
The farmstand at Foxtrot Flower Farm in Stanfordville is closed up for the winter.
Kate Farrar
The farmstand at Foxtrot Flower Farm in Stanfordville is closed up for the winter.
Signing up for a CSA is one of the most effective ways to support small farms and help community agriculture thrive
STANFORD — International CSA Day is Thursday, Feb. 22! So what is a CSA, and why should you sign up for one?.
Like any good idea or innovation, the CSA (community supported agriculture) model was created out of a vast shared need: the economic survival of small farms and farmers.
A CSA is a subscription service. You subscribe to a local farm’s CSA for a fixed cost, and the farm regularly provides you with its produce and/or products for a set period of the year.
The concept is that local customers invest in a farm when the farm needs it most: up front, before a farmer has any produce to show for themselves or with their investors.
Without the CSA model, farmers work, pay and invest back into the farm year-round but only make their income seasonally.
I founded Foxtrot Farm & Flowers in Stanfordville three years ago, after working for eight years in agriculture. I built Foxtrot around a CSA model because in my experience it’s financially effective, time efficient, and most rewarding for a farm of my scale to sell directly to their community, building relationships over the years.
A year on the farm
At Foxtrot, the year of expenditures on the new crop begins now, in mid-February, when I begin to sow, tend to and heat — with propane — this year’s crop.
Apart from the CSAs, my income doesn’t start to trickle in until the blooming of narcissus and tulips in April, followed by a small seedling sale in early May. Then there is a gap during heavy planting season until around mid-June, when my annual and perennial flowers start to bloom.
Come July, August and September, I’m hustling, harvesting for retail and wholesale outlets, designing flowers for weddings and special events. Money is coming in and I feel buoyed, but come mid-October, reminders of frost are just around the corner.
When the frost hits, so does the financial crash: the flowers burned and browned, and the cyclical crunch season begins again.
A little economic boost comes around the holidays with wreath sales and the like, but so do the holiday expenses, so it just about evens out. The bank account that I felt accomplished and proud of in November starts to look less shiny come January, after three months of — hopefully — paying myself a wage, without income.
Come January and February, I’m ordering seeds and supplies for the next growing season, I’m making expensive improvements on any number of things — to date: building a walk-in cooler ($5,000 plus operation costs); a germination chamber ($1,000 plus operation costs); a lean-to for farm storage ($7,000); a farm stand ($2,000); and a growing tunnel ($23,000).
In March and April, self-employment taxes are due. I’m starting seeds and experiencing financial security-induced panic attacks.
The breakdown
A Foxtrot bouquet might cost $30. To break that down, let’s borrow Lennie Larkin’s “The Flower Dollar” framework and apply it to a bouquet from Foxtrot:
— $3.50 into infrastructure and machinery (money to reinvest in machinery).
— $4.50 into land costs (mortgages, taxes and rents).
— $4.50 into farm supplies (seeds, plants, bulbs, compost, fertilizer, irrigation).
— $4.50 into administrative costs (insurance, permits, bookkeeping, accounting and utilities).
— $6 into employee payroll — fair, living wages for farm workers. A quick note on wages: many farms struggle to keep up with the ever increasing living wage in the area. Most local farms are able to offer their employees between $18-$22/hour, while the true living wage in the Hudson Valley is now $24.75/hour.
— $7 into profit — a hopefully living wage for me, and reinvestment in capital expenses.
Most farmers hope to make a profit, but often we just about break even.
I’ve worked in agriculture for the last 11 years, as a crew member, a manager and as a farm owner. I’ve had second jobs and third jobs to stay afloat.
Only this year as a business owner — going into year three at Foxtrot — have I started to be able to pay myself a year-round wage and that is largely due to the CSA model that I’ve built Foxtrot around.
The money that my CSA members invest in Foxtrot from November through April enable me to keep the business afloat. In return, once the flowers are blooming, I share them generously with my members.
There is good value in a CSA for its members — most farms position their CSA pricing between wholesale and retail value in gratitude for the upfront investment on the part of their CSA members (a $30 Foxtrot CSA bouquet might be valued at $40 elsewhere).
Let’s just say, a farmer remembers these customers.
A labor of love
Farming is a labor of love, and that’s no body’s burden but our own. But ultimately, most career farmers must work with a bottom line, and operate without another means of income or a large security net.
If we value small farms as a community, we must ask: How could the task be made easier?
The CSA as an economic model is an answer to this financial dilemma. It creates a small but critical seasonal security net for working farms and farmers, and a built-in, community-driven customer base for a farmer’s harvest.
Joining a CSA isn’t a donation. It is a subscription model similar to so many that we rather passively participate in these days — Amazon Prime, Netflix, Spotify, and Blue Apron, to name a few. The difference is that a CSA is a subscription to your neighbors, your community, your local economy, your landscape in exchange for something that is tangible, important and life-giving in return.
I have had the pleasure of being a part of the leadership committee for the Hudson Valley CSA Coalition, a network of over 120 farms whose aim it is to advocate for the CSA model.
Visit Farm Search as a part of the Hudson Valley CSA Coalition’s website, hudsonvalleycsa.org, to explore the CSAs that are available in your community.
A few other local farms’ CSAs include:
— Rock Steady Farm, Millerton: produce, with partner farm add-ons available.
— Chaseholm Farm, Pine Plains: beef, pork, dairy and cheese.
— Foliage Botanics, Pine Plains: a seasonal apothecary of plant medicine.
— Sisters Hill Farm, Stanfordville: produce, with pick-your-own add-ons available.
Kate Farrar is the farmer and florist at Foxtrot Farm & Flowers, 6862 Route 82, Stanfordville. For more information email foxtrotfarmflowers@gmail.com.
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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