Our Collaborators

1% for the Planet

Hawthorne Valley is an approved partner with 1% For the Planet whose mission is to build, support and activate an alliance of businesses financially committed to creating a healthy planet.

 

American Farmland Trust

As part of Hawthorne Valley’s USDA Grant funding, AFT will offer expertise in helping beginning farmers with their first land leases. In its 35-year history, AFT has helped save more than 5 million acres of farm and ranch land and contributed to conservation improvements on millions more. To learn more, visit their website.

 

AmeriCorps Hudson

Each summer at Kids Can Cook, Hawthorne Valley is gifted with the presence of AmeriCorps service members. The AmeriCorps from Hudson is a collaboration of Promise Neighborhood, the Hudson City School District, and Mental Health. Service members are known as the Promise Corps.

 

Bard Prison Initiative

The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) is a division of Bard College that enrolls incarcerated women and men in academic programs that lead to degrees from Bard College. The program currently enrolls 300 incarcerated men and women full time with the college. Hawthorne Valley works with BPI to bring gardening to inmates.

 

Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation

Hawthorne Valley has had a longstanding relationship with Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation and most recently has participated in the foundation’s roundtable working group sessions on addressing the issue of food access and food justice for all residence in Columbia County.

 

Biodynamic Association

Hawthorne Valley Farm offers the Biodynamic Intensive as part of the North American Biodynamic Apprenticeship Program; and the farm’s Institute for Mindful Agriculture is a project in collaboration with the Biodynamic Association and the Presencing Institute at MIT.

 

Black Urban Growers

Hawthorne Valley collaborates with this grassroots organization to bring more African-American growers into the sustainable food movement and particularly formerly incarcerated individuals with a strong interest in growing food.

 

Camphill

The Camphill Communities in Columbia County remain some of Hawthorne Valley’s closest collaborators. Hawthorne Valley initially chose to locate in Columbia County in 1972 in large measure due to the pioneering presence of Camphill Copake, which was founded in 1961. Camphill and the Hawthorne Valley combined forces to start Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School in 1973. Three additional Camphill communities, Triform, Camphill Ghent, and Hudson Solaris Community Center, have come into being in Columbia County in the ensuing years. Hudson Solaris hosts the Place Based Learning Center’s afterschool program, Farm Explorers.

 

Chester Agricultural Center

 

Columbia County Chamber of Commerce

Hawthorne Valley has been a Chamber member since 1999. We recognize the importance of the Chamber’s commitment to community collaboration and business growth, and achieving high quality of life in Columbia County. Each year, we are happy to support the Chamber’s Agricultural Brunch and Agricultural Tour.

 

Columbia Land Conservancy

Hawthorne Valley is one of Columbia County’s earliest partners in land conservation after putting all of Hawthorne Valley Association’s land into what was at the time Columbia Land Conservancy’s (CLC) largest agricultural easement. CLC is a leading pioneer in land conservation especially in relationship to agriculture and their Farmer Landowner Match program compliments Hawthorne Valley’s various Farmer Training programs.

 

Farm Beginnings Collaborative

Hawthorne Valley Farm is a member of the Farm Beginnings Collaborative – a national whole farm planning program for farmers with 10 chapters nationwide.

 

Farmer Veteran Coalition

This national organization has asked us to host a workshop at Hawthorne Valley this summer (2016) for farmer veterans.

 

FarmRoots

Hawthorne Valley has partnered with FarmRoots, a program of Grow NYC for the past 5 years and we have received two USDA grants together to support this work.

 

Farms2Tables, The F2T Box

The F2T Box is a key distributor for Hawthorne Valley. Their innovative app-based ordering system is essentially a farmers’ market in the palm of your hand. It allows restaurants and grocers to order from a wide variety of farms for next-day delivery, and to be billed for all the items on one invoice. From the farmer/producer point of view, this enables us to work with a number of customers we wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach.

 

Free Columbia

An art and social change initiative that creates independent and accessible educational and artistic opportunities through art courses, exhibitions, lectures and more. Learn more.

GrowNYC

Hawthorne Valley has been a member on GrowNYC’s flagship Union Square Greenmarket since 1980.

 

Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming

Glynwood is a non-profit organization in Putnam County, serving food and farming professionals across New York’s Hudson Valley. They are a kindred spirit to Hawthorne Valley in our work to advance regenerative agriculture in service of our natural environment, local economies, and human health.

