
The cows at Hawthorne Valley Farm in Columbia County are only in the barn when necessary.
Patrick Grego
The cows at Hawthorne Valley Farm in Columbia County are only in the barn when necessary.
GREAT BARRINGTON — With the right support, local farmers can turn a challenging season into a successful harvest.
Neil Chrisman and Joel Millonzi founded the nonprofit Berkshire Agricultural Ventures (BAV) in 2017 to help local farmers in the Berkshire-Taconic area (Berkshire County, Massachusetts; Columbia and Dutchess Counties, New York; and Litchfield County, Connecticut).
In BAV’s sunny office overlooking downtown Great Barrington, Executive Director Rebecca Busansky recalled the origins of BAV.
“Joel told me a story about him and Neil,” she said. “They’d just get in the car and drive around, talking to farmers about their needs, where the gaps were, and how to fill them.”
Seven years later, the group has assisted over 150 local businesses.
BAV’s “core services” are grants, loans, and technical assistance. They’ve provided $2.1 million in low interest loans, $1.5 million in grants, and 2,000 plus hours in technical assistance.
Busansky stressed BAV’s focus on low interest, flexible loans. They lend at 0 to 3%. Typical nonprofits will charge closer to a 7 to 8% interest rate for cost of capital, to pay staff etc.
Busansky said, “We rely on our mix of grants and donors to step up. We subsidize our loan program.”
Other funds come from state and federal grants, foundations, and private donors. BAV is a USDA microlender. They have a system called the Resilience Grant Fund where they can provide up to $5,000 “catalyzing” grants. Busansky said, “The idea with this is to get a farmer over the finish line.”
Fort Hill Farm owners Paul Bucciaglia and Rebecca Batchie, and son, with Dan Carr.Provided
BAV hires grant writers to consult with farmers. Since the pandemic, farmers have seen more grant opportunities; yet without certain knowledge, there’s “not an equal playing field.” Busansky explained, “By pairing farmers with a consultant, we can really make a difference,”
BAV’s specific programs include Local Meat Processing Support, Climate Smart Agriculture, and Market Match Fund.
The Market Match Fund is an initiative in its third year, working towards food access and economic development. It provides a funding stream, based on BAV fundraising, to match SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) dollars at Berkshire farmers’ markets. Customers can match up to $30 in eligible products, including meat, dairy, and even baked goods.
Ciana Barnaba, Community Relations & Resource Development Manager, brought the fund to life, with her experience managing farmers’ markets in New York City. There was a disconnect between farmers’ markets when it came to SNAP, creating a burden for those in charge.
Busansky said, “Market Match is a triple win piece. BAV helps farmers’ market managers, the low income community, and farmers.”
Ben Crockett, Climate Smart Agriculture Program Manager, explained his work, “The Programming for Climate Smart Ag is this huge umbrella of different practices of farm management looking at how farmers adapt to a changing climate.”
Drought ravished 2022. There were extreme floods in 2023. The climate is volatile.
Crockett explained a case he worked on last year. BAV did a risk assessment for Kelley Babbin at Howling Flats Farm LLC. Essentially, Crocket spoke with Babbin about her “biggest risks.”
First, her farm was below sea level, and second her farm suffered unexpected changes from towns shifting water discharge to fields. Impacted by severe flooding, Babbin couldn’t graze.
Crocket said, “We built a plan to amend her soils,” invested in Silvopasture, and paired her with a grant writer. Ultimately those systems improved drainage and reduced flooding consequences.
West Stockbridge Farmers Market.Patrick Grego
BAV also focuses on exploring issues across the broader food system. For instance, how can a farmer use all of a slaughtered animal for products, to reduce environmental consequences and increase economic benefits for food demand?
Bone broth, meatballs, and roving butchers are a part of the answer.
The Local Meat Program started four years ago with a report from Kitchen Table Consultants which found the major barrier for livestock farmers was access to meat processors. Busansky said, “If farmers can’t get appointments to process their animals, they can’t get products out to market.”
BAV developed long-term technical assistance engagements with meat processors, a livestock working group, The Meat Up (a newsletter and Listserv), and a HACCP hotline with Nicole Day of AgriForaging Food Safety for health and safety issues.
Considering new projects, Busansky said, “One area we’re looking at now is this real need to get the next generation of farmers onto farmland.”
SHARON — Angela Derrick Carabine, 74, died May 17, 2025, at Vasser Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was the wife of Michael Carabine and mother of Caitlin Carabine McLean.
A funeral Mass will be celebrated on June 6 at 11:00 a.m. at Saint Katri (St Bernards Church) Church. Burial will follow at St. Bernards Cemetery. A complete obituary can be found on the website of the Kenny Funeral home kennyfuneralhomes.com.
Sam Waterston
On June 7 at 3 p.m., the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington will host a benefit screening of “The Killing Fields,” Roland Joffé’s 1984 drama about the Khmer Rouge and the two journalists, Cambodian Dith Pran and New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, whose story carried the weight of a nation’s tragedy.
The film, which earned three Academy Awards and seven nominations — including one for Best Actor for Sam Waterston — will be followed by a rare conversation between Waterston and his longtime collaborator and acclaimed television and theater director Matthew Penn.
