Rondout Valley Growers Association

Locally Known

by Gregory Schoenfeld, August 27, 2010

Wandering amidst rows of brightly colored flowers, fruit trees, and overflowing boxes of fresh produce, customers are making their selections: an armful of sweet corn, a hanging petunia plant, an extra bag of mulch for the garden. Opened in 1960, at the corner of Route 209 and Cottekill Road in Stone Ridge (“the junction of anywhere and everywhere,” as one customer calls it), Davenport Farms’ Farm Stand and Nursery sits a mile-and-a-half down the road from the hundred acres of farm and where their celebrated sweet corn (and broccoli, and pumpkin, and watermelon, to name just a few others) is grown. Over the years, Bruce Davenport’s place has become a Marbletown standard, and a hub of local activity.

To one side of the building is a simple red picnic table, where families casually take their lunch and relaxing shoppers meet and chat. At any given time, one might also find the principals of the Rondout Valley Growers Association (RVGA) there, discussing the next chapter of their organization’s growth. To get an even fuller picture, however, of the mission, and the depth of purpose, that drives the RVGA forward, a bit more perspective might be of service.

The story begins, give or take, about 25,000 years ago.

At about that time, glacial ice that covered the northern portion of the continent began to melt, forming rivers that carried rock and other primary elements to naturally selected regions; materials that would, one day, produce the kind of ideal soil that is the lifeblood of the New York’s agricultural regions. By 1828, when Maurice and William Wurts’ D&H Canal opened routes and communities in the rich and largely uncharted valley along the Rondout Creek, a new wave of settlers began to find out what Native Americans had discovered many centuries before: This was an extraordinary place to farm. When Davenport, president of the RVGA, states that “producing an ear of corn in the Rondout Valley is like completing a work of art thousands of years in the making,” there is a sense that something more than business-as-usual is happening here.