners as saviors, but as potential partners who can make one essential resource more available to the farmers trying to produce food in the region.
Kwak, who owns land in Orange County, said his own path began with a desire to connect land access with housing for farmers. In 2019, he offered a young farm family a 30-year free land lease and on-site affordable housing.
That example points to a broader range of possibilities. Some landowners may be able to offer pasture, housing, water access or infrastructure that would be prohibitively expensive for a farmer to create from scratch. For farmers, those arrangements can provide room to build a business. For landowners, they can turn open acreage into something more than scenery.
The work is also local for Marsh. In Pine Plains and surrounding communities, large properties often change hands for sums that put them far beyond the reach of working farmers. Hudson Valley Farmland Stewards is trying to reach those landowners with a simple message: If you own land, learn what it can do.
In a region where agriculture remains central to the landscape but increasingly difficult to sustain, Marsh and Kwak say the future of farming may depend, in part, on whether property owners are willing to make room for the people prepared to work the land.