Hudson Locale Begins! (rough draft)

Hudson Locale Farm and Living Project

Our mission is to explore the art of farming and sustainable design. We seek to also explore the relationship that a redesign of our physical systems has on our cultural and social systems. We seek to explore these relationships and how we as farm and ecological designers can extend these design methods into our social ecology. We are a movement of young people interested in agriculture and regenerative design in our living systems. We are learning on on a number of different farms and eco-landscaping projects using diverse methods and coming from many different backgrounds and trainings. We seek to explore everything from conventional organic agriculture to biodynamics, and also the newly emerging design concept of permaculture on an agricultural and social scale, as well as the wild systems that surround our civilization. Our organization is driven by 2 major long-term goals.

1. To expand on the role of farmers, distributers and consumers to participate in larger social and ecological dialogue in what is to be known as a collective redesign of our local agricultural and food distribution system. As a group of young emerging farmers we are facing a shortage of space in the local niche market of organic and healthy foods. At the same time, we the majority of Americans, are also faced with the inability to keep ourselves in good health through consistently buying healthy food because the prices are above what the majority of families can afford. Through a strong movement of volunteers with CSA shares ans student agreeements on a number of these different farms, we are hoping to create a surplus with which to meet some of the current demand of wholesale imports. We find that the import of food from other parts of the globe is far less sustainable than meeting this demand locally. We are seeking to work towards that demand as a community of farmers, distributors and consumers in association with one another.

2. To create a community of mentors and educators in many fields of regenerative design and agricultural methods. An ideal community takes place amongst a field of growing vegetables if the gardens are laid out in the correct fashion, and designed to function in an effective and cooperative manner. A community of people reflects this in many different ways. Our goal is to create a training which explores this synthesis,of agriculture and social systems, and how they are innately connected to what must be implemented into our community architecture in the years to come.

We are not a non profit. We are a farm/ peer led training in social and ecological redesign. Our sale of produce is not for profit, but is instead directed to pay mentors and organizers their right livelihood and to coordinate the growth of local social initiatives that promote regenerative social and ecological design in our living systems. We are hoping to create an institute for donation based education that arises from the belief that our immediate task of switching to a regenerative food system is far more important than developing as a conventional business where profit comes before creative development, ecological regeneration, or the renewal of our social forms that support our local lifestyle.

Our Structure

Our intention is to create an institute and local food movement that is cooperatively run, and the many students and interns who are interested in participating and learning through our farm funded education would sell produce and crafts to raise money for an education that is affordable for young people who do not have a lot of money, are seeking alternative education forms, or are taking a gap year from college to supplement their learning through our programs.

The idea is that the financial capital generated through marketing produce would complete an entire cycle within the internal economy of the farm school. Our money would flow in three different channels. The first would be to support mentors, teachers administrators, residents and staff with a modest compensation for carrying the core organization and offering their time to support our initiative. The second would be capital to invest in the farms themselves. And the third kind of money is the kind that is most undervalued, it is a currency beyond money but needs economic support. This is the money that is directed towards education, creative ventures, spirituality, and the strengthening of networks through events, classes, and programs of various kinds.

Something we are seeking to avoid is, any form of projective economics. This means we will not project figures or speculate economic patterns to develop rapidly. We believe that simplicity and collaboration, are important attributes to our future communities, and we are rapidly learning that they can be applied in a diverse manner to allow our community to develop organically through the support and enthusiasm of the people who see the need for it to exist. In the same manner we hope that it will be renewed many times, by allowing itself to die and re-examining the needs of the surrounding community, be reborn. We think that it is essential to the age we are living in that our monetary investment in designing the farm institute and places to house residents, volunteers and students be minimal. We therefore would limit the maximum investment of any further structure until the programs are fully running. to a yurt or pavilion, and would explore simple functional and aesthetic structures within a budget of $200 - $1500. So far we have been very fortunate to have a lot of materials donated for the building of our camps. We hope to keep it coming!

The Food System Project

The food system project is based out of Pleroma Farm, where we are going to be growing vegetables for our CSA and hope to be able to produce a surplus through a community effort that shares an interest in an abundance of affordable healthy produce. In the summer of 2010 A number of young farm and community design trainees have come together to work under the umbrella of local mentors and teachers, to both develop an apprenticeship/peer led educational framework and to focus on learning how to operate a farm through a hands on skill-sharing and peer coordinated learning process.

