Local Living Festival

I gave presentation about Farmhack@ESF at the Local Living Festival in Canton, NY on September 24th. Although I did my best to give an engaging presentation, the audience was probably ten people maximum and not laughing at my jokes. This is definitely an agricultural community, but I think they weren't particularly interested in engineering or design. I also represented ESF in a campus sustainability summit and was under-qualified to discuss my school's plan to be carbon neutral by 2015.

Before this festival, I had been to the North Country twice before, for an all-girls math and science camp in middle school. (giggle now) At the time it had seemed like this isolated place that just might as well be Canada, but that weekend made me reconsider. The people I met were so nice. They went out of their way to welcome me into their community. I arrived with a cold and recieved heaps of mashed potatoes, veggies, greens and hot tea to sooth my congested head and tired bones. Everyone was so genuinely happy to meet me and being helpful was just what you did.

This festival was all about environmental issues, but they were approached in a very different way from downstate. Any policies discussed were very regional and nobody was there to fund raise. It was all very tangible and honest. Assemblywoman Addie Russell mediated the sustainability summit I participated in. She spoke about how the North Country is so isolated that they never feel the economic highs and lows that the rest of the state experiences. This brand of environmentalism was all about self-sufficiency -- local farms, getting off the grid and canning at home. The farmer (Dullie from Birdsfoot) I stayed with held a question and answer session about her farming practices. Only two other people attended and I got to ask her all about crop rotations and soil amendments. She was very forthcoming with information and pointed me in the right direction to learn more.

Initially, I was drawn to urban agriculture because it seemed like that was where agriculture was getting innovative, but now rural life is increasingly more appealing. Local food isn't hip and trendy here, it's part of everyday life. The kind of community built in this kind of geographic isolation is fascinating as someone who grew up in the New York metropolitan area. With the exception of the colleges present, most of the the establishments present were small businesses invested in the local economy. The people of the North Country seemed to be treating each other excellently because they were all so intertwined.

I'm sure winters are rotten and petty gossip exists in the North Country, but what I saw of it was pretty glorious.