By Shawn Dell Joyce

Next Sunday, the Wallkill Valley will be treated to a local foods/homesteader’s delight. The Hudson Valley Food Network is sponsoring a “Seed and Skill Share” from 11 am to 3 pm at Hodgson Farm and Garden Center on Albany Post Road in Walden. If you ever wanted to grow your own foods, be a homesteader, or just look like one, it will be the best five bucks you ever spend!

A skill share, according to organizer Meghan Murphy, “is one whole amazing day of workshops and demonstrations by professional and amateur local food and farm experts.” You can learn about everything from raising chickens to getting rid of garden pests in organic gardens in this one-day intensive.

Barbara Taylor-Laino has been giving workshops for six years at Midsummer Farm, an organic CSA  in Warwick called Midsummer Farm. She will be sharing her expertise in a workshop called; “Backyard Organic Chicken Rearing.” She will review the simple steps to easily and safely keep chickens on a small scale in your backyard or small farm and with a focus on keeping them organically.

Dina Falconi of Wild Earth Programs, will demonstrate how to use local dried plants for herbal infusions and kefir soda in a workshop called; “Creating Water Kefir Sodas.” Dina is a clinical herbalist focused on food activism and nutritional healing. She has been teaching classes on the use of herbs for food, medicine and pleasure, including wild food foraging and cooking, for more than twenty years.  She is a founding member of the Northeast Herbal Association and author of “Earthy Bodies & Heavenly Hair.” If you bring a jar, she’ll share her special grains with you.

 Marc Eisenson of the Mid Hudson Mycological Association will tell you all you ever wanted to know about wild shiitake, stropharia and oysters mushrooms and the  ways you can grow them at home or in your yard. Marc Eisenson will discuss how mushrooms grow, demonstrate how to propagate your own spawn, as well as describe the equipment required.

Jay Levine of the Hudson Valley Backyard Farm Company will lead a workshop in Integrated Pest Management. This is a way to control pests or diseases that is especially useful when growing plants organically. Jay has been gardening since he was six years old. He the owner of the Hudson Valley Backyard Farm Company, which installs and maintains organic vegetable gardens and teaches organic gardening and cooking classes.

 Entrepreneur Mimi Fix asks; “Do you have an idea for starting a food business using local ingredients?” Her workshop focuses on refining and developing ideas. Get feedback on what works and learn more about what’s involved with business start-ups. Mimi Fix is the owner of Baking Fix, a culinary consulting business, and wrote “Start and Run a Home-Based Food Business.”

You can also learn the art of “Artisan Sausage Making” from Mark Elia, of Eli’s Catering and Meats. He teaches how to create your own blend of sausage from selecting meat to dreaming up new spice combinations.

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning newspaper columnist and director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery.

 By Shawn Dell Joyce

The Town of Montgomery is quickly becoming an arts-centered town, much like the villages of Sugar Loaf and Warwick. Walden boasts several dance companies, the New Rose Theatre, New York School of Music and several other cultural jewels. The village of Montgomery has a well-established concert series in the Senior Center hosted by Howard Garrett, and now has four galleries including my own nonprofit gallery and art school; the Wallkill River School. We also have James Douglas Gallery and frame shop, next door to Mikey Teutel’s latest venture; “Wolfgang Gallery.”

Unfortunately, we will be losing DiBello Gallery and Frame Shop this month, and I would like to acknowledge the loss it will be to our cultural landscape. Joe DiBello has been an advocate for small businesses in the town, and has worked extensively with the Montgomery Business Association to create a cohesive local business community. DiBello will be closing his doors at the end of this month.

DiBello, and the other cultural fixtures in our community not only add culture, we create economic impact. These small businesses are what give our town local color and local flavor. They are what differentiate us from every other exit on the highway which has the same six chain stores. We bring in tourism for our gallery receptions, and classes, but also, we are a local industry. That means we create (manufacture) products locally generating a multiplier effect.