Our CSA this season will produce milk, eggs, yogurt, fresh vegetables, edible mushrooms, culinary herbs, medicinal herbs, honey, meat, and processed produce such as pesto, sauerkraut, pickled produce, and even some other prepared foods. Pleroma Farm has been in operation for over 20 years, and over this time it was developed by Ana Lups MD as a fully operational biodynamic farm and healing retreat. Over the past 2 years the farm was looking for someone to run and operate the vegetable garden. And in the spring of 2010 a group of young activists, artists, entrepeneurs permaculture designers and farmers in training, drew up a proposal to open up the farm to the community for support and direct community based learning. It became apparent to us that the goals outlined for the Hudson River Food Economy Project, were to be the focus of our intentions.

Our goal is to research where food is being imported through energy exhaustive global trade systems and to work with restaurants and vendors to be able to supply healthy wholesome foods at competitive prices. Our hope is that we can work together with restaurants and vendors to provide local organically grown food without a rise in price that hurts the consumer, or the vendor.

We plan to work with as many local farmers as possible. To distribute to places where good wholesome food is not available. Part of our educational program would be through work/knowledge trade with local farmers and craftsmen. Hopefully these community members can also benefit from our hands on help, and contribute surplus that is created, to help strengthen our local food economy.

We also plan to to run a couple of farm stands in different locations in Columbia County as well as our own farm store which will be open most weekdays and providing all of our in season produce.

Gift currency

The most integral investment that must be made in todays social structures is to the realm of creativity. When one evaluates the roots of todays dominant economic theory, creativity cannot fit into the same economic framework as a bunch of beets. Quite simply they are two very different things we see the need for a portion of all economic activity to become gifts for people engaged in creative work. Creative work includes education, research, artistic activity and spiritual work. Today a gift currency exists in the form of state taxation but it is not a free willed gift economy.

We are planning to work with as many community arts initiatives as possible. As artists we find that working with our hands on the farm is a healthy supplement to artistic activities. We encourage artists to use the space for artistic activities, and supplement their creative work with helping out on the farm. Our currency with artists is through vegetables. In exchange for artists or young entrepreneurs contributing to our food localization effort, we would like to support them with food to cut back on the costs of living. We would also like to provide the biggest wholesale discount to arts initiatives to support events. This way they can sell produce to help with fundraising for their own creative initiative. We are also hoping to provide a food cart for this use.

The Farm and Community Design Institute

Our second primary long-term goal is to train a rapidly growing movement of social and ecological designers who are capable of redesigning our living systems to foster cooperative social and ecological architecture. A famous permaculture saying goes “the problem is the solution” we like to take this approach when looking at the current relationship between human civilization and the environment it affects and creates. We believe there is an emerging movement of socially minded individuals that choose to look at the issues our world faces as opportunities for learning and growth. We would like to create a peer led local, hands on social and ecological redesign training. Ana Lups has offered the use of Pleroma Farm as a canvas for this hands on community and agricultural design project. We hope to use methods of permaculture and other innovative design strategies to design the farms food system. Over the coming years our educational program will offer regenerative design trainings aimed at developing the farms assets and amplifying the synthesis of its working systems in exchange for the use of the space. We hope to develop this kind of relationship with all of the other farms and mentors we work with.

How the Program Works

In the spring of 2011 we are hoping to offer our first 6 month farm and community redesign training. The idea is that it will consist of 6-12 full time students who develop their curriculum through a series of guidelines and processes that autonomously review the modern social conditions, and through a number of different lenses examine strategic design solutions, aspects of wholeness and personal development, social decision making technologies, the creative arts, and awareness techniques in how we approach our social situations and our connection with the land. The central idea behind this designer training is to reconnect all that we do in the social realm with our inseparability from natural systems. The idea is that we will learn social and ecological design from nature up. Starting at nature, we would then move through examining the survival arts, and ancient living skills in conjunction with the values of basic human rights we have established as a global community. Once we have examined what a human being really needs to survive (on all levels of being) we would then begin to look at design strategies so that these needs can be met

