Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture
Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture is a non-profit farm as well as an agricultural education and research center located in Pocantico Hills, New York. The center was created on formerly belonging to Pocantico, the Rockefeller estate. It is surrounded on three sides by the Rockefeller State Park Preserve. Stone Barns promotes sustainable agriculture, local food, and community-supported agriculture. It is a four-season operation.
Stone Barns Center is also home to the Barber family's Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a restaurant that serves contemporary cuisine using local ingredients, with an emphasis on produce from the center's farm. Blue Hill staff also participate in the center's education programs.
History
Stone Barns' property was once part of Pocantico, the Rockefeller estate. The Norman-style stone barns were commissioned by Rockefeller Jr. to be a dairy farm in the 1930s. The complex fell into disuse during the 1950s and was mainly used for storage. In the 1970s, agricultural activity resumed when David Rockefeller's wife Margaret "Peggy" McGrath Rockefeller began a successful cattle breeding operation.Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture was created by David Rockefeller and his daughter Peggy Dulany as a memorial for Peggy Rockefeller, who died in 1996. David's move to carve off a segment of the already donated land for a personal, albeit charitable, project caused disagreement on the part of other Rockefeller family members, as it ran contrary to the family's conservation policy. Inclusion of a commercial entity, a restaurant, was an additional point of internal friction. David, the patriarch of the family, prevailed, and Stone Barns opened to the public in May 2004. Ultimately, the positive public image of the Stone Barns Center as an international beacon for sustainable agriculture and culinary innovation secured it as a successful part of the Rockefeller legacy.
In 2008, Stone Barns opened its slaughterhouse to slaughter its livestock for plating at Blue Hill. Using their own slaughterhouse also eliminated the long and expensive drives to the closest one.
In 2017, Stone Barns published Letters to a Young Farmer, a compilation of essays and letters about the highs and lows of farming life, including Barbara Kingsolver, Bill McKibben, Michael Pollan, Temple Grandin, Wendell Berry, Rick Bayless, and Marion Nestle.
Farm
The farm at Stone Barns is a four-season operation with approximately used for vegetable production. It uses a seven-year rotation schedule in the field and greenhouse beds. The farm grows 300 varieties of produce year-round, both in the outdoor fields and gardens and in the minimally heated greenhouse that capitalizes on each season's available sunlight. Among the crops suitable for the local soil and climate are rare varieties such as celtuce, Kai-lan, hakurei turnips, New England Eight-Row Flint seed corn, and finale fennel. The farm uses no pesticides, herbicides or chemical additives, although compost is added to the soil for enrichment. The farm has a six-month composting cycle using manure, hay, and food waste scraps.Livestock
Stone Barns raises cattle, chickens, sheep, pigs, goats and bees suited to the local ecosystem. The livestock farmers try to raise animals in a manner consistent with the animals' evolutionary instincts. The cattle, chickens, sheep and goats are raised on pastures kept healthy and productive through carefully managed rotational grazing. The sheep and pigs' bedding packs are regularly turned and composted. Farmers who raise animals in this fashion are frequently called "grass farmers" because there is so much emphasis on the health of the pastures. Strategies for maintaining the pastures include intensive paddock management so the grazed area has ample time to recover and provide a natural refuge for birds and other wildlife, essential for the maintenance of ecological balance.In 2018, Stone Barns began managing 300+ acres of the Rockefeller State Park Preserve. The first season saw a multi-species intensive grazing program where pigs forage and consume food waste including spent grain from the Captain Lawrence brewery in Elmsford, New York. Cattle, sheep, goats, hens and ducks also graze the preserve's land.