Exploring the Small Farm Dream

4-H teens learn about the hard work and creativity needed to run a successful small farm during Career Exploration Days at the Cornell University campus

This summer, hundreds of 4-H teens from all over New York arrived at Cornell University to explore careers in everything from Astronomy to Veterinary Science. We at the Cornell Small Farms Program were pleased to host a session titled “Exploring the Small Farm Dream.” Students learned all about farm-related career paths and even got their hands dirty at the Cornell Dilmun Hill Student Farm. Following are some accounts of 4H members experiences.
Small Farms, Big Job
By Billy Yang, New York, NY

Everybody has a comfort zone. Mine is with roaring subway trains, crowded streets, and colossal skyscrapers in a bustling metropolitan environment. Small farms in rural upstate New York are a nearly completely foreign concept to me. However, after visiting several of these farms, I finally had a chance to see what was behind the gallon of milk in the supermarket, or that piece of lettuce in the produce section. But more importantly, with the help of these field trips, I came to realize the amount of hard work and dedication needed for these farms to succeed and thrive the way that they do.
The first stop on my three-day trip here at Cornell University was MacDaniel’s Nut Grove, located on campus. There, I was introduced to the concept of forest farming, where crops were grown in the shady, damp environment that a wooded forest provides. The people who worked there grew a variety of crops, ranging from native pawpaw plants to exotic Shitake mushrooms. The Shitake mushrooms, a delicious kind of fungus native to China, are grown on logs, specially inoculated with the mycelium of the mushroom and sawdust. After a long year of living in a relatively dormant state, the mushrooms sprout out after being soaked in water for 24 hours. It is certainly a lot of work and requires some amount of patience, considering a year of waiting produces only one pound of mushrooms per log. They also grow ginseng plants there for their roots. These small, simple plants can take more than ten years to harvest. However, wild ginseng can fetch upwards of $600 per pound; that is quite an investment!
The next day, we explored a few places farther out, off campus. After a 45 minute drive from the university, we arrived at Reisinger’s Apple Country in Watkins Glen. Because I am such a huge fan of apples, I certainly wondered how they were grown. At the orchard, Rick Reisinger, who does most of the work along with his daughter, showed us how apple trees were planted, grafted, and maintained. The growing of apples is such a laborious task! He grows more than twenty varieties of apples there on more than 9,000 trees, and it takes a large amount of work all year long to keep the orchard running smoothly. When he has to thin the apple trees, it can take hours to finish a single row. With the amount of work that he has to put into his orchard, I have come to appreciate apples for more than just their crisp, sweet flavor.

Later on in the day, we dropped by Sunset View Creamery in Odessa. Sunset View is a fifth-generation dairy farm and creamery on more than 400 acres of land. Just looking at the sheer amount of land, it is clear that it cannot be an easy job to maintain all of it. The wonderfully amiable woman who gave us a brief tour of the farm, Mrs. Hoffman, showed us the machinery behind cheese production. The entire process involved several pieces of large machinery, and it can take many hours in a humid room that may approach temperatures in their nineties to produce cheese. It definitely seemed like an exhausting task. However, before we left, she gave us a few pieces of cheese to try, and I can safely say that all that hard work has paid off.
My short trip to upstate New York has been an educational experience in several ways. I have broadened my horizons and become a little more open-minded to what happens outside the city gates. Now I can see and appreciate that behind every mushroom, every apple, every piece of cheese, there is the hard work and dedication of a farmer.
Billy Yang is a 4-H member from New York, NY. He may be reached at 646-378-9566 or sillybillyxp@aim.com.

Education vs. Experience
By Rachel Lee, Albany, NY

Cornell University does an awesome job at helping the farmers of New York State. This week I took a program that showed us 4-Hers about different types of farming. We saw two different types of farms. One is for teaching, like Dilmun Hill and MacDaniel’s Nut Grove. Then we saw the farms run by people who have been farming their entire lives Like Sunset View Creamery and Reinsinger’s Apple Country.
The main difference in the two types of farms is profit. The two teaching farms may pay for themselves, but they do not make a profit. The other farms provided a living for the people working on them. The teaching farms were run and worked on by students. The students are there to become farmers themselves. Then there are the people who have been farming their entire lives. Their farms are their jobs, so they have to make a profit. Due to the changing times they have to explore new ways of making a profit, such as agrotourism.
Both types of farms use a lot of science in what they do. They are trying to find new ways of doing things, such as cloning apple trees and finding out which woods are best for growing mushrooms. The school farms experiment a little more radically, like how to use soil that has been contaminated with lead arsenic. So they are both learning. So which is better, education or experience? You decide.
Rachel Lee is a 4-H member from Albany NY.

Exploring the Small Farm Dream
By Dana Seag, Rockland, NY

Coming from a suburban area, just outside of New York City, I was unaware of the work, money, and science put into farming. My 4-H program was not agriculturally based, but I dream of living on a farm. Before attending Career Explorations I loved gardening in my less-than-half-an-acre backyard, but I had very little knowledge of the large scale growing and care of fruit, vegetables, and livestock.
Our first visit was to MacDaniel’s Nut Grove here on the Cornell campus. Learning about forest farming was particularly interesting because, unlike the other types of farms we visited, I had never even heard of it. Although they are easy to grow, mushrooms take a lot longer than I thought to grow. They were also growing ginseng, a plant used for its root that takes 10 years to harvest. These little roots can sell for $600! I never imagined people using the forest to grow domesticated food or that one tiny root could be sold at such a price.
Dilmun Farm, also on campus, was really interesting. It is almost entirely run by underclassmen, which really impressed me. The students were all very excited about their work and you could tell they loved being out in the fields. It was really encouraging to see young adults putting so much work into something they love. Not only were these students toiling away in the hot sun all day, but they were participating in cutting-edge research as they tried to find ways to plant over land contaminated from the use of lead arsenate. It inspired me so much that I can’t wait to go back to Rockland and look for similar opportunities for teens.
The amount of work put into owning and caring for an apple orchard is immense. I had no idea! I went in thinking I wouldn’t learn much—stick a seed in the ground, wait for it to grow, maybe turn on the sprinklers every once in a while, pick the apples. But that is nowhere near what Rick Reisinger does, and his farm is not just a hundred little apple trees. He grows apples on 9,000 apple trees currently and has plots for black raspberries and raspberries as well as strawberries and sour cherries. The apples must be cared for during all 4 seasons, it’s not just the planting in the spring and picking in the fall that I thought. Apples must be picked off by hand before the tree loses energy trying to grow too many, meaning Reisinger and his daughter had to go around 9,000 trees this spring and pluck off excess apples! I gained a lot of respect for apple growers and I would love to help in one the orchards near my home.
Our last trip was to Sunset View Dairy Farm. I loved seeing the animals. Coming from a much more urban area, I felt like I was on an “authentic” farm with all of those cows mooing around me! The science put into the making of cheese and the money put into machines amazed me. I never realized how much money went into the making of a dollar fifty block of cheese or how much science was used in making cheese and caring for animals. Not only did I personally get to learn the process, but it was such an eye opening experience to life on a farm. I had no idea that farmers could have other jobs—but the Hoffmans all had other jobs to promise a steady income. I was also amazed by the life of the family—the kids all live on the same street, just at the edges of the farm! I loved how close the family was by working together and living on the family’s old farm.
Each trip we took was so eye-opening. I learned a lot and I’ve gained a ton of respect for the people who grow our food on their farms. I’m inspired to find places to work in my community as well as New York State and get involved in the local food movements.
Dana Seag is a 4-H member from Rockland, NY. She may be reached at DanaElizabethSeag@verizon.net