An example of this would be: after examining our current social structures on a macrocosmic and microcosmic scale we pinpoint where we feel attention is needed in the way something is designed or run. If for example, the group pinpoints agriculture and medicine and sustainable building as sectors of our social sphere and farm community that we feel need to be actively redesigned by new innovative entrepeneurs, we would then develop the curriculum around farm design natural building, and herbal and alternative medicines. If the group instead comes to a consensus that they would like to work on the relationship between food economics and the arts on a rural and urban scale we would set up projects accordingly that students could work with in conjunction with the community and have a completed example of the theories they are working with. This provides both a sense of assurance and empowerment that such work is possible. It also provides each student with a completed design project for their portfolio as a designer. We are hoping to work in partnership with Gaia Northeast, an open source self guided study university. The hope is that working with the Farm and community design institute, one can also work towards more than one type of design accreditation. We would also hope to eventually incorporate the 72 hour permaculture design course into the program along with a couple of others. Should the opportunity be created to buy the land, the focus of workshops and hands on learning projects in the first years of the program would be geared towards building the infrastructure of a permanent learning community.

The program would also be open to more short term students. They would play less of a role in the curriculum design but would participate in the days activities. Students participating for 1 month would participate in a particular block in the curriculum. Blocks would be month long and would examine a specific topic as well as topics that are carried throughout the 6 months. The program would also be open to participation from volunteers and short term students who would only stay for a week and sit in on workshops and add the outsiders perspective to our internal social organism. Our goal is that by having these three different types of students we will diversify perspectives, and allow the fresh energy of new faces to promote openness and community integration.

We will also have skillshares and special educational events which are open to the public so we are able to share our skills and learning with the wider community.

We would like to focus on age diversity in the presentation and sharing of knowledge. We would like to draw from the wisdom of elders, the expertise of professionals, and the fresh insight of young adults.

This age diversity would also foster and synthesize with a diversity within the presentation of material. We would like the material to presented in three different ways. One third of the program would be lectures and classes, one third, workshops and active engagement in hands on learning, and finally the student becomes an active participant in skill-sharing what they have learned and learning to present their entrepeneurial endeavors.

We would also like to make it possible for parents of children to participate in the educational activities. Through a collective child minding rotation, parents are given the opportunity to be fully engaged in the learning activities. We also see children as the carriers of our future and therefore as a central component of any community design. We seek to make the experience of the farm and community a family experience. We would also like our longterm educational programs, and internships to be open to families and will work to forge cooperation between parents of children and other members of the community to allow parents to be free to participate in the learning process. And allow the “whole village to raise the child” as an old african proverb says.

We also would like to promote diversity and balance in the activities of the group. There are three types of group activity. Some groups come together for the purpose of undergoing a learning process together. Some groups are formed around a common action the individuals are taking in the world. Other groups are formed around social interest in sharing dialogue and cultural freedom. These groups are purely social. We would like to consider this balance each year when we design our curriculum together.

We are interested in creating tri sector partnerships within the structure of the farm, the institute, and Hudson Locale Food Project. This is also known to some as social threefolding. This is a topic that will also be explored during the curriculum and synthesized with other topics and social methods throughout. These tri sector partnerships consist of a healthy balance, and cooperative alliance between economics and the cultivation of the earth, communication and decision making, and culture, the realm of ideas and meaning. These three spheres of social activity need to be able to freely govern themselves in consideration and cooperation with the other spheres. Just like individuals within a community. In a community the essence of each members contribution to its perpetual creation should be evident in unique and diverse ways.

Some of the things we would like to learn in our academy, are biodynamic agriculture, permaculture, regenerative architecture, social sculpture, performance arts, cultural studies, natural building, soil and water systems and ecology, nature education and ancient living skills, techniques of awareness, anthroposophy, alternative medicine, mycology, forestry, biofuels, social three folding, food preparation and processing, fine arts and crafts, alternative economics and local currencies, consensus democracy and whole systems thinking, and media literacy among many other skills. The idea behind the curriculum would be that it is peer coordinated and co-designed by students in a conscious way each year. Each long-term student would also pick a topic or role that they feel called to examine and work with within the community. They would work with mentors to develop their knowledge of their topic and at the end of the year teach it to their peers as part of the program.

Our goal is for this academy to be an open source bridge between many different active communities and initiatives. Pleroma Farm is an anthroposophically inspired biodynamic farm environment, and our aim is to work out of these ideas to synthesize them with other ideas such as permaculture, examinations of contemporary culture and social design, simple living and nature based skills, whole systems thinking, modern media, food, contemporary cultural and political ideas and methods and much more. Our goal is to promote a culture that goes beyond sustainability and can regenerate the systems in our human and natural environment to the point where they can promote true growth and learning.

