Transforming the Adirondack food and farm landscape

Nonprofits help expand access to locally grown food

By Sara Foss

Eight years ago, Adam Reed moved his farm to the Adirondacks. 

Saratoga County, where he had been based, was too expensive. Essex County, more affordable, came with a new challenge: running a sustainable business in a low-population region. 

“There’s a great farming community, but the farm-to-mouths-to-feed ratio isn’t ideal,” said Reed, who grows organic vegetables at Tangleroot Farm. “So, everyone’s finding their own niche.” At Tangleroot, the successful formula relies on maintaining Reed’s customer base in Saratoga County while finding ways to reach far-flung consumers in the Adirondacks.

Enter nonprofit partners

He’s been aided by two nonprofit organizations, the Essex Food Hub and AdkAction. The Hub delivers Tangleroot veggies to Saratoga County and deeper sections of the Adirondack Park, enabling Reed to spend more time on his town of Essex farm. AdkAction pays for community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm shares for lower-income households. 

Without AdkAction’s help, Reed doubts his veggies would reach the park’s more vulnerable residents. “We charge a fair bit for our food,” he said. “There’s no denying that. Part of that is reflecting an honest price for good, healthy food.”

Adirondack farmers, nonprofits, and government agencies have been trying to solve the puzzle of how to get more local food to residents for some time. These efforts accelerated during the pandemic when disruptions to supply chains, food shortages and spiking labor costs exposed the fragility of the food system.

In 2021, a coalition of organizations formed the Adirondack Food System Network (AFSN) to build a more resilient and sustainable food system less reliant on distant producers and more capable of absorbing unexpected shocks. 

“When the pandemic hit, when shelves were bare, when farmers didn’t know what to do, people began talking,” recalled Sawyer Bailey, executive director of Keeseville-based AdkAction, which sponsors AFSN.

Expanding networks

This spring, AFSN hired its first full-time program manager, Josh Stephani. Members see his appointment as a critical step toward growing the network’s reach and impact. 

Stephani has been involved with AFSN since its inception. He was co-chair for two years and represented his previous employer, the Washington County-based, anti-hunger organization Comfort Food Community, on the network’s steering community. 

Stephani believes collaboration is key to creating a local alternative to the industrial food system. His role will be to bring more cohesion to a somewhat fragmented and siloed system, helping to promote idea-sharing and problem-solving among groups that have common goals but are stretched thin.

He’s considering developing a food security blueprint for the Adirondacks that assesses the food system’s weaknesses and strengths. 

“We’re trying to support and build the capacity of the community and organizations already doing this work,” Stephani said. “That connector piece is really important.” Before AFSN, “we were all doing our own programs without really talking.” 

AFSN’s vision is idealistic: a food system where farmers thrive and every resident has access to high-quality food regardless of income.

Rural challenges

Members recognize that bringing this dream to fruition will be difficult, in part because of geographic and demographic realities.

The Adirondack Park covers 6 million acres, and many residents live in pockets far from full-service grocery stores and other sources for provisions. For many farmers, transporting goods to the park’s more isolated locales doesn’t make economic sense. 

“One of the challenges in our region is that we have very low density and very long miles,” said Lindsay Willemain, executive director of the Essex Food Hub and an AFSN steering committee member. “As a purely free market endeavor, (distribution) just doesn’t make dollars and cents.” 

“Every farmer I know who is trying to live off of farm income is struggling,” said Dillon Klepetar, project leader for the Adirondack Council’s Essex Farm Institute and owner of Echo Farm in Essex, which runs a farm-to-table catering business. 

In this environment, nonprofits like the Essex Food Hub and AdkAction aim to fill gaps. They’ve launched innovative programs that look beyond the traditional food pantry model and emphasize removing barriers to quality food, such as cost or transportation, and helping farmers make ends meet. 

The Hub functions as a commercial distributor, taking wholesale orders for food producers and delivering to buyers. Other nonprofits give out vouchers and tokens to make shopping at farmers’ markets more affordable, run home delivery programs and facilitate the purchase of locally produced food for local schools. 

“We’re so happy that (AFSN) can lend even more strategy, coordination and communications between all of these players so we can really punch above our weight as a rural model where people can afford to live, work and eat,” Bailey said.

AFSN members see reasons for optimism amid a sometimes-difficult landscape. 

In 2022, the Essex County Farmland Protection & Food System Plan, released by Cornell Cooperative Extension, suggested that “food system development presents an ideal, foundational opportunity for strengthening Essex County’s economy, preserving its quality of life and landscape, and building a buffer against future disturbances.” 

“The fundamental challenge—and opportunity—that small food systems like Essex County face is defining and achieving success at a small scale,” the report states. It also notes “one bright demographic trend”: “(Essex County) has some of the highest percentages of young, new and beginning, and female farmers of any county in New York.”

Establishing storefronts

One of those newer farms is Craigardan, nestled in the shadow of Rocky Peak Ridge in Elizabethtown. 

Founded in 2016, Craigardan is an interdisciplinary residence program for artists and scholars and a working farm with pigs, sheep, egg-laying hens, garden beds and a greenhouse. Food produced on the farm feeds the 65-70 residents of Craigardan each year and is also sold and given away at a small store on Route 9N.

Inside the store, there’s a mix of local and non-local foods, including Craigardan pork and lamb. On the porch, a refrigerator fills up with food free for the taking, no questions asked, during the growing season. 

Craigardan executive director Michele Drozd, a member of the AFSN steering committee, wants to make it worthwhile for Adirondack farmers to sell their goods at the Craigardan farm store. 

“Some farmers are going downstate and bypassing the region,” she said. “Some don’t want to wholesale—they want to sell in their own spot. The more we buy from farmers, the more viable they see this local market.” 