The Wallkill River School traces our multiplier effect. We measure how much of the money that comes into our hands, gets passed through other local hands before disappearing to some corporate bank vault outside of Orange County. In our case, we partner with a local art supply store (Newburgh Art Supply), we advertise in this newspaper, and work with several local restaurants for catering and events including Wildfire Grill, Ward’s Bridge Inn, Holbert’s Catering, and others. We use a local insurance company, pay rent to local landlords (Devitt Management) and work with local framers like James Douglas Gallery and others.

 Economist and author Michael Shuman notes that “about 42 percent of our economy is “place based,” or created through small, locally-owned businesses.” This means that almost half our economy depends upon small independent businesses that make up the backbone of our hometowns. The key to economic recovery is localization, and reversing globalization. Shuman estimates that we could expand our national economy to be 70 percent local.

Small businesses are our best hope for a stable local economy, and ones that use local products in manufacturing (like art), network with other local businesses (like restaurants), and generate economic impact (like farms) will put our economy back on track. Thanks to Joe DiBello for his service and contribution to our community. Please continue his good work by helping us build the new industry of culture in the Wallkill Valley.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School and Art Gallery in Montgomery and an award-winning newspaper columnist.

By Shawn Dell Joyce

In his State of the Union address, President Obama subtly equated nuclear power and coal with “clean” energy. His main focus was on transitioning to renewable energy sources like solar, wind, hydro, biomass, and geothermal, from our current energy diet of fossil fuels. However, even the insinuation that nuclear is “green” or that coal can ever be “clean” is misleading, and sending a wrong message to policy makers.

Coal can never be clean even with the most sophisticated carbon cleaning equipment. From its extraction to its use, “coal sends more greenhouse gases into the air and more mercury and acid rain onto our earth and produces more lung-searing ozone and particulates than any other industry,” according to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yet, coal is the meat and potatoes of our nation’s energy diet. More than half of our energy comes from coal, making the coal industry the “number one polluter,” according to Kennedy.

Nuclear power is also quite dirty. According to Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, “if the toxic radiation emitted daily from every nuclear reactor and other commercial nuclear facilities were the color and texture of oil, or smelled like natural gas, or came out as black soot, no one would ever again confuse nuclear power with “clean.”

We could repower American by making our buildings more energy efficient, greatly increase renewable energy generation, construct a unified national smart grid, and transition to clean and affordable electric cars. Repowering America would create new industries with high-paying jobs, and lower energy bills. It would also create energy independence with clean domestic sources of energy and less foreign oil. Most importantly, repowering our country would address climate change in a meaningful way, by making a solid impact at the scope that scientists suggest to curb climate change. 

How can this small miracle be accomplished? RepowerAmerica.org suggests:

—–Improve energy efficiency of our buildings: To make the most out of the energy we currently produce, America needs a national efficiency upgrade. Make new buildings more efficient, upgrade old buildings to save energy, and update our appliances and equipment to use less energy and perform the same or more functions than they do now.

—–Generate 100% of US electricity from truly clean carbon-free sources: Renewable energy generation technologies like solar thermal, photovoltaic, wind, geothermal and biomass have been adding clean, reliable power to the grid for more than a decade. This includes solar and geothermal plants in the southwest, biomass in the northeast and southeast, and wind farms through the Midwest corridor. It is now time to dramatically ramp-up the contribution of renewables to the energy mix.

—–Unified National Smart Grid: Modernize transmission infrastructure so that clean electricity generated anywhere in America can power homes and businesses across the nation; Build national electricity ‘interstates’ that move power quickly and cheaply to where it is needed; Establish local smart grids that buy and sell power from households and support clean plug-in cars.

—–Automobiles: Clean plug-in passenger vehicles will reduce dependence on foreign oil, provide transportation for as little as $1 per equivalent gallon, create price certainty with renewable energy sources that are abundant and free, and help solve the climate crisis. A plug-in fleet will also contribute to energy storage on the grid. And the transition will revitalize the American auto industry.

