
Sarah Chase, owner of Chaseholm Farm in Pine Plains, with a bull she uses for breeding heifers that are well suited to grazing and organic production.
Janna Siller
Sarah Chase, owner of Chaseholm Farm in Pine Plains, with a bull she uses for breeding heifers that are well suited to grazing and organic production.
PINE PLAINS — Most mornings, you can find farmer Sarah Chase in the same place you could find her at the ages of 14, 10 and 6 — in the dairy barn her grandfather built.
Chaseholm Farm has weathered the immense challenges pitted against modern dairies to become the sibling partnership, local food presence and ecosystem steward that it is today. Chase and her crew maintain the organic, grass-fed dairy while her brother, Rory, turns the milk into Chaseholm Creamery’s line of award-winning artisan cheeses.
When Ken Chase bought three farms in the 1930s and combined them to start his business, there were over 40 dairy farms in Pine Plains. Today, Chaseholm is one of four.
Consolidation in the industry, price fluctuation and real estate development pressure have made business untenable for most family dairies in the region over the decades.
“Not everyone appreciates that the rolling, grassy hills people are drawn to in this region have been maintained by livestock farmers,” Chase shared last week, standing between two orderly rows of cows during morning milking. “As farms are sold off to development, a lot of brush is moving in.”
Chaseholm’s longevity is thanks to a combination of farmer ingenuity, vision, community support and luck.
When Chase returned to the farm after college, it was out of a longing to reconnect with the land and animals she had grown up with while her father, Barry Chase, was managing Chaseholm.
It was also with a new understanding that there was a potential market within local food economies.
“I had friends who were experimenting with small vegetable farms that sold directly to customers through CSAs [community supported agriculture] and markets,” said Chase. “I wondered if something similar might be possible with dairy.”
Ever since Chase took over the farm in 2013, connecting directly with customers has been central to the business.
Chaseholm now operates a small, on-site store mere feet from the barn where the cows march into their stanchions every morning. The store stocks raw milk as well as the farm’s yogurt, beef and pork, and other locally sourced groceries. The cheese Rory makes down the road out of Sarah’s milk is featured as well.
The farm also delivers to CSA pickup sites around the region and the cheeses are available at many local stores and farmers markets.
Most dairy farmers sell their milk to regional cooperatives that pick it up and bring it swiftly to be processed. While the co-ops play an important role in getting fresh milk to market on a large scale, farmers are at the whim of set prices.
“We used to sell that way, but prices are so low and volatile, we couldn’t make it work. There is just constant pressure that reduces the value of milk,” Chase explained while each of the cows waited patiently for a turn to be milked. “There is a saying that when prices are high, you buy more cows to reap the benefits, and when prices are low, you buy more cows to increase production enough to make any money.”
Sarah Chase, owner of Chaseholm Farm in Pine Plains, in the barn her grandfather built.Janna Siller
Getting bigger and bigger felt like a losing battle to Chase, especially with the grass-based practices she had in mind:
“I’m just like my dad — the reason I’m here is because I love the cows. The more I learned about the potential of grass-based grazing systems to regenerate land, it was like discovering that my favorite animal was a superhero.”
To explain why, Chase took a journey to the deep, carbon-sequestering soils of grasslands the world over where herbivores graze concentrated areas in short bursts before moving along to stay safe from predators. The animals stimulate root growth and microbial life by pruning the grasses and by dropping fertilizer in the form of manure.
“We intend to replicate the impact of the great migratory herds, but in miniature, on Chaseholm’s pastures,” Chase said. “We use electric fencing and some brain power to coordinate which plot of land the cows will graze that day and when and where hay will be cut to carry the herd through the winter.”
Rory sees the benefits of grazing on the flavor profile of his cheeses and Sarah sees it on the resilience of the land. “Moisture is being held better in soil. In drought years, we are able to continue grazing.”
Breeding is also a key component of the system. Dutchess County has long been known for its productive, high-quality Holsteins. Chase is adding compatibility with grazing systems to the mix of traits she breeds for in her Holstein-Jersey mixes.
The Chase family, with the support of local land trusts, state funds and local fundraising, has sold the development rights to almost 300 acres of their land, 100 of which are forested, and put it all into permanent conservancy. Chase leases an additional 500 acres of land for producing hay and baleage (think: pickled hay that is extra nutritious to cows).
While Chase is passionate about inviting customers to experience the nutrition, flavor and connection to land that the farm has to offer, she also wants to create access to the unique kind of good time that is only possible on farms. Chaseholm hosts events from June through November with bands playing in the pasture, burgers for sale on the lawn, and drag shows in the barn.
As for the future, Chase hopes to keep anomalously being able to employ farmers in the dairy industry — Chaseholm currently supports a combined two full-time, year-round positions. She also hopes to invest in the farm’s infrastructure with a new barn:
“I want to modernize our facilities so that we can spend more time doing the fun/creative/enterprising stuff and less time just doing chores. It will be a big morale booster around here to move away from our very manual 1930s-style winter feeding methods, and I think our cows will like the new system, too.”
Sarah Chase, owner of Chaseholm Farm in Pine Plains, in front of the farm store and the barn her grandfather built.Janna Siller
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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