The Essex Food Hub has helped open up downstate markets for Adirondack producers by running regular delivery routes to New York City, the Catskills and the Capital Region. The organization also purchases food from producers in other parts of the state to add to its offerings. “We need things that our community can’t necessarily grow,” Willemain said. But, she added, the small farm movement won’t reach its potential without solid distribution lines.

Founded in 2022, the Essex Food Hub took over the operations of another local food hub, The Hub on the Hill in Essex. In March, the Hub moved to a former brewery in Westport and began renovating the facility. During this transition, some programs were paused. 

Willemain said the new facility will include commercial kitchens for entrepreneurs to rent, permanent space for established businesses and a market. She noted that the closest big grocery store is Tops in Elizabethtown, 11 miles away. “I do think there is a need for a high-quality grocery store, and I think there will be a lot of interest in it,” she said.

Preserving farmland

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Census of Agriculture shows farms and farmland in Essex County are on the decline. In 2017, Essex County had 57,522 acres of farmland; in 2022, it had 48,510 acres, a 15% decrease. The number of farms also fell, from 285 in 2017 to 244 in 2022. 

One group working to counter this trend is the Adirondack Land Trust in Keene. 

The organization has about 7,000 acres of farmland in conservation easements and hopes to add more. “We work to protect land and keep it always viable and able to produce agricultural goods,” said Aaron Thomas, the trust’s farmland and stewardship specialist and a member of AFSN’s steering committee. 

The drop in farmland “tells us we’ve got more work to do,” Thomas said. “It’s happening pretty quickly. Protecting farmland is more and more important and will become a more and more valuable commodity as time goes on.” 

Essex County remains home to a diverse array of farms. However, the picture in other sections of the park is much different. 

Dan Kiefer-Bach, former community development coordinator for LivingADK, said being part of AFSN has helped LivingADK, which represents a relatively isolated section of the park in northeastern Herkimer County, connect with regional efforts to remake the food system.

“We have very little local agricultural production,” said Kiefer-Bach, who recently became executive director of the Cloudsplitter Foundation. “We need to get food from fertile areas to this area. Having AFSN to speak more holistically about the challenges in the Adirondack Park has been huge.”

Addressing food deserts

Through AFSN, Kiefer-Bach met Bailey, of AdkAction, who connected him with the Blue Mountain Center, an artist residency in nearby Hamilton County. During the pandemic, the center launched a program called Hamilton Helps to address local food insecurity and started providing residents with vouchers to use at farmer’s markets in Long Lake, Indian Lake and Speculator. 

LivingADK runs a similar voucher program, and Kiefer-Bach realized that for some Hamilton County residents, the farmstand in Inlet was closer than those in their home county. “I had no idea the Blue Mountain Center had a voucher program,” he recalled. “We were able to connect with them, and now their vouchers are accepted at the farmstand in Inlet.” 

The lack of farming in Herkimer and Hamilton counties has also sparked efforts to grow more food.

A new community garden opened in the town of Webb this spring. In Inlet, the Inlet Common School, which closed five years ago, has been repurposed as a community center with indoor grow towers, a regular farmers market, and 24 garden beds, 12 of which are new this year.

“One of our goals for the community garden was to help with the food desert that’s up here,” said Chris Holt, secretary of the Inlet Area Community Task Force, which oversees the Inlet Common School.

A growing need

Such efforts are occurring when many Adirondack food pantries are seeing an uptick in demand. At one in Indian Lake, the rising need is compounded by surging expenses. 

“Our cost to run the pantry has tripled, and we’re actually getting less food,” said Deborah Ameden, who runs the pantry. “We used to get 5,000 pounds for $900. Now we’re getting 4,000 pounds for close to $2,800.” 

Ameden estimated that the pantry serves 75-80 households each month and that while pantry use spiked during the pandemic, the number of visitors remains above pre-COVID levels. “We have a lot of repeat people, but now we’re starting to see newer people,” she said. For a long time, the pantry didn’t see any new patrons. Now it has roughly four or five each month.

Supply chain issues have also worsened since COVID, Ameden said. Most of her pantry’s food comes from the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York in Albany County. “They don’t have everything we need all the time or all of the things that we want,” she said. “The meats, the proteins, the fresh produce, are harder to get.”

Jessica, a 43-year-old single mother of two who requested that only her first name be used, relies on Gardenshare in St. Lawrence County, to help feed her family. Through the organization’s Bonus Bucks program, she purchases $300 worth of farmers market cards; the organization matches her investment, giving her $600 to spend at county farmers markets. 

“I literally double my cash dollars,” said Jessica, who works in early education and is furloughed every summer, making her eligible for SNAP benefits. “With the cost of food, I’m dependent on it.” Without Gardenshare, “my children would be eating a lot more frozen things, not local things, and definitely not as many fresh vegetables and fruits.” 

Sharing resources

In 2021, AdkAction launched Fair Share. It subsidizes CSA farm shares for households in Essex, Hamilton, Franklin, Clinton, and Herkimer counties. The program started with 23 families. Today, 170 families receive weekly CSA shares from local farms, and Bailey said the goal is to expand the program to other counties. She estimated each CSA share costs $500. 

“We’ve never advertised for our program, and we do have a long waitlist,” said Hannah Grall, project manager for AdkAction. “I think the need is greater than we know.” 

Reed, of Tangleroot Farm, said that over a third of his farm’s 150 CSA customers—who range from Port Henry to Plattsburgh—are Fair Share members. 

Feeding Adirondack residents who might not otherwise be able to afford fruits and vegetables from local farms is satisfying, Reed said. “It’s the best part of what we do,” he said. “I would love to grow the Fair Share program as much as possible. It hits all the right notes.”