MILLBROOK — The scent of citrus, emanating from a discreet diffuser tucked along the wall, fills the air upon entering the historic farmhouse at Silverbrook Manor, where perfume expert Mindy Yang and her husband, William Harris, have started to build a life centered on regenerative agriculture and education.
It’s a fitting introduction to the couple and their property — a centuries-old farm that raised dairy cattle before the American Revolution and horses for decades afterward. Over glasses of cold water infused with mint from their garden, the couple described the property as a collision of eras and visions, blending Yang’s passion for scents, food and natural medicines with Harris’s interior design skills and love of history.
At Silverbrook Manor, a property on Route 82 near the Cornell Cooperative Extension campus, Yang and Harris are building what they describe as a community-centered farm focused on regenerative agriculture and education.
After Washington officials recently determined the operation could proceed without a special-use permit, the couple resumed plans they had been developing since purchasing the property in 2021. They have restored former horse paddocks into native wildflower habitat and begun working with experts in regenerative and Indigenous agriculture, with plans to eventually offer educational tours and operate a private community-supported agriculture program.
The history of the space looms large for Yang and Harris. They pieced together the home’s history through research and documents and photographs discovered beneath floorboards and in the attic.
An historic photograph shows how former owners of Silverbrook Manor decorated their dining room.Photo By Nathan Miller
Harris said the house’s documented history dates back to before the Revolution.
“When Paul Revere was running down the street yelling ‘the British are coming,’ someone was here milking cows,” Harris said.
During the late-1800s and early 1900s, the home was owned by an actress named Katherine La Salle and her husband, Wentworth Bacon, a World War I veteran and dairy farmer who corresponded with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to voice his concerns about the dairy industry at the time.
The house reflects its storied past. Harris has taken care to establish design motifs that are at once modern and referential to the house’s history.
Modern art — some painted by Harris himself — and chic furniture mix and mingle with original crown molding, ornate fireplaces and vintage flooring that signal the house’s age.
For Yang and Harris, stewardship of the land and stewardship of the house go hand in hand — impulses that drew them both to regenerative farming.
Yang’s CSA concept was born out of dissatisfaction with the traditional model. She described typical CSAs as being transactional. That transaction gets food to people who want it, but they leave with vegetables and still have to rely on growers and suppliers to get more. Teach someone to fish, however, and the world might actually start to change, Yang said.
Yang’s CSA would center education and sharing knowledge. She has a vision that includes an intimate and private group of members taking advantage of the green space, walking through the fields and gardens, and learning and teaching others about how to forage for wild food and how to grow vegetables, herbs and medicinal plants.
“Nobody’s learning anything, nobody’s getting their hands dirty,” Yang said. “We can make the most beautiful painting and collect the most beautiful things but we don’t get to share with anyone.”
The CSA operates on a tiered subscription model. Currently, the so-called Farm Club offers a community share level — designed with individuals and families in mind — for $85 per month, a merchant share tier for $120 per month and a creative share tier — geared toward chefs, educators, herbalists and the like — for $285 per month.
Yang said there are currently only three members in the CSA. The couple had waited to fully advertise the CSA until regulatory hurdles with the Town of Washington had been cleared.
In April 2026, Yang and Harris received a letter from Washington’s zoning code enforcement officer advising them to seek a special use permit from the Planning Board under the town’s regulations on private clubs and educational institutions. The pair appeared before the Planning Board in June, but were told their operation didn’t qualify as a private club — which typically refers to country clubs or other recreational organizations that operate a clubhouse for social gatherings — or an educational institution, which refers to things like boarding schools and colleges.
In fact, Planning Board members took the position that the couple’s proposed operation is covered by right under New York State law and the town’s zoning code, and told Yang and Harris to carry on with the CSA operation.
Now, the couple are pressing forward with their goals, albeit slowly and methodically.
Outside the old farmhouse, Yang’s garden and greenhouse look like barely-controlled wildness — which is exactly the point.
Yang centers regenerative farming techniques that work to improve soil health and local ecology. Her commitment to naturalist practices runs deep — she even refuses to use a tractor on the property for fear of compacting soil too much and a desire to emit as little harmful chemicals as possible.
Yang and Harris emphasized the influence that indigenous farmers have had on their philosophy and techniques. Yang mentioned the “three sisters” — corn, beans and squash — and how planting them all together creates a synergy that helps each of the plants thrive despite being in such close quarters to each other.
She takes that approach throughout the garden, ditching herbicides and pesticides for pest-deterring plants like marigolds and other aromatic flowers.
Yang invites those who are interested in joining the CSA to visit silverbrookmanor.com to learn more about the operation and pricing. The couple emphasized a private, intimate approach to membership, saying they plan to vet all applicants before accepting any applications.
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KK Kozik in her studio
It is a particularly fitting philosophy for an artist whose paintings often begin with the world around her but rarely end there. There might be something recognizable — a stone wall, an apple tree, a crow — but then there is something less certain. Something that appears to be one thing becomes another upon inspection. Memory gets involved. So does imagination. So does time.
