Your Home for Horticultural Information in New York State.

A GREAT LOSS

8 months ago

Paul Baker, Executive Director for the NYS Horticultural Society, Executive Director of Ag Affiliates, and Executive Secretary of the New York State Berry Growers, passed away from injuries he sustained from a car accident Wednesday afternoon near his home in ... more

Snapshot of the Future

8 months ago

Twenty years ago, when I was managing my farm, I was having to listen to suppliers who serviced my operation on how I was just not up to the challenge of foreign competition. I told them I was forced to ... more

Do You Ever Have The Feeling No One is Listening?

9 months ago

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We Need to Step Back and Find New Uses for the Apple

11 months ago

Earlier this year I challenged each of you to come up with a new use for the apple. My example was what positives flowed from the introduction of taking raw peanuts and creating peanut butter? This then merged with jelly ... more

Summer 2021

Start Them Young

I remember my grandfather saying that when I was a kid. He would tell us that it didn’t matter what it was, just get interested in something. For my brothers and I that was farming. My earliest memories are of riding with my dad, grandpa or uncle every chance I got learning the “tricks of the trade”. I drove my first tractor when I was 6, it was a Farmall 230. Soon after I graduated to a 766, then I learned how to mow the lawn with a cub cadet. Granted this was slightly backwards, but none the less I was hooked on farming. From then on if I wasn’t in school, I was at work. A farm can be a fun place for a kid, you’re learning valuable skills and a good work ethic, and it doesn’t feel like work. Now I work with my dad and brother, and my kids ages 6 and 3 come running out to ride with me. In the blink of an eye I went from riding around getting taught how to do things, to teaching the next generation how it’s done. There is a huge amount of pride when you can teach your kids to do what you do and love it just as much, and nothing would make me happier than for them to take over when I’m too old to do it. When I was in high school, I wrote my sophomore research paper on how fast family farms were disappearing in America. Since I wrote that paper 15 years ago, I haven’t seen that situation change for the better. If we as farmers don’t get our children interested at a young age, I feel that we may see the small family operations disappear altogether and that would be a tragic loss to the foundation of our country.