May in Montgomery – 2019
Our Farms to Your Table
Celebrating our 40thYear of making local history come alive
Bridgepoint Run Farmstand – photo Dale Johnson
The Van Harlingen Historical Society’s 2019 May in Montgomery celebrates a new way to make local farming successful, bringing people and our local farms together – “Our Farms To Your Table” – with a bus tour to three certified organic farms in Montgo
mery. Local farmers will be welcoming a tour bus, Saturday May 11, in the midst of their spring planting season, to explain how they qualify for a coveted certification and show off their early crops.
May in Montgomery is our annual fund raiser. Tour takers this year will discover a wealth of local farm produce on a luncheon menu prepared especially for us by Greenflash Farm and served in their handsomely restored early timbered barn. Our luncheon will be accompanied by a showing of the film “Farming in the Millstone Valley: Past and Present,” which our late president Judy Peters was working to complete.
Our luncheon hosts, Steven Back and Wendy Golden, borrowed the name “Green Flash” from local lore after purchasing the old Gallup farm on Mountain View Road, which had fallen on hard times along with most dairy farms in this region’s milkshed. Since taking ownership in 2015, Stephen and Wendy have passionately developed an elaborate plan to produce vegetables, fruits, flowers and pasture raised livestock and free-range chickens in keeping with the principles of sustainable agriculture. This is their second year as a certified organic farm selling cooperative shares of their produce.
Cherry Valley Cooperative is Montgomery’s branch of a group of nearby sister farms, including Four Barns Farm & Bubbly Jen’s Farm. Our hosts here will be Alec Gioseffi and Lauren Nagy, who will demonstrate and share their collaboration efforts with us. They are fervently dedicated to growing healthy food which is produced using resilient ecological stewardship. They offer vegetables, herbs, log grown mushrooms, and pasture raised chickens and are dedicated to gatherings and education around health, wholism, and an integrated connection to nature. Along with their assortment of organic products, they are selling farm shares for this year’s growing season. They also offer education for beginning farmers, nature classes and walks, and yoga.
Dale Johnson of Bridgepoint Run Farm is enthusiastically adapting his historic family farm to be organic this year. This stop on the tour will offer a chance to see farming as it was first carried on in Montgomery. The homestead includes an original Dutch house and the original Dutch barn will be open to see, so we can appreciate the original structural barn framing characteristic of early Dutch settlers in the Millstone Valley. Dale will also show us the latest farming techniques for hastening the harvest of spring produce.
Limited tickets are now available click here for details
Van Harlingen Historical Society is a registered non-profit organization. For more information, email info@vanharlingen.org.