 

The Good Work Institute

The Good Work Institute is a non-profit organization in the Hudson Valley of New York that hopes to help turn this moment into a sustained movement by connecting and supporting the people, projects, and organizations that are leading the transition locally.

 

Greater Hudson Promise Neighborhood

Hawthorne Valley Farm’s Place Based Learning Center is very happy to partner with, and learn from, the good people at Greater Hudson Promise Neighborhood, a vital organization run by Hawthorne Valley Alumna Joan E. Hunt.

 

H.O.S.T. Collaborative

The Hudson Out-of-School Time Collaborative is a network of local organizations that provide services and programs to children our of school hours. Other member organizations include: Kite’s Nest, Hudson Department of Youth, FASNY Museum of Firefighting, Hudson Bluehawk Nation Afterschool Program, Hudson Hall, Hudson Area Library, Operation Unite, Bindlestiff Family Circus, Perfect Ten Afterschool, Staley B. Keith Justice Center, WiseBodies, Art Omi, the Sylvia Center at Katchkie Farm, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and more.

 

Hudson City School District

In addition to our Kids Can Cook collaboration with the school district, Hawthorne Valley Farm is a Community Partner in the 21st Century Grant for the district’s Bluehawks After School Program, offering visits to the farm twice a week and cooking classes.

 

Hudson Department of Youth

The Hudson Department of Youth provides year round after-school and summer activities for children ages 5 – 18.

 

Insight Garden Program

Hawthorne Valley Fam partners with the Insight Garden Program (IGP) to bring gardening to inmates in Woodbourne and Fishkill Correctional facilities, and to work with their curriculum in community gardens in New York City with Black Urban Growers. IGP facilitates an innovative curriculum combined with vocational gardening and landscaping training so that people in prison can reconnect to self, community, and the natural world. This “inner” and “outer” gardening approach transforms lives, ends ongoing cycles of incarceration, and creates safer communities.

 

Institute for Mindful Agriculture

Helping re-shape agricultural theory and practice to create a world where individuals are once again strongly connected to the source of their sustenance, and where food is grown in active dialogue with nature and distributed in a socially just manner. Learn more.

 

The Local Economies Project

The Local Economies Project’s mission and purpose are closely aligned with Hawthorne Valley and we have collaborated in a variety of ways as they launched the Farm Hub in 2014.  Our Farmscape Ecology Program is assisting with ecological assessment work on The Farm Hub’s property in the Rondout Valley.

 

Long Table Harvest

Hawthorne Valley recently began collaborating with Long Table Harvest, a county wide gleaning program whose mission is to connect food insecure individuals to farmers with surplus produce in order to nourish and strengthen our community.

 

Mental Health Association of Columbia & Greene Counties

Mental Health Association of Columbia & Greene Counties is a major provider of mental health, preventative and support services and an integral part of the provider network in this area.

 

National Young Farmers Coalition

Hawthorne Valley routinely works with the National Young Farmers Coalition, headquartered in Columbia County, which is a support organization for beginning farmers nationwide.

 

The Nature Institute

The Nature Institute was founded by Craig and Henrike Holdrege, two former teachers at Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School. Hawthorne Valley and The Nature Institute regularly collaborate on a variety of initiatives including our winter Biodynamic Intensives, work with our farm apprentices, and The Living Soils work with Bruno Follador.

 

Northern Rivers

Northern Rivers is the largest multi-services agency in New York’s Capital Region dedicated to helping families and their children. The organization works with Hawthorne Valley Place Based Learning Center to identify at-risk children that would benefit from participation in our children’s programming.

 

Perfect Ten

Perfect Ten is the only club for girls in Hudson age 8-18. The organization inspires the courage to aspire and aims to teach the skills necessary for each girl to achieve her goals. Girls learn about possibilities from college to career to skilled trades. Hawthorne Valley works with the program to identify girls that are interested in learning about food and farming through our Kids Can Cook program.

 

RSF Social Finance

RSF Social Finance is one of Hawthorne Valley’s longest-standing and influential collaborative partnerships. RSF was located in Harlemville, NY and had their offices on Fern Hill above the north hill of Hawthorne Valley Farm until they moved to their current home in San Francisco, CA.  Their mission to change the way the world works with money continues to inspire and inform the work of Hawthorne Valley in countless ways.

 

Scenic Hudson

Hawthorne Valley has always admired the good work being done by Scenic Hudson and has participated in various educational seminars, conferences, and research initiatives and in 2016 will work with Scenic Hudson to put the newly acquired land on Schnackenberg Road into agricultural easement.