My Pictures of the Stone Barns Harvest Festival
Recently, and for the second year in a row, I was asked to be the judge in a pie bake-off contest at the Harvest Festival held at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in beautiful Pocantico Hills, New York. It was great fun, the pies were yummy, and the weather was spectacular. I even got to go carriage riding with David Rockefeller!
Stone Barns Center is a wonderful place developed by David Rockefeller Sr. and his family. These interconnected Norman-style farm buildings were originally built by John D. Rockefeller in the early 1930s, and the entire complex has been completely restored for this project. The mission of this nonprofit farm is to teach and promote sustainable, community-based food production. Open to the public all year long, visitors can learn about this organic farm and all its special techniques of producing crops and livestock. When it gets too cold to grow crops outdoors at Stone Barns, they move operations indoors in a special greenhouse designed by Eliot Coleman, who is an expert on four-season farming. This amazing and efficient greenhouse requires very little heat, mostly utilizing energy from the sun.
Stone Barns Center also houses Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a three-star restaurant that I just love, run by Dan Barber. Here you can dine on really delicious food grown on that farm and other local Hudson Valley farms, as well. Try it if you're ever in the area and if you can, visit the farm center, too.
This is the original dairy barn beautifully restored and transformed into a learning center for sustainable agriculture and a three-star restaurant:
Yumm...Guests were served traditional Stone Barns spit-roasted Berkshire Hogs raised at the center.
It’s always a pleasure to see David Rockefeller Sr.
4-year-old Ty Amsterdam wins first place in the pie contest for his chocolate mudpie. He really loved the microphone!
Little Ty’s mudpie:
Fancy schmantzy:
Some of the other pies:
More pies, and I got to taste each one!!!
Fields and fields of healthy organic food at the peak of the harvest season:
In this organic greenhouse, produce is sown and grown right in the ground in richly composted fertile soil:
Lovely Stone Barns and silos:
David Rockefeller and I enjoying the afternoon in his carriage:
Breathtaking views of the Hudson River:
Guests and their carriages:
Martha Pins
Martha Tweets
