Berkshire Ag Ventures nurtures farms into next generation
The cows at Hawthorne Valley Farm in Columbia County are only in the barn when necessary.
Patrick Grego
Fort Hill Farm owners Paul Bucciaglia and Rebecca Batchie, and son, with Dan Carr.Provided
West Stockbridge Farmers Market.Patrick Grego
Latest News
Two uprooted locust trees still lie in the yard in front of Animal Farm Foundation’s original kennels where they fell on a fence during a storm on Thursday, June 19.
Nathan Miller
“We saw the storm getting stronger,” Ortiz said. “We started talking, ‘we should check for trees.’ That’s when I looked outside the Kubota and I just started screaming ‘run!’”
A branch from a tree just above their utility vehicle had split. The two men ran from the vehicle, but the falling branch caught Nunez and struck his back.
The fallen branch caused some soreness and bruising, Nunez said, but no broken bones. After a short hospital visit, doctors sent Nunez home to rest and heal. He has since returned to work, helping to repair the broken fences and clean up the storm damage that still lingers.
Uprooted locust trees mangled fences, damaged roofs and knocked down power lines all over the 400 acre farm that houses the Animal Farm Foundation’s shelter.Nathan Miller
The powerful storm uprooted and knocked down branches of dozens of black locust trees on the Animal Farm Foundation’s property and on neighboring properties along Pugsley Hill Road and Shaefer Road. Nikki Juchem, Director of Operations and Public Policy for the shelter, was in a meeting with Executive Director Bernice Clifford and founder Jane Berkey when a tree outside the main office building was struck by lightning and fell on the farm’s donkey enclosure.
“It’s really a miracle that everyone was unscathed, as well as the animals,” Juchem said.
In addition to Nunez’s injuries and the damaged donkey enclosure, fallen trees destroyed the fencing that secured the Animal Farm Foundation’s original kennel yard, fencing for a horse paddock, and poked a hole through the roof and into the ceiling of one of the facility’s dog play rooms.
And more was at risk than just the employees, volunteers, dogs, and other animals already sheltered at the farm. The shelter was expecting about 15 more dogs to arrive shortly after the storm.
“We were fixing up the horse barn to be dog kennels,” Juchem said. “Luckily we had all the extra space, because we would have been in a real pickle.”
All the dogs that were being kept in the original kennel building had to be moved to the newly renovated kennels so the noisy repairs wouldn’t bother them, Juchem said. Fosters stepped up to house dogs that couldn’t fit while necessary repairs were being completed, too.
A log stuck on a fence post outside the shelter’s kennel building.Nathan Miller
“Lots of damage but we had a lot of support from the community,” Juchem said. “We had contractors come out immediately to start cutting down trees and helping us out with the cleanup, so we’re doing OK now.”
The cleanup and repair process is ongoing, but Juchem said the total cost is still unclear.
Animal Farm Foundation is a nonprofit dog shelter with a focus on “pit bulls,” Juchem said. “Breed is not behavior,” she said, emphasizing the organization’s guiding philosophy. More information on volunteering, donating to the shelter, or adopting a dog is available online at www.animalfarmfoundation.org
The Animal Farm Foundation will be collaborating with the North East Community Center Farmers Market to bring adoptable dogs to the market every Saturday during the month of August.
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.
Richard Kraft
Pearson first encountered the world of alternative publications — magazines filled with experimental writing, artworks in the form of a book, and samizdat literature — as a young writer living in Berlin just before The Wall came down in 1989. Later, in New York City, she spent a great deal of time with artists “who were always making and assembling, whose continuous art-making made the thin membrane between art and life even more porous,” she explained.
Pearson traces the idea of publishing to a 2001 exhibition of artist-poet Joe Brainard. That show led to “The Nancy Book,” Siglio’s debut title in 2008, and she’s never looked back. The book contains over fifty full-page reproductions of Brainard’s dazzlingly accomplished and witty drawings of the cartoon strip character, Nancy. It includes essays and contributions by Robert Creeley, Ann Lauterbach, Frank O’Hara, Ron Padgett, and other poets of great renown, all thrilled to celebrate and remember Brainard (sometimes called “a poet’s artist”) who died of AIDS in 1994. Pearson said, ‘My first project with Brainard was such a good experience, I kept going. “
Since then, Pearson, the sole proprietor of Siglio, has designed, edited, and published over 40 books and other printed editions. Her books are characterized by unexpected juxtapositions of texts and images and collage-like assemblages, as well as for carefully designed and gorgeously printed volumes. Her list includes many “rediscoveries” of unpublished manuscripts and little-known publications. At the same time, she has commissioned new work from an impressive array of artists and writers such as Christian Marclay, Sophie Calle and Cecilia Vicinua among others.
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.Richard Kraft
Though most Siglio books feature work by artists and writers from the 1960s to today, one standout— “Tantra Song” (2011) — showcases vibrant 17th-century Indian tantric paintings collected by poet-ethnographer Franck André Jammes, their modernist feel echoing Hilma af Klint or Brice Marden. Siglio also frequently draws on the spirit of the Fluxus movement, reissuing works by figures like John Cage and Ray Johnson with editions that honor their playful, ephemeral, and poetic origins.
Siglio also excels at photo-narratives rooted in highly specific, often eccentric concepts. “Memory” (2020), by avant-garde writer Bernadette Mayer, reproduces her journal and daily rolls of 35mm film from a month in the Berkshires in 1971, capturing the texture of each day. “Call and Response” (2022), created during COVID lockdown by composer and visual artist Christian Marclay, pairs his photographs of London’s quieted streets with musical scores composed in reply by his friend Bruce Beresford—each image in dialogue with sound.
Siglio books are sold through it’s website (sigliopress.com), as well as museum or specialty bookshops. (The Lenox Bookstore represents a number of Siglio books; the newly opened Lakeville Books & Stationery has copies of “Tantra Song.”) In all cases, Pearson strives to make “two or three degrees of connection” with each book buyer, including a “special gift” — often a piece of printed ephemera — with each purchase.
