By Shawn Dell Joyce

Rep. Maurice Hinchey has made a startling statement — that the concentration of wealth in the U.S. is the same today as it was in the 1920’s with the highest concentration of dollars in the hands of the wealthiest few. It seems that most of those wealthy hands don’t live in the Wallkill Valley.

We must create our own economic stimulus if we are to weather the current economic climate. One way that we can all do this is by interweaving our businesses and households with other local businesses and farms.  What I mean by this is generating economic impact in our hometowns by keeping our money flowing in the local economy, and passing through local business after local business.
One way we do this in Montgomery is through a band of village businesses called Montgomery Business Association. We work together to bring cultural tourism to our quaint historic village. We also look for ways to connect our businesses and lower our operating costs.

For example, I’m the director of the nonprofit Wallkill River School. We are working with Ms. Claire’s Musical Cupboard on summer programs for children. We will share the cost of a locally-printed brochure which advertises both businesses.
The way this act generates local economic impact is that $100 comes in to Ms. Claire’s Musical Cupboard from a parent enrolling their child. Part of that $100 pays the teacher who lives locally, part goes to pay rent to a local landlord, and toward advertising that helps benefit Wallkill River School by lowering our advertising costs as well. Net result, several local businesses have benefitted by one parent buying local.

Looking at a larger scale, I traced the economic impact of the Wallkill River School on our local community.  Last year, we had 806 adult enrollments in 131 classes, and 174 child enrollments in 30 classes bringing in a gross of $77,156. Additionally, we offered a comprehensive free teen art class program offering 20 classes to 194 local teen enrollments, and a free Senior’s class serving  780 drop-ins per year almost equaling attendance in our paying classes.

Of the $77,156 brought in by art classes,  half was paid out to the local artists who taught the classes. The other $38,500 goes toward paying staff salaries; both employees live in the community and pay local property taxes.  And part went to paying utility bills, insurance (through a local broker) and refreshment costs.  The gallery part of our business pays the rent which goes to our local landlord and patron, Ed Devitt.
We created economic impact in our home community by partnering with James Douglas Gallery for framing, and sending him thousands of dollars of framing business. We also generate business for a local art supply store, Newburgh Art Supply. We partnered with several local farms including joining the Share of the Harvest Program at Sycamore Farms to provide local foods picnic lunch for our summer outdoor painting class and for still life objects, Hoeffner’s Farm for seasonal decorations like cut flowers, pine drapes and wreaths, mums, etc.

Another way we found to generate economic impact is to partner with several local restaurants including Wildfire Grill, Ward’s Bridge Inn, and Iron Café to provide lunches for our classes generating more than $3,000 in lunch revenues for these businesses. All together, our economic impact on this community was to pay out more than $80,000 to other local businesses and residents, creating a multiplier effect as they, in turn, support other local businesses and pay local taxes.
I hope our model of doing business gives you some ideas of ways that your business and family can also stimulate the local economy.  This is common sense stimulus, which, to me, makes more sense then handing over a massive federal debt to our grandchildren.

Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

OK, I’ll admit it. January often tests my commitment to eating local. I’m running low on things I canned, dried, or froze over the summer, and most farms are closed. Meanwhile, the grocery store produce aisles are brimming with ripe watermelons, peaches, grapes and other fresh produce flown thousands of miles from the tropics to our frozen black dirt. Why would anyone pass up this fossil-fueled abundance?

“My immediate answer,” says farmer and locavore Linda Borghi, “is to look deeply into the eyes of a five-year-old. What kind of world are we leaving them? It’s all about carbon emissions and your footprint. By eating as much as we can within a 100-mile radius (of our home) we are able to reduce our carbon footprint by close to 40 percent.”

While forty percent of your carbon emissions sounds like a lofty number, remember that about 30 percent of world carbon emissions are caused by burning rainforests for beef and biofuels, according to the Rainforest Fund. Add to that the 15 percent of emissions caused by the transporting produce thousands of miles according to the National Academy of Science, and Borghi’s estimate falls on the low side.

If you are looking for fresh greens, local meats and eggs, fruits and vegetables, here are the places I go to all winter.

