Roisin Creedon-Carey chose to intern at Cornell Cooperative Extension to focus on sustainable agriculture practiced through community living. This is the final of three blog posts in her experience embracing seasonal eating as part of her student experience at St. Lawrence’s Adirondack Semester. Find the link to her recipe at the close of the article.
Yurt village at Adirondack Semester, photo credit: St. Lawrence University
Every Friday, our assistant directors Will and Amanda, would leave the yurt village to do office work and run errands. The students would stay, attending classes and plugging away at woodworking projects, knowing that at 6:30 pm we would reconvene at the dinner table. Around 4:30, we would start to get antsy. We knew that they’d soon be back with mail, newspapers, and weather reports, but most importantly vegetables, meat, and eggs for the week ahead. A bell would ring, alerting us to their arrival. The ten of us would run to greet them and begin hauling in the boxes of goodies from the outside world.
As a group, we would divide and conquer. Some students would bring mail into the classroom, and others would trek vegetables from our Kent Family Growers share into the kitchen. We would shift the vegetables we still had on hand to the front of the pantry so they’d get used first. Read more Vegetable Lover’s Shakshuka
Roisin Creedon-Carey chose to intern at Cornell Cooperative Extension to focus on sustainable agriculture practiced through community living. This is the second installment of three blog posts in her experience embracing seasonal and local eating. Find the link to her recipe at the close of the article.
In the Yurt village at the Adirondack Semester, all our veggies and meat were local. We diced carrots from North Country soils, sauteed perfectly purple eggplant, and fried ground beef for stroganoff. The students were divided into 5 cook teams to make all our meals. As the semester progressed, we ended up filling specific food niches. My cook partner and I made eggplant parmesan, stir-fries, and the Wednesday night classic of the semester was the recipe I am featuring today: Beef Stroganoff. With a few gluten-sensitive residents, two vegans, and two vegetarians this recipe lent itself to interpretation. Ultimately, we ended up with three pots of pasta: one with meat and dairy, one with meat substitutes, and one without meat, dairy, or gluten
Halfway through our fall semester, we toured three Adirondack farms and were excited to learn about sustainable agriculture from young minds. Getting our food from local farmers was fulfilling so we were eager to meet the people with dirt under their fingernails. After a Friday of woodworking and lectures, we packed our bags for an overnight at North Country Creamery in Keeseville, New York. We pitched our tents and bedded down early so we could rise with the sun to milk the cows. The philosophy at North Country Creamery is perfectly exemplified by their farm store. Left unlocked and operated on the honor system, owners Ashlee Klainhammer and Steve Googin want to provide for their immediate community before all else. Inspired by our morning milking, Bri Duggan, beef stroganoff creator, sustainable agriculture fan, and avid student decided to intern at North Country Creamery. Duggan likes this recipe because it’s a good dish for a large group and it’s easy to customize since as she says, “you can add as many veggies as you want!”
The herd moving pastures at North Country Creamery
With just enough coffee in our systems to make it to the next stop, we drove up the road to Mace Chasm Farm. As our Adirondack Semester program centers around community living, we eagerly hung onto every word Asa Thomas-Train told us about the lively nights when their farm hosts summer music events. They aren’t just partying all the time, in fact they work hard raising their own livestock, with an on-site butcher shop where they create custom sausage flavors, bone broths and more. Mace Chasm aims to be resilient and ensure that the needs of both the farm and the customers are met. We were getting accustomed to this level of care for the community and livestock. Particularly impressed, fellow Adirondack Semester student Cara Monteleone is currently learning how to butcher meat here and they say “the time and effort put into caring for the livestock shows in the product. It’s rewarding to give back to a strong community that benefits from having a resource like Mace Chasm.”
Self-serve farmstore at Mace Chasm with entrance to butcher shop
Our last stop of the day was Essex Farm, a full-diet CSA that has operated for over a decade. Co-owner Mark Kimball ran around with us as we picked raspberries with gleeful eyes and full bellies. He closed out the tour by generously offering us armloads of vegetables, dairy, and freshly ground beef. Mark’s philosophy on community stems from reciprocity and gratitude. And what did we do with this living abundance? We turned it into beef stroganoff, of course!
Much of our animal protein this semester came from 8 O’clock Ranch in DeKalb.
In a semester focused on place, sustainability, and reciprocity there was no better way to align our values than to source our food from area farmers. At this point in the semester we’ve been asked how this experience will impact our lives going forward. For some, this takes the shape of farming, others working for environmental non-profits, and some will get involved in local politics. While we’ve all been impacted differently, the sense of fulfillment we gained from home cooked meals and authentic farmers will remain a testimony to the value of passion and thoughtfulness in rooting ourselves to a place.
Here’s how we made our Beef Stroganoff on the Adirondack Semester, find recipe here.
This past summer I was a Garden to Table intern at Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County. I am a student at St. Lawrence University and the internship was through the Public Interest Corps on campus, which pairs students with non-profits in the North Country. I carried out multiple projects while there, including designing content for a pollinator garden sign, editing videos about food producers, contributing to a collection of local, seasonal recipes, and assisting with cooking classes for youth attending Farm Day Camp. These projects, in addition to the everyday tasks like watering and harvesting in the high tunnel, helped to forward the mission of Extension.
One of my favorite assignments was designing the pollinator garden signage. I started by researching models used in gardens around the world and reading about native plants and pollinators of the North Country, using resources such as the New York State Conservationist magazine. I used a design software called Canva which I had experience with before this internship but got to explore further in this assignment. With feedback from my supervisor, Erica, we arrived at a final version. It is rewarding to know that something I helped envision will be placed permanently at the Learning Farm for visitors to enjoy.
Pollinator Sign
Apart from gaining a new skill set, I have grown more knowledgeable about the North Country after this internship, as well as more passionate about the activities and organizations that exist here. I understood that nonprofits have a big role to play in rural New York, and Cornell Cooperative Extension in particular has a role in supporting local farmers and businesses, as well as providing stimulating activities for youth.
The High Tunnel at CCE
I am beyond grateful for the people that welcomed me at Extension, and interning here opened my eyes to the community of northern New York. My experience was enriching professionally but also made my summer a more enjoyable experience: I tasted blueberries for the first time, harvested my first tomatoes, connected with kids through food, and met incredible people. I hope to implement what I learned into my academic studies but also in my daily life, bringing to SLU everything I learned about the local culture and environment.