Already there are new ways of harnessing renewable energy being developed every day. A recent project involves laying cylinders on the beds of streams and oceans to harness water flow. Researchers discovered that a flow of three knots can produce 51 watts.  If many cylinders were layered on the sea bed over a 1km by 1.5km area, and the height of an average house, a flow of three knots could generate enough power for around 100,000 homes. Even a small cylinder stack could power an anchored ship or a lighthouse.

Biomass plants that generate energy from bagged household garbage are another potential source for renewable energy that have not been factored into the energy mix yet. Biomass plants like Taylor Biomass in New York, have the potential to turn municipal waste into a source of electricity through a process that produces minimal carbon emissions and other pollutants. Biomass plants can also be set up to produce ethanol to fuel cars.

Let’s explore these new clean and green technologies to replace unsustainable power sources like coal, oil and nuclear.

SHawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School and a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist.

By Shawn Dell Joyce
In the dead of winter, most of us dream of the plump ripe tomatoes of summer, while fondling the pink excuses for tomatoes in the supermarkets. But, did you realize how many local farms are open right now with some fresh, locally-grown produce? Here’s a partial listing of a few farms in the region where you can stop in all winter.

Brother and sister team; Holly and Ned Roebuck, are working together to save their family farm. For several generations Roebucks have worked this particular piece of property into many different configurations. These Roebucks have free ranging Belted Galloway cows, and an organic vegetable farm. Walnut Grove Farm in the Town of Crawford, offers frozen organic free-range beef, pork, bacon, pies and jars of jams and jellies by appointment. Ned Roebuck (845) 313-4855 www.WalnutGroveFarms.net

A family farm for many generations, W. Rogowski Farm, 327-329 Glenwood Road, Pine Island, 258-4423, has an organic farm stand open year round. The owner/farmer is Cheryl Rogowski and family, and has been a major force in promoting sustainable agriculture in our region. 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. Also you will find books, my artwork, and some garlic wreaths. Open every Sat. from 9-2 until spring.  www.rogowskifarm.com

Nestled between subdivisions, and making the most of a bit of open space is 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, and real milk with real cream on top. You must see the farm stand to believe the beauty and abundance of these fresh organic vegetables. Open Sat. from 9-2 through April.  782-7310 www.bloominghillfarm.com

Dolan’s Farm in Gardiner is on 208 near Ireland Corners. I would give you their phone number but it won’t do you much good, because no one answers the phone on this busy farm. You are more likely to find the farmer around back behind the farm stand in the packing room where bins of apples are available. Dolan’s is open, and you can buy apples until this season’s harvest runs out. Just pull down the driveway a bit and look for a lanky smiling man up to his elbows in tractor parts and you’ve found Mr. Dolan.

Apples are also crisp and delicious from 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. Soons is open to the public until 5 pm most days, and encourages you order pies in advance for the holidays. Soons has been family owned and operated for many years, and you can almost always find a Soons in the store. www.SoonsOrchards.com, (845) 374-5471

One of the few multigenerational working family farms left in the region is Cornwall’s Jones Farm on 190 Angola Road. This farm does a bustling business in the winter with the “largest gift store in the region,” according to co-owner David Clearwater. He and wife Terry, and her parents are the farmers. Terry is also an artist and framer who runs a frame shop next to the farm store. 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

Penning’s Farm at Route 94 and Warwick Turnpike offers an indoor farmer’s market every Saturday from 11-4pm with live music, a café, and food tastings. Right now, you can find local foods producers like Lowland Farms (for grass-fed beef), Hometown Baker (Warwick-based bakery), Astas (homemade dog treats) Hudson Valley Pantry (homemade jams, jellies, hummus, and salsa), Late Bloomer Farm (sprouts, organic grains, and artisanal soaps), local wines, ciders, and live plants. www.penningsfarmmarket.com (845) 986-1059.

