Hops Hollow Farm

Welcome

Hops Hollow is an experimental farm located in Poughquag, NY. Our land has been "resting" for the 20+ years we've owned it and aerial photos from many years ago indicate it has never been used for chemical based agriculture. We are lucky to have a clean slate to start with.

2018 is our fourth season and experience has hardened our resolve to achieve our goals.

Our goals are :

• • Demonstrate small scale sustainable farming is economically feasible.

  • Use sustainable growing practices with emphasis on soil health and promote diverse microbial communities to ensure high availability of nutrients to our crops. 

  • Increase appreciation for fresh locally raised produce by harvesting crops in their prime and minimizing the time from field to plate. To realize this goal we're experimenting with new distribution methods.

  • Identify methods for small farms to build lasting relationships with like-minded members of their community. We believe social networks have potential to unite and serve like-minded individuals much more effectively.

  • Help farmers utilize existing technology platforms to maximize market value of crops and reduce food waste by improving visibility of crop availability. Farmers already know that planting and harvest records are important for farm management, we believe that farms of the future will store and organize their records electronically and that their records can generate harvest schedules to share directly with customers. Have a look at our harvest schedule to see what we mean.

If you'd like to visit our farm and/or purchase some of its bounty, please message us on Facebook...  Our Hops Hollow Farm Facebook Page.

2017 Accomplishments

• • We hosted a cider pressing event for a local Home Brewers Club in an effort to connect with like minded individuals interested in using local products to make healthy foods and beverages. 

  • We continue to use buckwheat as a cover crop. In 2017 we added mustard as a cover crop to follow Potatoes because mustards release chemical agents called glucosalinates which suppress soil-borne pathogens and pests (fungi, nematodes, and some weeds). Both cover crops did a good job suppressing perennial weeds, was effectively "terminated" by the winter cold, and provided a weed free environment for us to plant our spring crops into. 

  • We used neem oil to control potato beetles on our potatoes and had another bumper crop of hard to find specialty potato varieties. 

  • We continue to evovle a database that we're using to publish our harvest schedule. The system uses a cloud based computing platform called SalesForce.com and we are working to provide the same capability to any farm at no charge. The harvest schedule has helped us communicate our harvest schedule to customers, improved sales, and reduced waste. 

  • Our custom built a bed-lifter helped us harvest 2700 lbs of specialty potatoes. At our small scale a PTO driven potato digger is overkill, but our bed-lifter attaches to a standard 3-pt hitch tool bar, costs about $100 to make, and spares us the back-breaking work of forking potatoes. Our labor cost ( harvest only) for potatoes was reduced from 23 cents per lb to about 10 cents a pound.

  • We continue to utilize Facebook as a medium to follow our crops from farm to table. We supply vegetables to local restaurants and encourage chefs and household cooks to share how they have used our crops. We believe that cooking and eating is a meaningful social experience that should be shared and celebrated.