Rise & Root Farm

About this land node

Overview

Project Vision

We see Rise & Root in twenty years as a thriving cooperative farm of many more acres, a chosen-family model other QT+BIPOC farmers have followed, and a steady source of food and seedlings that have helped New York City neighborhoods replace food apartheid with gardens, markets and ownership of their own food system.

Project Purpose

To build a more equitable food system through the healing power of food and farming, growing healthy, affordable, locally grown food for New York City residents, especially in low-income communities, while creating a farm where queer, trans, Black, Indigenous and people-of-color farmers lead.

Project Title

Rise & Root Farm

Ecoregional Location

Northeast US Coastal Forests, Northeastern American Mixed Forests (NA10)

Local Location

Black Dirt Region

Political Location

Chester, Orange County, New York, United States

Ecology & biodiversity

Biodiversity context

The Black Dirt region was once a vast wetland; most has been drained for agriculture, leaving remnant marshes that are regionally important for wetland birds. Organic, diversified farms like Rise & Root add habitat and reduce chemical inputs within an intensively farmed basin.

Ecological corridors

The Wallkill River and its remnant wetlands form a north-south corridor through the Black Dirt linking to the Wallkill River National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey and the Shawangunk Grasslands and Hudson Valley to the north.

Natural boundaries

The farm lies on the floor of the Black Dirt basin of the Wallkill River valley, near the village of Chester, within the 270-acre Chester Agricultural Center. Low hills of Orange County rise around the flat, dark muck fields, and drainage ditches carry water toward the Wallkill River.

Ecosystem unity

The Black Dirt region is a former glacial lake bed whose drained peat soils form one of the most distinctive agricultural landscapes in the Northeast, within the Northeast US Coastal Forests ecoregion. The farm's small, intensively grown fields sit among onion farms, wet meadows and remnant wetlands along the Wallkill.

Climate & water

Climate Zones

Humid continental climate with hot summers (Köppen Dfa). The low-lying basin is frost-prone, with cold air settling on clear nights in spring and autumn.

Rainfall patterns

Precipitation is spread evenly through the year with no dry season; late summer and early autumn are slightly wetter, often boosted by thunderstorms and the remnants of tropical storms. Winter precipitation falls as snow, sleet and rain, and spring snowmelt drives peak streamflow in March and April.

Average Rainfall

Approximately 1,150 to 1,250 mm per year; the Black Dirt basin floods in wet years, as it did severely after Hurricane Irene in 2011.

Temperature Extremes

July highs average near 29°C with heat waves above 32°C. January lows average around -8°C, and the basin's frost pockets bring earlier and later frosts than the surrounding hills.

Average Temperature

About 10°C annually, from roughly -3°C in January to 23°C in July.

Watershed

Within the Wallkill River watershed; the Wallkill flows north through the Black Dirt to join the Rondout Creek and the Hudson River at Kingston.

Nearby water bodies

Drainage ditches and the Wallkill River run through the Black Dirt basin near the farm; Glenmere Lake lies a few kilometres to the south.

Land & terrain

Elevation & slope

Nearly flat basin floor at roughly 120 to 130 metres above sea level, with surrounding hills rising a few dozen metres above the fields.

Landforms

Post-glacial lake bed filled with peat, now a flat agricultural basin crossed by drainage ditches, bordered by low glacial hills and bedrock knolls of the Wallkill valley.

Soil Types

Deep organic muck soils (Histosols) formed from peat in a drained post-glacial lake bed, the famous Black Dirt. Exceptionally fertile and dark, these soils are prized for onions and vegetables but subside and oxidize when drained and tilled.

Soil health

Black Dirt soils are rich but fragile, losing organic matter to oxidation each year they are drained and worked. Organic management, cover cropping and permanent beds help slow that loss on the farm's five acres.

Erosion risk

Low from water on the flat fields, but the light, dry muck is prone to wind erosion when bare, and the soil loses volume through oxidation; cover crops and mulches reduce both.

Renewable resource potential

Solar on barns and greenhouses at the agricultural center; composting; the farm already uses a heated greenhouse that could run on renewable power.

People & history

Land Acknowledgements

Rise & Root Farm lies within Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape people, whose Munsee-speaking communities lived along the western side of Muhheakantuck, the river that flows both ways. We acknowledge the Lenape and their descendants in the Delaware Nation, the Delaware Tribe of Indians and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, whose relationship with this land continues.

Recent land history

The Black Dirt basin was drained for agriculture from the late 1800s, becoming one of the nation's leading onion-growing areas. In 2014 investors created the nonprofit Chester Agricultural Center on 270 acres to lease land and infrastructure to new farmers, and Rise & Root signed a 30-year lease the same year, beginning to farm in 2015 and expanding from 1.5 to 5 acres.

Regenerative practice

Regenerative Focus

Regenerative Agriculture & Soil Health, Community Regeneration & Resilience Building, Education, Participatory & Regenerative Governance, Regenerative Entrepreneurship

Regenerative Methodologies

Organic vegetable, herb and flower production on Black Dirt muck soils; cooperative ownership and shared decision-making among four farmer-owners; greenhouse seedling production for community gardens; high tunnels for season extension; shared infrastructure with other farms at the Chester Agricultural Center; direct marketing to farmers' markets and community food programs.

Environmental objectives

Farm the region's rare Black Dirt soils organically and protect their organic matter; produce seedlings that green hundreds of community gardens in New York City; demonstrate small-scale, low-input production on leased land.

Community objectives

Bring healthy, affordable, locally grown food to low-income New York City residents; create farm ownership and leadership for women, QT+ and BIPOC farmers; train and mentor new farmers; supply soup kitchens and community programs in Middletown and the Bronx; build a community kitchen for value-added products and education.

Community engagement

The farm sells at Union Square Greenmarket and La Familia Verde in the Bronx and in Chester, supplies the Guild of St. Margaret soup kitchen in Middletown, and grows seedlings for NYC Parks GreenThumb gardeners. Volunteers and visitors learn on the farm, the owners teach widely through Farm School NYC, Black Urban Growers and the Black Farmer Fund, and the farm is part of the 12-farm Chester Agricultural Center community.

Economic Model

A cooperatively owned farm business on a 30-year lease at the nonprofit Chester Agricultural Center, which provides land and shared infrastructure. Income comes from farmers' markets, wholesale to restaurants and community programs, and a seedling contract with NYC Parks GreenThumb, supplemented by grants such as American Farmland Trust's Brighter Future Fund.

Impact

Expressed Impact

Rise & Root shows what happens when urban food-justice organizers gain access to farmland: a cooperative, QT+BIPOC-led farm that feeds city neighborhoods, supplies the seedlings for hundreds of community gardens and models shared ownership. Its founders' reach, from Black Urban Growers to the Black Farmer Fund, makes the farm a hub of a wider movement to end food apartheid.

Key impact metrics

5 acres under cultivation on a 30-year lease, started 2014–2015 on 1.5 acres; four cooperative farmer-owners; seedlings grown for NYC Parks GreenThumb community gardens; weekly sales at Union Square Greenmarket and Bronx markets; produce donated to a Middletown soup kitchen; part of a 270-acre, 12-farm agricultural center.

Visiting & links

Nearest urban centres

The village of Chester (population about 4,000) is adjacent. Middletown (population about 28,000) is roughly 15 km northwest, and New York City about 90 km southeast.

Website

https://www.riseandrootfarm.com

Connections

In the same bioregion

Nearby