Buyer, Be (A)ware

by Susan Piperato and photographs by Susan Piperato, March 18, 2009

 

 

If you’re committed to living sustainably, grocery shopping can present an unsolvable dilemma. In order to buy food that promotes good health and leaves as small an impact on the earth as possible in its production, an enlightened consumer must not only check labels to make sure food products are natural, but know where the food comes from—which can be next to impossible.
Even if you do have an approximate idea of the produce’s provenance, it’s often a toss-up as to which to choose—the reasonably-priced, non-organic but locally grown apples, for instance, or the more expensive, certified-organic, imported ones. Either way, you win some and lose some. Choose the locally grown variety and, unless you know the grower, you may risk exposing your family to chemical growing agents, fungicides, and pesticides, but you can rest assured that a minimum of fossil fuel was burned in the apples’ transport to the store. Pick the organic apples and although you’ll know they’re reasonably safe to eat (depending upon the standards of their organic certification, which is another story altogether), knowing that it cost the earth, literally, for them to come to you will undoubtedly leave a bit of a bad taste in your mouth. Ironically, sometimes the harder you think about what you’re buying, the more you realize how widely you’re missing the mark.

But truly sustainable shopping—with an abundance of both locally-grown and -made organic foods, as well as easily accessible information on imports—just might be the wave of the future, thanks to the example set by the enterprising folks at Hawthorne Valley Farm Store. The new “green”-constructed, $2.1 million grocery store is the latest brainchild of Hawthorne Valley Association (hva), a nonprofit organization in Harlemville (Ghent), Columbia County, whose mission is to promote cultural renewal through education, agriculture, and the arts.

The Farm Store, formerly housed in a barn and operated successfully on a much smaller scale for the past 30 years, is dedicated to educating consumers and creating regional markets for locally-grown produce and household products. As such, it offers local fruits and vegetables; milk, yogurt, eggs, and cheeses; lacto-fermented vegetable products; breads and pastries baked on-site and regionally; pasture-fed beef, poultry, and pork; and even homegrown and homemade condiments, including mustards, vinegars, jams, nut butters, honey, and specialty sauces.

Besides Hawthorne Valley Farm, a Demeter-certified biodynamic farm and Community-Supported Agriculture network, hva also runs Hawthorne Valley School, a kindergarten-through-12th-grade Waldorf School; a visiting students program that hosts children from schools throughout the Northeast for weeklong farm experiences; a summer camp; and the Adonis Press, which publishes and distributes science books and provides age-appropriate school art supplies.

Hawthorne Valley Farm was founded in 1972, explains hva executive director Martin Ping, following “the impulse of a group of educators, farmers, artists, and scientists to link education, agriculture, and the arts in a way in which students, teachers, farmers, and craftspeople could come together and really work side by side.” Despite several obstacles, not least of which being Harlemville’s longstanding economic struggle, the farmers prevailed and flourished. Last year hva employed 134 people, its student population was over 320, and the number of children who have attended its visiting students program over the past 31 years rose past the 10,000 mark. Arguably, Hawthorne Valley Farm is the closest thing the Hudson Valley has to a utopia.