“This came out of the blue,” Waterston said of the Triplex invitation, “but I love the town, I love this area. We raised our kids here in the Northwest Corner and it’s been good for them and good for us.”
Waterston hasn’t seen the film in decades but its impact has always remained present.
“It was a major event in my life at the time,” Waterston said of filming “The Killing Fields,” “and it had a big influence on me and my life ever after.” He remembers the shoot vividly. “My adrenaline was running high and the part of Sydney Schanberg was so complicated, so interesting.”
Waterston lobbied for the role of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for years, tracing his early interest to a serendipitous connection while filming in England. Even before Joffé’s production was greenlit, he had his sights set on playing the role. “I knew I wanted the part for years even before it was a movie that was being produced.”
What followed was not just critical acclaim, but also a political awakening. “The film gave all of us an intimate acquaintance with refugees, what it is to be a refugee, how the world forgets them and what a terrible crime that is.”
In Boston, at a press stop for the film, two women asked Waterston a pointed question: now that he knew what he knew, what was he going to do about it? “I said, ‘Well, you know, I’m an actor, so I thought I’d go on acting.’ And they said, ‘No, that’s not what you need to do. You need to join Refugees International.’” And join he did, serving on the organization’s board for 25 years.
Both Schanberg and Dith Pran, whose life the film also chronicles, were “cooperative and helpful … in a million ways,” Waterston said. Upon first meeting Pran, Waterston recalled, “He came up to me, made a fist, and pounded on my chest really hard and said, ‘You must understand that Sydney is very strong here.’ He was trying to plant something in me.”
There were more tender gestures, too. Schanberg used the New York Times wire to relay that Waterston’s wife had just given birth while he was filming in Thailand, adding to the personal and emotional connection to the production.
Though “The Killing Fields” is a historical document, its truths still resonate deeply today. “Corruption is a real thing,” Waterston warned. “Journalism is an absolutely essential part of our democracy that is as under siege today as it was then. It’s different now but it’s the same thing of ‘Don’t tell the stories we don’t want heard.’ Without journalists, we are dust in the wind.” Waterston added, “Democracy is built on the consent of the governed but the other thing it’s built on is participation of the governed and without full participation, democracy really doesn’t stand much of a chance. It’s kind of a dead man walking.”
When asked what he hopes the audience will take away from the screening, Waterston didn’t hesitate. “This is the story that puts the victims of war at the center of the story and breaks your heart. I think that does people a world of good to have their hearts broken about something that’s true. So, I hope that’s what the impact will be now.”
Tickets for the benefit screening are available at www.thetriplex.org. Proceeds support Triplex Cinema, a nonprofit home for film and community programming in the Berkshires.
Scott Reinhard, graphic designer, cartographer, former Graphics Editor at the New York Times, took time out from setting up his show “Here, Here, Here, Here- Maps as Art” to explain his process of working.Here he explains one of the “Heres”, the Hunt Library’s location on earth (the orange dot below his hand).
Map lovers know that as well as providing the vital functions of location and guidance, maps can also be works of art.With an exhibition titled “Here, Here, Here, Here — Maps as Art,” Scott Reinhard, graphic designer and cartographer, shows this to be true. The exhibition opens on June 7 at the David M. Hunt Library at 63 Main St., Falls Village, and will be the first solo exhibition for Reinhard.
Reinhard explained how he came to be a mapmaker. “Mapping as a part of my career was somewhat unexpected.I took an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS), the technological side of mapmaking, when I was in graduate school for graphic design at North Carolina State.GIS opened up a whole new world, new tools, and data as a medium to play with.”
He added, “When I moved to New York City, I continued that exploration of cartography, and my work eventually caught the attention of the New York Times, where I went to work as a Graphics Editor, making maps and data visualizations for a number of years.”At the New York Times, his work contributed to a number of Pulitzer Prize winning efforts.
In his work, Reinhard takes complex data and turns it into intriguing visualizations the viewer can begin to comprehend immediately and will want to continue to look into and explore more deeply.
One method Reinhard uses combines historic United States Geological survey maps with “current elevation data (height above sea level for a point on earth) to create 3-D looking maps, combining old and new,” he explained.
For the show at Hunt Library Reinhard said, “I knew that I wanted to incorporate the place into the show itself. A place can be many things.The exhibition portrays the exact spot visitors are from four vantage points: the solar system, the earth, the Northwest Corner, and the library itself.” Hence the name, “Here, Here, Here, Here.”
He continued, “The largest installation, the Northwest Corner, is a mosaic of high-resolution color prints and hand-printed cyanotypes — one of the earliest forms of photography. They use elevation data to portray the landscape in a variety of ways, from highly abstract to the highly detailed.”
This sixteen-foot-wide installation covers the area of Millerton to Barkhamsted Reservoir and from North Canaan down to Cornwall for a total of about 445 square miles.
For subjects, he chooses places he’s visited and feels deeply connected to, like the Northwest Corner.“This show is a thank you to the community for the richness that it has brought to my life. I love it here,” he said.
The opening reception for the show is on June 7 from 5 to 7 p.m. On Thursday, June 12, Reinhard will give a talk about his work from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the library.“Here, Here, Here, Here” will be on display until July 3.
Scott Reinhard’s 16-foot-wide piece of the Northwest Corner is laid out on the floor prior to being hung for the show. L. Tomaino
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