posted by Conrad.

A day of preliminary farm visits to a quartet of collaborating farms: Rose Hill Orchard (Red Hook, NY), Treadlight Farm (Kerhonkson, NY), Hudson Valley Seed Company (Accord, NY) and Transgenerational Farm (Accord, NY).

Rose Hill is a pick-your-own orchard and cidery with 190 apple varieties, plus peaches, plums, blueberries, and cherries. They are a low-spray operation and have one ‘bioblock”, where they are trying organic methods. We (Claudia, Josie Laing & Conrad) walked around with farm manager Kevin Clark.

One of the most noticeable aspects, to an ecologist, is the space provided for wild (literally) flowers.  This takes the form of both blocks allowed to grow up until a fall mowing and similarly managed areas between the trees.

Fun sightings included Sassafras growing along the eastern edge, and a fruiting Serviceberry with ample, ripe, healthy fruits (elsewhere birds or Apple-cedar Rust generally seem to get to the berries before we do). There were also both Smooth Sumach and Staghorn Sumach. In the abundant flowering milkweed, we noted the occasional bee or beetle ‘captured’ by the Common Milkweed flowers, but also saw them feeding ample visitors including a Banded Hairstreak. We also saw Common Milkweed’s cousin, Indian Hemp, between the trees. Other butterflies noticed during our quick visit were Least Skipper, Tiger Swallowtail (probably Eastern), Meadow Fritillary (they have been declining and so are always nice to see), Common Wood Nymph, Monarch, Silver-spotted Skipper and Great Spangled Fritillary.

This was just our preliminary tour of Rose Hill, so expect more details later. Our visits to the other three farms were only quick orientations from the farmer, and we did not spend time scouting any of them, so expect an introduction to each of them later also. Anne Bloomfield who, together with Will Yandik, will be doing bird surveys joined us for our visits to the ‘west bank’ farms.