Organic: Farmers & Chefs of the Hudson Valley

With its rich agricultural land, the awareness for sustainable living, and the growing demand for local, organic food, the farm-to-table, locavore movement has become a way of life in the Hudson Valley. The book Organic: Farmers & Chefs at the Hudson Valley spotlights the region and features the portraits and words of the dedicated farmers who are committed to growing and producing food using sustainable methods, and the chefs who echo their beliefs and pay homage to the food they produce, including such notables as: Amy Hepworth of Hepworth Farms, who works on a 7th generation family-owned farm and Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, who was named one of the world’s most influential people in 2009 in Time‘s annual Time 100. Zakary Pelaccio, owner of Fish & Game, is famous for building Brooklyn’s first gastropub and pioneering NYC’s nose-to-tail culinary movement and is also featured, just as Ken Greene at the Hudson Valley Seed Library is, who provides many local producers with heirloom and open-pollinated garden seeds and protects 15,000 years of agricultural history. Another important personality is Steffen Schneider at the 400-acre biodynamic Hawthorne Valley Farm, who has helped educate over 13,000 kids since 1972 as part of the farm’s Visiting Students Program.

The over 100 portraits of the farmers and chefs of the Hudson Valley were photographed using the wet-plate collodion process, a technique developed in the 1850s when the art of photography was in its infancy. With the use of large wooden cameras and brass lenses, glass plates are hand coated to produce one-of-a-kind ambrotype images. The amber toned images remind of a time when the cultivation of land was a manual process that linked the farmer directly to the soil. (Picture: Guy Jones)

The book was created by Francesco Mastalia who has traveled the world, photographing tribal, religious, spiritual, and indigenous peoples. His book Dreads, published by Workman Artisan, is a photo documentary on the history of dreadlocks. The book is now in its seventh printing, sold worldwide, and includes an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker.

Joan Dye Gussow, PhD, who wrote the preface, is known as the matriarch of the organic, locavore, small-farm movement. She is a mentor to today’s leading food activists. She has wielded considerable influence in academia (as a nutrition and education professor at Columbia University), in government (as a member of the National Organics Standards Board), and in the advocacy world (serving on the Center for Food Safety’s Advisory Board). She has written extensively, including, most recently, Growing Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Growing Vegetables (Chelsea Green, 2010). She makes her home in the Hudson Valley. (Picture: Hanna Bail)

Organic: Farmers & Chefs of the Hudson Valley
Hardcover
224 pages
ISBN: 978-1-57687-710-4
$49.95 US/CAN
The book is available in November 2014 and can be ordered here.