This month, Limina Grace Harmon will run uncontested to represent New Paltz in county legislature. But Harmon is more than a candidate: she’s a mother, scholar, pastor, and a member of Sustainable Hudson Valley’s board of directors. Among her personal passions are eating sandwiches from Frank’s Fresh Pickling Co. on Main Street—”sandwiches of the gods,” she jokes—hanging out with her dogs, and trying to solve the local housing crisis.
“I’m pretty passionate about affordable housing,” Harmon says. “I want us to set ourselves up to solve as many problems at one time as possible.” This means training underutilized workers to build eco-friendly housing with affordable units according to Harmon.
“I also want to see a greater emphasis on community wellness,” she continues. Already, Harmon has supported local police reform, cultivated community aid at NP United Methodist Church, and pushed to expand county-led mental health response programs. Still, she asks, “How can you be mentally and emotionally well if you are in constant fear of whether or not you will have a roof over your head?”
Alex Wojcik, deputy village mayor, agrees: “Better housing policies would save a lot of lives.” For her, the housing crisis hits home. In 2021, Wojcik faced eviction when her landlord decided to sell. She struggled for months to find new housing. “The situation in New Paltz is pretty dire,” they say. “People can’t afford where they currently are and they can’t find any other options.”
Building homes on the town’s outer edges is an option, but density prohibits aggressive development downtown. “It’s not like we can just plop a bunch of new housing down in the middle of everything,” Wojcik says. Instead, they and other town officials are focused on protecting units that already exist.
The town recently cracked down on short-term rentals, requiring each listing to be owner-occupied. Rent stabilization, Wojcik says, is on the docket next, along with legislation empowering tenants to fight unreasonable rent hikes.
People for Plants
A longtime activist, Wojcik puts justice first in all of their work—not only when it comes to fair housing. This summer, they facilitated the first ever Cannabis Grower’s Showcase: an event allowing local marijuana growers to offload inventory jammed up by delays at the state level.
Now the showcase takes place weekly in a location that, according to Wojcik, is poetically just. “We’re right behind where the courthouse used to be, where so much of our community has had to go because they were stopped for having small amounts of cannabis.”
Giving residents access to regulated cannabis might help offset the effects of another crisis: the opioid epidemic. Alexia Brown, founder of New Paltz cannabis consulting firm RoseBud Entity believes the plant could be an effective resource for harm reduction. Brown is currently waiting on a dispensary license, but hopes to incorporate harm-reduction programming when she receives it.
While waiting on her license, Brown is leaning into cannabis consulting, connecting clients to products that align with their desired experience. “I try to customize the cannabis use for the client,” Brown explains. “If you’re looking for something that is going to help you sleep at night, but it’s not going to give you paranoia, and you’re not going to wake up groggy,” she can advise on which cannabinoids will produce the intended effect.
New York’s Office of Cannabis Management will begin reviewing license applications like Brown’s on November 4. If approved, she plans to offer more events and transform her current space on Main Street into a recreational cannabis lounge. “My main goal is ending the stigma, educating others, (and) creating a sense of peace,” Brown says. “I always felt like these plants brought me back to being calm and I just wanted to spread that.”
To Brown’s delight, the community has been very receptive. After all, plant medicine is nothing new in New Paltz. At the ethereal Tweefontein Herb Farm, a string of owner-stewards have been producing and selling herbal tinctures for nearly 40 years on the outskirts of the village.
In its current iteration, the farm is led by herbalist Chris Boelsen. He finds inspiration not only in plants, but in people. “A lot of my products have actually developed from talking to people, trying to develop some product for them,” he says. The farm’s signature arthritis salve, for example, was created for a friend. Now, Boelsen says, the product is popular among many of his regular clients. “It seems to really enrich their lives and help them with pain and mobility.”
Today, Boelsen is an accomplished Western herbalist. But when he took over Tweefontein in 2014, he had little knowledge about farming and herbs. “Really, my impetus was to try to come and create community space.” Melissa Scheibner, Tweefontein’s community manager, has helped Boelsen achieve that, curating events that turn stewardship into a celebration. Weather permitting, Scheibner hosts a monthly ecstatic dance in the outdoor garden: a barefoot, silent disco open to all ages and abilities. Part of the event, Scheibner says, “is bringing in a moment of gratitude to the land for holding us.” She continues, “We do incorporate the plants and the land into these events, and they’re really what’s holding us. It’s just been really cool to see community gather around plants.”