Pleroma Farm

In the coming year a group of student farmers are going to develop the basic infrastructure for these two food and education projects. The summer of 2010 will act as a “dry run” of sorts to prepare for the following year. These volunteers are going to apprentice on the farm and other surrounding farms. To learn and share with one another, the basic skills of running a farm and working together as a skill sharing community. Setting up the agricultural systems and learning new methods of redesigning and re-establishing the farm as a fully producing market oriented farm will be a collective process where each member of this initial year's core group will be engaging in a miniature version of the educational program. Each member of our peer coordinated program will focus on their own project or niche within the farm community.

Our plan is to build a family style camp that can house up to 10 people between tent bungalows, and sheltered tent platforms for those who bring tents. We would like to expand this campground capacity in the future organically as a cohesive group forms that can hold a healthy non-chaotic or destructive environment. All people staying in these camps would be expected to either participate in an educational or agricultural activity, as negotiated with the core members of the farm initiative.

In exchange for labor, one can stay on the farm, participate in the activities taking place, and eat good healthy food that is grown on the premises. The farm camp will include a social fire circle, a sheltered gathering space with a stone grill and a stone bread oven. A separate kitchen area with benches and a gas stove that offers dry storage for supplies, as well as another shed for dry storage. Surrounding it we will have all of the tenting areas. The idea is that through camping together in nature we will promote intimate healthy communities of young people who are staying at the farm during a given time. We will also promote intimacy with our natural systems by immersing ourselves in this natural environment as a living nature immersion. The idea is that eventually more permanent structures would be deeloped through low budget natural building techniques that are explored through the farm education program.

We are planning to rapidly expand and develop the output of the farm to include numerous mushroom crops, expand our apiaries, we are in the process of developing a new medicinal and culinary herb garden, we plan to exponentially expand our fruit and berry crops with cranberries, hardy kiwi's, paw paws, seaberries, and other plants implemented through methods of permaculture design. We would also like to redesign systems withing our farm to help make chicken feed more sustainable, to filter cow manure runoff through mycelium networks and berry bogs, we would like to cultivate numerous wetland species, incorporate wild species, build permaculture herb spirals to enhance the warmth and microclimate diversity within the herb garden. Overall we would like to prepare working models that students can learn from that can keep developing through our design institute in future years.

We are planning to utilize one of the farm's kitchen spaces at least once a week to prepare cafe style meals for people who come out to visit the farm. The idea is that we would hold a space for people to come and experience the farm and learn about our ideas of integrating communities into working with the earth, and introducing the earth to working with human communities. There would be a space for sharing art, music, crafts, skills, and it would be brought together under a cafe style meal that would raise money for the farm. This is directly tied to our idea of bringing food to the community through the arts, and expanding the role of the arts in the community through food. A number of different trained volunteer or skill trading chef's would carry the leadership of coordinating the preparation of the food grown on the farm, and eventually we would like to incorporate the culinary arts into our educational program. We would also like to prepare foods during this time which can be sold through local vendors.

Our Current Participants and Partners

Dan McManus is a young artist and craftsman who has been doing an independent study in human cultures and communities through the lens of art and social systems, through Goddard College and is currently working on his thesis on the topic of social sculpture as a renewal of social and ecological design. Dan will be finishing his thesis in the coming year through either Goddard college or Gaia Northeast and hopes to work with his faculty mentors to develop the ideas behind this proposal further. Dan has also recently finished his permaculture design course, and plans to actively work with these ideas to create innovative new systems within the farm, Dan will be designing and building a permaculture herb garden featuring an extensive medicinal focus, and helping head up the vegetable growing. Dan also has actively been learning and practicing primitive skills and nature based tracking and awareness. Dan plans to continue pursuing these skills and share them as part of our program.

Melissa Johannsen is a young gardener and artist who has had experience farming and marketing organic vegetables in Oregon, she has a lifelong relationship to gardening and has many years experience landscaping. Melissa shares a lot of useful knowledge and is actively learning the art of organic and biodynamic farming and is also helping to head up the vegetable growing. Melissa also has experience making tinctures, salves, teas, and much more.