Since moving from New York City to Sharon, Connecticut in 2006, the landscape around her has become increasingly important to that process.
“I just saw things differently,” Kozik said.
The change was not immediate. She remembers an earlier version of herself driving through Vermont without paying much attention to what was happening beyond the windshield.
“I didn’t have the means to see what was happening around me,” she said. “I just sort of la, la, la, la, la, driving to Vermont.”
But, she said, she started to pay attention differently.
“I became more sensitized as time went on,” she said.
Asked whether that change came with age, she said, “Age and so-called wisdom.”
There’s a sense of loss in her landscapes, but a particular kind of loss that also has a twinge of redemption. Specifically, what happens to a landscape when people leave it?
“When the people go away, the wildlife comes back,” Kozik said.
KK Kozik in her studio with her painting “Golden Delicious.”Natalia Zukerman
Kozik’s work has never settled into a single recognizable formula. She has painted landscapes, figures and still lifes, moved toward abstraction and returned to representation. Her subjects change, but the underlying impulse remains: to take what is in front of her and discover what else there might be.
Kozik describes herself as someone who is always trying to figure things out. Her paintings often have the feeling of a thought in progress rather than a conclusion. They have been called “single-line novellas,” a description that makes sense: They can contain the suggestion of an entire story without telling you exactly what happened.
The animals are part of that storytelling.
They arrived partly because of what was disappearing.
“They were like the new redemption in a way,” she said.
There is something almost funny about the way Kozik talks about this — not because the loss itself is funny, but because she refuses to turn it into a grand pronouncement. She observes something, considers it, and lets it complicate the work.
That same sensibility comes through when she talks about her own development as an artist. Her paintings make room for interpretation. They don’t always tell the viewer what an animal symbolizes, or why a landscape has been altered, or where a particular image came from. Instead, they leave enough evidence to make you curious and enough room for your own stories.
The effect is not accidental. Kozik has spent years thinking about how images work, both as paintings and as containers for ideas.
Her work is currently included in “The Naturalist,” a group exhibition on view through Sept. 13 at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, alongside Richard Klein, Sally Maca, Rick Shaefer and Tricia Wright. The exhibition brings together artists whose work engages with the natural world, including its forms, histories and mysteries.
Kozik is an especially apt fit for the exhibition. She is described by the gallery as a landscape painter, figurative painter and interiors/still-life painter whose work frequently moves toward painterly abstraction. Her practice, the gallery notes, is “fluid and continuous” — always searching for new pictorial problems to solve.
That search has also extended beyond her own studio.
For several years, Kozik ran ICEHOUSE Project Space, an 18th-century icehouse on Sharon’s town green that she transformed into an unusual venue for contemporary art. It opened in 2018 with Dan Devine’s “Inside-Out NASCAR” and went on to host site-specific projects by artists including Mark Dion, Eric Aho, Janet Biggs, Richard Klein, Kristin Jones, Lisa Hoke and Ryan Frank. The projects addressed everything from the decline of winged insects and native and invasive plants to Sharon’s iron industry, its gardens and its history as an ice-producing community.
The space is now closed, but its premise still feels connected to Kozik’s painting practice. Each project responded in some way to the physical location, turning what might otherwise have been a little historic outbuilding into a setting for contemporary art.
Kozik’s own work does something similar with the landscape. She takes a place and lets it become more than a place.
Kozik’s paintings tell us that something happened before we arrived, and that something will happen after we leave.
And then there is the question of what to do with the space in between.
Maybe Kozik’s paintings are less about that space and more about an idea, as she put it, of “which questions to think about.”
Jazzmine Bone and A Stitch in Tyme power through the Gambler’s Choice run during the 2024 Lakeville Open.
The event, which has been held continuously for 69 years, is open to the public with free admission.
Individual competitions will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and visitors can stop by briefly or settle in for the day.
A food truck, bake sale and portable restrooms will be available on-site.
The show is the primary fundraiser for The Lakeville Pony Club, with proceeds supporting young riders who need financial assistance to participate in lessons. Members and their families work throughout the year to create the event for both competitors and spectators.
Members of the Lakeville Pony Club and Echo the pony arrive for the costume class during the Lakeville Open in 2024.Caitlin Von Graf
For those new to horse shows, the day offers a chance to learn more about the sport and understand what happens in the ring. In equitation competitions, judges evaluate the rider’s skill, from beginners learning walk and trot to more advanced riders navigating cantering and jumping courses.
Hunter competitions focus on the horse’s style and smoothness over fences, while jumper classes emphasize accuracy and speed as horses and riders race against the clock without knocking down rails.
The day also includes a crowd favorite: the costume class, where horses and riders dress up in creative ensembles for a chance at the top prize.
Programs will be available onsite to help spectators identify competitors and horses. A full list of competitions, entry information and details for those interested can be found at rigameadow.com
Whether an experienced equestrian or simply curious about the sport, the Lakeville Open Horse Show offers a chance to enjoy a Hudson Valley tradition that continues to bring the community together.
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