Down in the village, Huguenot Street Farm manager Gavin Rinkor has seen the same. Rinkor and other workers spent the season dispatching produce through their CSA. But the yield isn’t what makes HSF interesting. It’s the grow.
Huguenot Street Farm is not certified organic—or certified at all. “This farm has always been a little bit rogue,” Rinkor says, especially when it comes to certification. In 2002, former HSF owners Ron and Kate Khosla established Certified Naturally Grown: a certificate system based on the National Organic Program that is more financially accessible to small-scale farmers. Despite being the birthplace of CNG, the farm is no longer CNG certified. Still, sustainability is a key concern. The farm avoids manure fertilizers culled from factory farms, opting for plant-based alternatives. Solar energy powers the tractor Rinkor uses to cultivate strictly non-GMO produce. Chemical herbicides are never used; weeds are removed mechanically. “We do what we feel is right for the land and people,” Rinkor says. And it pays off. “The CSA is basically this entire farm,” he says. “We don’t really sell much to anyone other than just the community members, and they support us.”
Around Campus
Sustainability doesn’t stop at the end of Huguenot Street. This year, SUNY New Paltz was awarded a gold sustainability rating by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. Recent projects like installing water bottle filling stations helped the university bring home the gold.
The filling station project is one of many devised by the Sustainability Ambassador Student Leadership Program. “Sustainable goals resonate with what’s on the hearts and minds of incoming college students,” Lisa Mitten, campus sustainability coordinator says. So far, ambassadors have spearheaded projects like eliminating single-use plastics from campus vending machines and installing micro-plastic filters on washing machines which, Mitten says, “might be the first in the world.”
The work of student ambassadors moves the campus toward a carbon-neutral future. When she imagines it, Mitten says, “I envision an electrified campus offset by renewable energy. I envision many of our existing buildings still being here, but even more of them renovated and updated. I imagine pollinator-friendly plants and flowers bursting at the seams throughout all seasons, from spring until fall.”
Mitten’s work has helped students forge a relationship with their natural environment. So has Chris Scott’s. Scott is the owner of BC’s Climbing Gym, an out-of-the-way spot behind the Walgreens on Main Street. While BC’s is open to students and residents alike, proximity to the college has kept a steady swell of excitement about local climbing. As winter approaches, that swell crashes into the gym.
“Climbing indoors is sometimes a little bit more accessible than going outdoors,” Scott says. When snow and ice blankets the boulders on the Shawangunk ridge, outdoor climbing is nearly impossible. The gym is a welcome refuge for climbers cast in by the cold. “Hopefully people are in there just training and being psyched, being healthy and knowing what their goals are through the winter,” Scott says.
From New Paltz to Nepal
As college students reach for sustainable goals and tricky boulders, high school students are taking hold of social concerns with the Maya Gold Foundation. Founders Mathew Swerdloff and Elise Gold started the organization in 2015 after their daughter, Maya, took her own life. They set out with a strong, but simple mission: to empower youth to access their inner wisdom and realize their dreams.
Teen members carry out the mission through travel and advocacy programs. In 2024, teens will embark on the Heart of Gold trip to Nepal, inspired by Maya’s dream to work with victims of trafficking there. “We do a lot of things there,” Gold says, “in her name, in her memory, because she never had a chance to do it.” In Nepal, the teens become ambassadors, partnering with other organizations to create meaningful cultural exchanges with host communities. “It changes their value system,” Gold says. “It could really change what they are going to pursue in the future.”
Stateside, the work of the foundation is equally moving. This fall, members offered a series of teen mental health first aid trainings. “There’s a great stigma, both in mental health challenges and crisis. And there’s also stigma in getting help,” Gold says. The sessions empower teens with tools to use in mental health crises before professional help arrives.
While the work of this foundation may seem like a tall order for teenagers, Gold sees tremendous promise in the youth that lead the Maya Gold Foundation: “The youth of this generation has so much to say.”
As New Paltz looks to address housing, climate, and health issues in the community, these teens represent a future of solutions. Today, local leaders are taking steps toward it. “There’s always more to say, and there’s always more to do,” Limina Grace Harmon says. But with capable hands at the helm of progress, the future of New Paltz is off to a promising start.
This article appears in November 2023.