      ·         Pennings Farm in Warwick has an indoor farm market on the weekends with many O.C. farmers including Kiernan Farm (Gardiner) offering organic, pastured beef,  Late Bloomer Farm (Montgomery) offering greens, local grains and flours, root vegetables, local cheeses, apples, wines, and many others. Hours are 11am-4pm on the weekends; www.penningsfarmmarket.com (845) 986-1059

·         Jones Farm on 190 Angola Road does a bustling business in the winter with the “largest gift store in the region,” according to co-owner David Clearwater. Their farm features fresh fall apples, homemade fudge, a bakery, gourmet foods, and many other goodies. Open 8am-5pm weekends, and until 6pm during the week. www.JonesFarmInc.com, (845) 534-4445.

·         Quaker Creek Store, 767 Pulaski Highway, Pine Island, (845) 258-4570, open Mon-Fri. 7am-6pm, Sat. 7am-4pm. Try their prepared foods like wonderful stuffed cabbage (local), pirogies with local potatoes and onions, Cajun Andouille with local ingredients.

·         Soons Orchards, 23 Soons Circle, New Hampton. Soons is probably famous for their pies, but you can find local garlic, vegetables, apples, pears, fresh ground peanut or almond butter, mixes for dips or soups, jars of salsa, jam and jellies, honey, and maple syrup, among other items. Open to the public 9-5:30 every day. www.SoonsOrchards.com, (845) 374-5471

·         Walnut Grove Farm in the Town of Crawford, offers frozen pasture raised organic beef, pork, chicken, bacon, pies and jars of jams and jellies by appointment. Ned Roebuck (845) 313-4855 www.WalnutGroveFarms.net

·         Blooming Hill Farm 1251 Route 208, in Washingtonville. Guy Jones and sister; Cindy Jones, offer many varieties of potatoes, squash, cold-hardy lettuces, and chards, root vegetables, onions, broccoli some fruits, eggs, Sat. from 9-2 through April.  782-7310 www.bloominghillfarm.com

·         W. Rogowski Farm, 327-329 Glenwood Road, Pine Island, 258-4423, has an organic farm stand open year round. You can currently find apples, pears, shallots, turnips, beets, garlic, onions (of course) potatoes, greens of many varieties including Asian, chili peppers, squashes, turnips, radishes, cabbages, dried beans, and processed things like jellies, honey, maple syrup, sugar and crème. Sat. from 9-2 until spring.  www.rogowskifarm.com

Shawn Dell Joyce is the founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, and an author of “Orange County Bounty” local foods cookbook. Shawn@zestoforange.com

This is a portrait of the late Orange County doyenne Amy Bull Crist. The portrait will be donated to the new educational center in her name being built on her family’s ancestral farm of Hill-Hold. I had only a photocopy of a photo to work from and am not sure I’ve captured her. I would love to hear what you folks think. Shawn@zestoforange.com

 By Shawn Dell Joyce

 If you are making a list of New Year’s resolutions for 2010 that include things like losing weight, being healthier, spending more time with family, and reconnecting with friends, how about looking at it another way. Ask yourself instead, “What impact am I making on my family and community?”

No Impact Man asked himself this question and found himself on a year-long challenge of living lightly in New York City with his small family and leaving little or no environmental impact. His family’s experience has recently been turned into a documentary, a book, and an online challenge at www.noimpactproject.org.

Could you avoid buying anything new (besides local produce) for one week? The No Impact Challenge asks you to start by stopping shopping for new things. Instead, repair broken things, make something yourself, or find used items at garage sales, Freecycle.com or Craig’s List. With the time you save by not shopping, host a clothing swap party, or play date with your family.

When Beavan began his experiment he stockpiled his family’s trash for a week to figure out what disposable items they could stop consuming and throwing away without sacrificing their happiness or comfort. He sorted the garbage into categories; disposables used less than ten minutes, and more than ten minutes, and things that they could live without. He equipped each family member with their own reusable drinking cup, containers, utensils, cloth napkins, and reusable bags. After giving up all disposable products, their level of happiness and satisfaction actually increased.

Beavan and his family invested in a rickshaw as their main transportation in NYC. We live in a commuting suburb and most of us spend an average of 1,000 hours annually behind the wheel. What would you do with all that extra time if you found other transportation? Half the trips we take in cars are less than 2 miles away and could be done on bicycle, roller skates, or foot with the side effect of improving our health and reducing our waistlines. Many of our local villages like Montgomery have recently improved sidewalks, and taken steps to encourage walking and bicycling.

Beavan’s family went without electricity for their no impact challenge. While that is extreme for us, most of our children watch more than four hours of t.v. every day. What if we all turned the darn things off and went for a walk in one of the lovely open spaces like Walden’s new rail trail, or Montgomery’s Benedict Park? Our children would feel more connected to the land and the seasons, and suffer less advertising.