Dines Farm offers fresh meats, and other farm’s products delivered to your door! Dines is located in Oak Hill, about 38 miles South of Albany, and offers their own pasture-raised chicken, pork, lamb, beef, duck, rabbit, turkey, chicken sausage, and hot dogs. Right now, they are offering mushrooms, goat cheese, and jams and jellies from other farms.  Dines delivery network is mostly Rockland, Westchester, Orange, and parts of Ulster. They are open to delivering in other areas, so it is worth a call if you want them to come to you. To set up a deliver, or ask what’s available, call (518) 239-4206 or email dinesfarm@aol.com and ask to be on the emailing list. 

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School and an author of “Orange County Bounty” local foods cookbook. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

We have become the true “corn people,” more so than the Aztecs or the Incas. If you were to examine a typical American skeleton under an electron microscope, you would find corn isotopes throughout our bones. We have more corn isotopes than any other culture, past, present and perhaps future.

Americans eat about one ton of corn per person, per year. This is not the delicious sweet corn our local farms grow. This is commodity corn appetizingly called “number two” corn, and is the main crop grown in our country. We primarily eat corn in the form of animal products. Cows; ruminants that naturally eat grasses, are being unnaturally fed corn. Salmon would never eat corn in the wild, but are fed corn on salmon farms. Chickens and pigs were naturally designed for varied diets but instead are fed mainly corn. Corn is one of the main ingredients in over 4,000 products found in our homes, even toothpaste. Some processed foods like Twinkies, contain over thirty-six forms of corn.

The corn that wasn’t fed to animals went to make corn sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, lactic acid, sorbitol, corn syrup, enzymes, starches, and thickeners. Thanks to the versatility of corn, our consumption of processed sweeteners has risen twenty-five pounds per person, since we began mass-producing the stuff in the early 1970’s according to the U.S.D.A. In spite of the surgeon general’s warning of an “epidemic of obesity,” we are still finding new and more fattening ways to consume corn.

 Corn is also one of the most environmentally devastating crops to grow. Corn guzzles fossil fuels in the form of fertilizer, insecticides, and heavy processing machinery. Each calorie of corn produced requires a calorie of fossil fuels to grow using standard farming practices.  When that corn is converted corn syrup, it requires ten calories of fossil fuels to create one calorie of syrup. When corn is converted to ethanol, we get about 4 calories of fuel energy for every three of calories of corn according to the U.S.D.A.

Is there any way out of this maize madness? Eating is a political act. Every dollar you spend on food is casting your vote, we literally are what we eat. When you pass up processed foods with all of its hidden corn, and buy fresh, locally-grown foods, you are helping to encourage more sustainable agriculture. Visit Wallkill Valley’s winter farmstands and buy your meat from local producers.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, and an author of “Orange County Bounty” local foods cookbook available through www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

In our culture, “dirt” is a derogatory term, like “dirt poor,” “dirty,” or “soiled.” Yet, we need only look back a few years to the 1930s Dust Bowl to see how important dirt really is. In the 1930s, the prairie grasses were plowed under to grow crops. After several years of intense drought, the soils dried out and no crops or native grasses survived to hold the topsoil in place. Winds whipped the topsoil into huge dust storms, causing many families to become refugees, and the loss of more than 5 inches of topsoil from almost 10 million acres, according to the United Nations.

Five inches may not sound like much, but it takes nature up to 500 years to produce 1 inch of topsoil. We are depleting our topsoil at a rate 10 times greater than nature can replenish it, according to several studies. Topsoil loss is three times worse in more populated countries like China and Africa. Chinese topsoil can be found in Hawaii during the spring planting season, blown in the wind to the islands from tilling. African topsoil can be found in Brazil and Florida, according to a USDA report. American topsoil often winds up in our rivers and streams as silt. Many rivers are now brown from topsoil erosion such as the Wallkill River and parts of the Hudson.

