Credit: Will Maitland Weiss
Stuart Farr farms 380 acres, most of it beside Route 82 in Ancramdale and off Route 7 at the Ancram/Copake border. Farr’s Hudson Valley Hops & Grains operation grows sunflowers, black beans, hops, wheat, rye and other grains. The products either go to local mills and become flour or to Kings County Distillery in Brooklyn and become whiskey. He presses the sunflower seeds into oil inside his own barn; you can get it locally through Sparrowbush bakery booths at farmer’s markets—and Sparrowbush breads are for sale at Chaseholm Farm and on the menu at Stissing House. After Farr harvests the grains, beans and seeds, the remaining bulk of the plants become organic matter, both providing nutrients to the next harvest and limiting pathogens. His farms are certified organic by the United States Department of Agriculture and the Real Organic Project.
Farr grew up on a farm—three generations, 125 acres of grains, beans, seeds in Essex, United Kingdom—but pivoted to technology. The office where he and others consulted for multiple farmers got a computer in the early 1980s and “let the kid figure that out” led to a Masters in Artificial Intelligence (not yet the omnipresence it was to become). It also led Farr to New York, and a 20-year career in tech. “Then I got bored with that,” he said. He started looking for farmland in the Hudson Valley, a return to literal and as well as figurative roots. He looked at property size and price and, most of all, at soil maps.
Dutchess and Columbia Counties are best suited, Farr said, for livestock foraging (no wonder the area was successfully home to so many dairy farms). Their soil is also good for wheat and sunflowers, especially if you recycle all of the plants’ nutrients back into the soil. You’re feeding the bacteria and fungi already in the ground and they, in turn, release the minerals from the soil to fuel the next harvest. No herbicides, no fungicides, no pesticides—the “good” bacterial overwhelm the “bad” and keep them at bay. Farr adds some liquid fish, kelp and molasses to feed his crops, and he now partners with Jerry Peele’s Herondale Farm: The sheep come over and eat the red clover crop cover, and their manure further empowers the soil bacteria.
Late in 2022, a group of mostly Ancram residents began meeting monthly under the banner “Ancram Resilient Gardens & Farms” to exchange knowledge about gardening and land use. In addition to a shared love of the local landscape and horticulture and agriculture, they are motivated by a desire to share best practices, amid climate change and other challenges to our age-old relationship to our natural environment.
On Saturday, Jan. 27, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Farr will describe his adventures and aspirations managing a living ecosystem. The presentation will take place at the Ancram Town Hall, 1416 County Route 7.
For more information: email arterianchang@gmail.com, and see the Hudson Valley Hops & Grains gallery.