Ironically, most of the food that the Beavan family consumed was probably grown in our area and sold at the farmer’s markets in NYC. Eating local in the winter requires more thought and planning than buying prepackaged foods in the supermarket. Several local farms are open year round in our area like Blooming Hill Farm and Soon’s Orchards. If you eat lunch outside of the house, make it yourself in a reusable container. If you substitute things grown locally for imports on your shopping list, like apples for bananas, you keep money flowing in our local economy.

The final part of No Impact Man’s Challenge involves volunteering for local nonprofits. “The final stage was to me the most important,” blogs Beavan.”The final stage was not about conservation. It was about innovation. And it was in this stage that I met new people and made the most friends. It was here that the people were most excited. It was not about doing less harm. It was about doing more good. It was less about limits and more about possibility.”

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, N.Y.  shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

It seems as if after Thanksgiving, the major news in our country is shopping and whether retail sales will top last year’s sales. And spend we will! We spend an average of $856 per person on the holidays, according to the American Research Group.

Unfortunately, most of our hard-earned dollars will go straight to China because more than 70 percent of the goods on store shelves are from there. If we multiply that by the current U.S. population, that’s about $180 billion leaving home for the holidays.

A recent economic study conducted in Austin, Texas, found that if each household in Travis County (population 921,006) simply redirected $100 of planned holiday spending from chain stores (carrying cheap imports) to the stores of local merchants, the local economic impact would reach approximately $10 million. Imagine how $10 million would boost your community’s economy.

On average, we spend between 20 and 40 hours shopping for holiday gifts and waiting in long lines. You easily could make most of your holiday gifts in that time and have the added bonus of time shared as a family. If you are buying gifts or giving money, you are cheating your loved ones. Instead, give gifts of time. Offer to change your elderly relatives’ light bulbs to compact fluorescents, or give them coupons good for a free day’s worth of caulking and winterizing. Those are things they could really use, and time spent together will benefit all of you.

Holidays should be about time well spent, not money. In the land where we have plenty of food, noise and gizmos, those are the things we cherish.
Here are a few ideas for adding more joy to your household and community this holiday season:

— Spend less time shopping, and make gingerbread men with your children one afternoon. Put the gingerbread men on decorative plates, and drop in on each neighbor to spread cheer.

— Pump money into the local economy by making donations to the food bank. That money will help families in your neighborhood more surely than money spent at a national chain store.

— Ask young children to pick out toys to buy and donate them to one of the Toys for Tots programs.

— Have a family meeting to decide on a spending limit, and figure out what imaginative gifts you can make together.

— This time of year is craft fair season and most churches and community groups offer at least one. Craft fairs are great opportunities to support local producers directly and keep your holiday spending local.

— On Christmas Day, once the gifts are opened, don’t let it be anticlimactic. Instead, spread birdseed and crumbled cookies outside for the wild things. Take a plate of food to a neighborhood shut-in or someone who has to work.

— Do something wonderful for someone else — anonymously.

Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Eating local embodies the spirit of the first Thanksgiving, where Puritans and Wampanoags sat down together to share a meal that consisted mainly of shellfish, eels, wild fowl (including swans and eagles) and other local foods that they could gather or grow.

When we get our foods locally, we eat in season and celebrate what’s available. Absent from the first Thanksgiving feast were modern traditional dishes like corn on the cob (all corn was dried by that time), pumpkin pie (they had no sugar), cranberry sauce (no sweetener other than Maple syrup), and stuffing (they served pudding).

We have altered the menu over the years to the point where we rehash and serve the same dishes over and over. This year, why not have a real Thanksgiving by celebrating the local harvest and the hardworking hands that grew it? Buy your dinner ingredients from local farms and prepare what is seasonally available in our area. Your food dollars will stay local, nourishing the farm family, farm hands, and local community. This is an act of gratitude that bolsters the local economy during tight times.

Right now, you can find turkeys that live the way nature intended, chasing bugs, scratching in the grass and frolicking in the fall leaves instead of penned up one-on-top-of another in factory farms. These turkeys will cost a little more than their supermarket counterparts because they are not mass produced, or government subsidized. They also taste more “turkeyish” because they are not force-fed an unnatural diet. As a result, free-range birds are healthier, and better for you as well.

