Lauren Olson – Fruition

August 15, 2022Lauren Olson

Local Foods Weekend 2022!

Join us on September 9th, 10th, and 11th for Local Foods Weekend, with events hosted by over 30 different food producers and businesses throughout St. Lawrence County and its neighboring areas. You can attend one, a few, or try to make it to all of the different events.

The Weekend’s events range from tours to tastings to kid-friendly activities, there’s something for everyone. Come out and participate in this exciting 3-day celebration of the products and the people that grow, raise, sell, or prepare food in and nearby St. Lawrence County.

Our rural food system is powered by many hard working farm suppliers, growers, retail stores, cooperatives, and restaurants, along with local organizations and customers. Explore our foodshed and discover the diversity of products created in the North Country.

See the individual event listing on the Local Foods Weekend Blog Page HERE. Events can be viewed via the online map, which includes the ability to filter the types of events and days of individual events. You can see photos and read the bios of all the businesses and farms participating or you can read the brochure of event listings for a complete list of options!

This event is associated with the Extension exhibit In Season: Our Rural Food System in Photos on display at Traditional Arts of Upstate New York (TAUNY) in downtown Canton from May 14-October 29, 2022. Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County aims to foster a unique weekend experience with dozens of different activities that entice the community to dive into the rich local offerings.

Lauren grew up in neighboring Vermont exploring and loving the green mountains and vast landscapes. Her undergraduate degree made her appreciate the communities that surround local foods and a Master’s Certificate in Food Studies from the University of Southern Maine made her want to pursue a career in the food system. In 2021 and 2022, she was the Local Foods Marketing and Development Educator for Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County.

June 3, 2022Lauren Olson

Photographing Farm & Food Businesses in St. Lawrence County

I sat down with Jennifer McCluskey of McCluskey Photography LLC in Canton, who was hired by Cornell Cooperative Extension to capture photos at area farms and food businesses as part of a Farm-to-Table initiative over the past 4 years. Since 2018, Cornell Cooperative Extension has been offering free professional photo shoots to any direct market producer who sells food in St. Lawrence County. The producers have 100% access to their images which have been used for their own education and promotion purposes. Extension spent the winter combing through the 12,000+ images and we curated an exhibit called In Season: Our Rural Food System in Photos. From pastures to deli cases to bee yards, it was a pleasure to travel the roads of St. Lawrence County documenting the farms and food businesses with Jennifer!

In this interview you can learn more about Jennifer’s background and her experience participating in this project.

Jennifer will also be leading a farm and food photography workshop on June 11th, read more here.

Jennifer taking photos at Rock Hollow Farm

How long have you been photographing professionally? How did you start?

I started taking photos professionally when I moved to St. Lawrence County in 2009. When I started the business, I had a purpose in mind. I felt like far too many people miss the small moments of beauty in their lives, instead thinking too much on the negatives in the world. I wanted to capture these moments of beauty, joy, and heartfelt emotion to help remind people of all the good that is out there. I feel like I have begun to accomplish that over the last few years in business, and want to work more to meet that goal. I find the North Country to be a beautiful place with great scenery for photographing, and wonderful, kind people who have welcomed me and my camera into their homes and lives.

How did you get involved with the Farm-to-Table photoshoots?

I got involved with Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE), through Flip Flippi, the Local Foods Program Leader at CCE in 2018 when Flip was collecting ideas about what the project would look like. We started by just talking through the project and what it would entail. Eventually as we were planning I was asked to be the photographer for the farm-to-table professional photoshoots for food and farm businesses in the area, and it’s worked out really well. We’ve taken images of some 80 plus food and farm businesses.

What aspects of a farm or restaurant photoshoot do you enjoy the most?

I really like seeing all the different and interesting things that people are working on. I didn’t know about the variety of products or places we have here in St. Lawrence County until I started working on the farm-to-table photoshoots. Like for example, Deer River Cranberries, I had heard of it but I didn’t know the scale of the production until we went there and saw the whole process from start to finish. Plus I love trying the delicious foods from our area producers.

Can you give us an example of a memorable farm photoshoot?

At Thompson’s Tree Farm, the steam from the sugaring process made the sunlight streaming through the maple stained glass and gaps in the boards look really ethereal, which was enjoyable to photograph. The photoshoot at Our Little Grewve Farm in Hermon also stood out to me, there were lots of little details to capture and beautiful flowers to take images of. The same with Never Tire Farm, the weather was bad and sleeting outside but it was beautiful inside the greenhouse and the soft light made it nice for photos.

Steam from the Sugaring Process at Thompson’s Tree Farm

March 23, 2022Lauren Olson

First Ever Ag and Food Producers Academy: Complete!

On March 12th at the Learning Farm, we wrapped up the first ever Ag & Food Producers Academy. Over the course of 8 weeks Academy participants had the opportunity to attend a variety of business and marketing classes tailored to small scale food and farm businesses. Four courses were held online during weeknights for 3-4 weeks. Topics led by specialists and educators included, Social Media Management, Business and Financing, E-Commerce For Producers and Food Businesses and Making Food Products in New York State. As a fairly new Educator here at CCE, who works with food producers and farmers looking to boost their marketing, I found myself teaching and leading the social media course. It was a great opportunity to blend the online social media marketing world with the realities of running your own food and farm business. You can read more about the specific topics and instructors HERE. While the majority of the learning took place online, the closing event allowed us to meet each other in-person and share conversations over some delicious food.

Participants talking over some freshly brewed tea

We had a wide range of guest presenters and speakers such as Lissa Goldstien of Wild Work Farm talking about her ECommerce platform and Chrissy Claudio of Simply C Farm explaining how she organizes her finances. Participants were also able to watch an interview with Food And Ferment co-owner Carly Dougherty explaining how they’ve scale their value added food business and hear from Dillion Kleepetar of Farmstead catering talking about how to best approach a social media strategy, just to name a few. It was a pleasure to hear all of their insights and stories and allowed for some great questions and conversations, and proved to be some participants favorite part of the classes. One participant shared, “The guest speakers were very inspiring, and hearing how they incorporated different e-commerce platforms into their businesses was very informative.”