Tour of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture
Accompanied by the director and representatives of the King’s Kitchen Garden of Versailles, we recently ventured out to the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture near Tarrytown, NY, to learn more about their agroecological rotational crop farming and ecological landscape planning. We toured the farm’s cold-season greenhouses, livestock barns, and organic agricultural fields with winter crops growing beneath protected tarps and hay-covered rows ready for early spring plantings, as well as trails nestled among fields, pastures, and forest patches.
This facility is home to a wide variety of vegetable, fruit, flower and herb species, many of which emerge on site through selective seed experimentation and development. The center spearheads the organic farm movement in the region by actively training young farmers, and by practicing a rotational crop system that maintains optimal soil fertility through carefully honed rotations of plants and animals which catalyze maximum levels beneficial microbiological life in the soil, and thereby eliminate any need for fertilizer, pesticides or herbicides. As a result, this agroecological operation facilitates the growth of delicious, diverse and nutrient-rich crops that continually enables soil regeneration, while serving as a regional research facility and working model of organic agriculture.
If you’d like to taste the fruits and veggies of their labor, we recommend visiting the Stone Barns Farm Market or dining at the prestigious Blue Hill restaurant, which sources their produce from the center.