We Americans are used to cheap and plentiful food; we spend less on food than any other developed nation in the world. On average, Americans spend only 2% of their disposable income on meat and poultry, compared to 4.1%  in 1970. This quest for cheap and plentiful has seen the average size of a farm bloat while the number of farms and farmers has decreased. In the 1960s, one farmer supplied food for 25.8 persons in the U.S. and abroad. Today, that same farmer feeds 144 people.

For farming to be an economically viable profession, we must make it more profitable for the farmers by eliminating the middle man. Right now, farmers get around eight cents of every dollar we spend on food in chain grocery stores. When you buy direct from the farm, the farmer gets the whole dollar, and that dollar has the economic impact of two dollars in the local community.

 
To find local Thanksgiving dinner ingredients:
www.localharvest.org
Sweet Potatoes, potatoes, onions, squash and other vegetables (farm stores):
Blooming Hill Farm, 1251 Route 208, Washingtonville 782-7310
Hoeffner Farms, 405 Goodwill Rd., Montgomery 457-3453
Jones Farm, 190 Angola Rd. Cornwall, 534-4445
Lawrence Farms & Orchards, 39 Colandrea Rd. Newburgh, 562-4268, www.lawrencefarmsorchards.com 

Pies and Cider (many of the stores listed above also carry these):
Soons Orchards, 23 Soons Circle, New Hampton, 374-5471, www.soonsorchards.com
Walnut Grove Farms-285 Youngblood Rd. Montgomery, NY, Ned Roebuck, www.walnutgrovefarms.net
845-313-4855

 
shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

“Reduce, reuse and recycle” is the new mantra, but we also must add “rethink” and examine our disposable mentality.

The “disposable mentality” of cheap goods and lots of them has dictated American consumerism for the past 20 years. Consumer goods are produced so cheaply that it is often less expensive to buy new things than have broken things fixed. A prime example: computer printers. Many printers cost less than the ink cartridges they contain. This encourages people to buy new printers instead of replacing the ink cartridges.

As a result, we see office equipment, appliances, televisions, outdated VCRs and other consumer goods dotting the curbsides. These perfectly usable consumer goods clog up our landfills and waste our resources. Some countries are stopping this disposable deluge by requiring that consumer products be designed for reuse and disassembly.

In 2001, Japan’s appliance-recycling law took effect. It prohibits the disposing of major appliances, such as televisions, air conditioners and washing machines. Instead, consumers pay fees to recycling firms to disassemble the products. The result has been consumer pressure on manufacturers to build easily recyclable appliances.

The European Union requires manufacturers to pay for recycling electronic equipment and disposing of toxins. That has slowed the rate of planned obsolescence in consumer goods, such as trendy cell phones that seem to need replacing every year. Some manufacturers, including Nokia, are designing their phones to be easily disassembled and reused.

Some American companies are finding that it is cheaper to accept back used consumer goods and recycle them than to buy raw materials. Airline companies, such as Boeing, are finding that it is cheaper to recycle used jets than to mine as much aluminum as they contain.

Remanufacturing is another industrial trend that is beginning to catch hold in the U.S.
Caterpillar, a heavy-equipment manufacturer, accepts back its spent diesel engines and carefully disassembles each one preserving the parts. The engines are rebuilt, with broken and worn parts replaced. That results in new engines and higher profits for the company.

Some new companies and nonprofits are emerging in the reuse of building materials. As lumber, piping and glass become more expensive, it becomes more profitable to reuse parts of buildings than to demolish whole structures, as was common practice. Habitat for Humanity has set up several “ReStores” around the country, where deconstructed building parts are available at low costs.

Want to change the disposable mindset in your household?

—Don’t buy anything unless you really need it. Can you make do without it? If not, can you find it used at a garage sale, through Craigslist or The Freecycle Network or borrow it from a friend?

—Pre-cycle! Purchase items with the least amount of packaging. Buy items that can be recycled, such as Tom’s toothpaste, the only toothpaste tube that can be recycled.

—Guerilla recycle! Take apart the layers of pet food bags, and discard the plastic inner liners. More than a pound of paper can be recycled from one pet food bag!

—Items in packaging that combines paper with metal or plastic — such as juice boxes, milk cartons, paper bags lined with foil, and Bubble Wrap mailers — are all un-recyclable.

—Ask manufacturers to take back products that are spent. For example, most printer ink cartridges can be returned for a discount; why can’t printers be returned, as well?

Shawn can be reached at Shawn@zestoforange.com