Our diet and farming practices are the main culprits behind topsoil erosion. Corn is one of the most environmentally-devastating crops to grow. The soil must be tilled, keeping it loose and dry, and vulnerable to erosion. Most of this corn is fed to animals or shipped overseas. For every pound of beef (fed with corn) we lose 5 pounds of fertile topsoil, according to a Harvard School of Public Health study. This adds up to more than 2 million acres of topsoil lost every year. On top of this, we lose another million acres to urban sprawl.

“Land degradation and desertification may be regarded as the silent crisis of the world, a genuine threat to the future of humankind,” says Andres Arnalds, assistant director of the Icelandic Soil Conservation Service. “Soil and vegetation is being lost at an alarming rate around the globe, which in turn has devastating effects on food production and accelerates climate change.”

A highly effective tool to conserve topsoil is the Conservation Reserve Program, according to Lester Brown of the Earth Policies Institute. Under the program, farmers were paid to plant trees or “cover crops,” such as clover, on highly erodible farmland. Reducing tillage was also encouraged. These techniques in combination reduced U.S. topsoil loss from 3.1 billion tons in 1982 to 1.9 billion tons in 1997.

Here are a few things you can do to reduce top soil loss:

– Compost fall leaves and vegetable trimmings. Use the compost to enrich the soil in your yard or garden.

– Eat only pasture-raised local meats and avoid corn-fed factory farmed meats.

– Don’t buy or support biofuels made from corn.

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Our buildings account for more than half of our carbon emissions and three-quarters of the existing buildings will need to be renovated or remodeled in the next twenty years. We also have a small army of unemployed and underemployed contractors with tools just itching for something to do. What if these ingenious folks were put to work retrofitting existing buildings with energy efficient upgrades?

Cambridge, Mass. is doing just that, and setting an example for municipalities across the nation. Cambridge set the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 20 percent, and drawing 20 percent of municipal power from renewable sources. To meet these ambitious goals, a nonprofit, city-sponsored group was formed to create green collar jobs and increase building efficiency. The Cambridge Energy Alliance connects local business owners with energy efficiency experts and bankers willing to loan them the money for these upgrades. The Alliance generally reduces a business’ energy use 15-30 percent. The loans they help to secure are low interest and can be paid by the savings from the business’s utility bill. Retrofitting thousands of old buildings has helped to stimulate a “green collar” job market in Cambridge.

Green collar jobs that are generated by encouraging energy efficiency would include jobs like home energy auditors, insulation installers, weatherization workers, retrofitters for buildings, and solar installers for electricity and solar hot water systems, among other jobs. According to Van Jones, from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and Oakland, CA’s Apollo Alliance, green collar jobs are manual-labor jobs that can’t be outsourced.

“You can’t take a building you want to weatherize, put it on a ship to China and then have them do it and send it back,” said Jones in a recent NY Times interview. “So we are going to have to put people to work in this country — weatherizing millions of buildings, putting up solar panels, constructing wind farms. Those green-collar jobs can provide a pathway out of poverty for someone who has not gone to college.”

Picture this, your child graduates from high school and has the option of going away to college, or enrolling in a local trade school, which now includes green alternatives. Let’s say that young Sally, might have opted for “beautician” as the only viable local career last year, can now choose from a $12/hour job weatherizing senior housing, with potential to grow to $40/hour as a certified home energy auditor. Or perhaps your fledgling will start with $18/hour working as a solar technician, and work his way up to $50 per hour as a certified solar installer.

“If we can get these youth in on the ground floor of the solar industry now, where they can be installers today, they’ll become managers in five years and owners in 10. And then they become inventors,” said Jones to the NY Times. “The green economy has the power to deliver new sources of work, wealth and health to low-income people — while honoring the Earth. If you can do that, you just wiped out a whole bunch of problems.”