Jeremiah Pierce is a young student gardener, who is learning to run and operate a large garden this year through his participation and collaboration at Pleroma Farm. Jeremiah has studied at Columbia/greene college and has experience as a young entrepeneur. Jeremiah will be in charge of marketing the vegetables while participating in their cultivation. Jeremiah also brings a wide array of carpentry experience and enthusiasm for engaging in new projects.

Tom Morini

Tom graduated from Simons Rock College where he studied performance arts. Tom is a performer and musician who is currently working on developing a performance collective. Tom is especially interested in the arts and community life. Tom hopes to organize the gift currency for artists, he hopes to start an infoshop for pamphlets, books and information on things that are happening in communities across the globe. Tom will also incorporate performance art into the community and help coordinate the cafe.

Rob Schroepple

Rob joined us out of a genuine interest in helping, and sharing his knowledge of structures, engineering, machinery, gardening and much more. Rob's technical knowledge is vital to our current projects and contributing his many resources and time.

(Bagel Cafe) Chiara Ostacoli

Chiara is also a recent graduate of the Permaculture Design Course. While running a popular cafe in Chatham NY she is starting a permaculture design consultancy for restaurants and cafe's showing them ways to localize their food systems and even grow some things themselves. Chiara is going to participate on the farm and offer culinary skill to our cafe evenings at the farm. In exchange we are providing the bagel cafe with a produce exchange so that the cafe can offer local, biodynamically and organically grown vegetables at no extra price to the cafe or consumer. Chiara has also contributed a herb spiral, something she studied for her individual project during the permaculture design course. Chiara will tentatively lead a workshop building a larger scale herb spiral in the new herb garden.

Castle Masonry

Castle Masonry is a collectively run stone masonry business founded by Dan McManus in 2004 throughout the past few years it has been an outlet for employment and masonry training to over 20 different young people who left with a basic knowledge of masonry skills and the sense of accomplishment for having completed beautiful stone installations. This spring Castle Masonry became a coopratively owned business after Paul Ivan Derremaux, Jaime Poirer, and Mathias Elliston achieved a few years of experience and competent expertise in the art of stonework. Castle Masonry is a business that works to incorporate progressive economic ideas in how it operates. Castle Masonry has donated time to finish the herb terrace project which was one of their major projects over the past few years. During this time they led a workshop on building a stone wall in which they shared their skills with 6 volunteers who donated their time in exchange for some technical stone knowledge.

Seed and Stone Landscapes, is a business that hopes to be affilliated with the students and interns at the farm. It is a permaculture design business that installs their landscapes as a social and ecological art process. It is a business that promotes healthy, balanced landscape designs, and offers students the opportunity to learn how to install them. A portion of the proceeds from Seed and Stone will go towards developing a biodynamic/permaculture nursery at the farm. Seed and Stone landscapes specializes in sculptural, edible and medicinal landscapes as well as spiritual garden spaces.

Sean Walsh is another Student who recently graduated with Dan and Chiara from the permaculture design course. Sean will be continuing on to the Conway school of landscape design in the fall. For his permaculture design project he researched mushroom cultivation and comprehensively read an entire textbook on how to grow and cultivate mushrooms. Sean has been actively meeting with us and planning our mushroom cultivation. He will be offering a hands on workshop on growing mushrooms in the coming weeks.

Chris Schuldt is a recent graduate of the Hawthorne Valley School. Chris is an artist and young socially minded individual. He hopes to create garden art and hold a space for artists on the farm.

Sunnyview Farm

Brian Goldstein is a young farmer with many years of farming experience managing Equinox Farm a prominent salad farm in Massachusetts. We are hoping to create a partnership with Sunnyview farm in supplying produce to the local market as well as some surplus to new york city markets.

Mike Muggeridge is the founder of Ruralliance, an organization of young entrepreneurs who create, promote and host cultural events specifically music. We are developing a relationship with ruralliance to support their cultural initiatives, and integrate our design work into the two music festivals held each summer at Sunnyview Farm.

Chatham Farmscape Project

Marcus Mcguire is an environmental consultant who is embarking on a project to turn an overgrown abandoned 2 acres on a side street of Chatham NY into a permaculture retreat and market garden to support the food economy opf chatham with food grown right there in town. Mark will be working together with the farm and design academy, and seed and stone landscapes, to site map redesign and rework the entire site. This will offer multiple years of hands on design experience and educational opportunities for our student groups.