The Poughkeepsie Harvest Fest: A Celebration of Community and Fresh Produce
This past Saturday, October 14, Hudson Valley locals gathered for the Poughkeepsie Harvest Fest. Organized by the Poughkeepsie Farm Project (PFP), the fest celebrated fresh produce and the relationship between local farmers and the land from which they harvest.
“Our vision is a regional collaborative community of farms,” said Sonya Joy Key, the Education Director of the PFP. “Our mission is to develop leaders who will be active in exploring barriers to food access and educating folks about their own relationship to their bodies and what they eat.”
The Poughkeepsie Harvest Fest featured an assortment of soups and fresh baked breads and treats from local farmers such as El Azteca and local vendors such as Rossi’s Deli.
Also available at the fest were delectable soups from various local chefs; options included chicken dumpling, chicken lime, and vegetarian among others. All available options contained locally sourced fresh produce, which is distributed and made widely accessible through the PFP.
The PFP makes produce so widely accessible through its relationship with locals, and initiatives such as nutritional assistance programs.
“We run a 15-acre vegetable production farm, and we’re community-supported so folks who get food from our farm either have a share that they purchased, or they use SNAP benefits,” said Key. “We also donate about 30% of what we grow, which ends up being somewhere between 25 and 30 thousand pounds of produce a year — that’s almost how much a separate farm would grow, so we’re very high production for the amount of space that we have.”
Key is fully committed to the PFP’s mission of increasing access to fresh produce for everyone. “In the foundation of the project, there was always intended to be a relationship with folks of color and people who are divested from by the food industry,” Key shared. “What I would really love to see in the future is not so much of a charity dynamic with food distribution but for everyone being able to access land.”
Lydia Hatfield, co-director of the PFP, spoke further on some of the project’s values. She began by acknowledging the displacement of indigenous communities from farmland such as that which the PFP harvests from. “We must recognize this displacement and that, as an organization, we have insufficiently endeavored to right the wrong of this displacement which continues to deeply affect indigenous communities everywhere to this day,” Hatfield said. “To this end, we aspire to build and sustain relationships with indigenous communities.”
Hatfield went on to address the magnitude of the PFP’s food donations, stating that in 2023 it has been “one of the biggest donors of locally grown produce in the Hudson Valley, distributing more than 30 thousand pounds of fresh food every year.”
The PFP’s next major goal, according to Hatfield, is to “donate 50 thousand pounds of food annually by 2030.” Aspiring for a 20 thousand pound increase, Hatfield emphasized the PFP’s reliance on its donors, partners, volunteers, and interns, all of whom she thanked to end her presentation.
