Our Farm and COVID-19
Our farm has always been a place that brings people together. There’s a certain magic in the buzz of a busy weekend on the farm. Throughout my lifetime, we’ve hosted music festivals, artists’ receptions, haunted hayrides, bonfire celebrations, and grown millions of pounds of fruit to be shared with our local community.
COVID-19 makes all of this a little more complicated. When our essence, our ethos — whatever you want to call that thing deep down that just drives us — says “come together,” it hurts to enforce policies of separation here on the farm. But it’s necessary, and the better we all comply with expert recommendations, the sooner we can all get back to doing the things we love.
We’ve been closely monitoring recommendations from the CDC and the Cornell Small Farms Program to adopt the necessary precautions to keep our guests and team safe at our farm and market. I’ll be updating this post as our practices evolve. If you have any concerns or recommendations, please feel free to contact us. All emails are sent directly to me.
Precautions at the Farm Market
Our Actions:
On March 16, we launched an online store. We urged our community to place an order online for contactless curbside pickup or free local delivery.
At the same time, we requested that only senior citizens shop in our market. We recognize that grocery shopping has become a bit of a stressful endeavor. We hope to minimize traffic in the market while keeping some normalcy for our senior citizen customers.
Our team is required to wear face masks at all times while in the market.
We added plexiglass barriers between guests and staff at checkout.
We added 6’ taped marks on the floor to keep the checkout line organized and at a safe distance.
We Ask Our Guests:
If you are able to, please consider placing your order online instead of entering our market. If you don’t see something on our website, give us a call at 845-758-8007.
If you must enter the market, please wear a face mask at all times.
Pick-Your-Own Precautions
We have 100 acres of active farmland here, so it should be easy to keep your distance. I am less worried about the picking are than I am about the parking lots and checkout areas. Fortunately, asparagus is our first crop, and it tends to draw smaller crowds than our berries. Asparagus will be a good opportunity to trial our safety procedures on a small scale.
Our Actions:
We have added plexiglass barriers in our booths to separate guests from staff during check in and check out.
We’ll have a scale and credit card reader placed on a table outside of the booth. This should enable contactless checkout.
Our team is required to wear a face mask at all times while working in the booth or near other people.
Asparagus & Strawberries - To spread pickers out, we will be directing cars to both ends of the fields. We added signs at each end of the field that indicate numbered picking areas. We will be designating one picking area to each car.
Blueberries - Blueberries are one of our larger crops, so we have plenty of space to spread people out. When you arrive, we’ll direct you to drive to one of several different parking areas. Before you enter a row to begin picking, please look down the row to see if there is someone else in the row. Please do your best to find an empty row.
We Ask Our Guests:
If you are feeling at all unwell, please stay home. We’ll have plenty of each of our crops available for sale at the farm market, and we deliver!
If possible, please use a credit card (or Apple Pay). We would like to minimize the amount of physical cash exchanged at our booth.
Please wear a mask during check in, check out, and when near other pickers.
Your car will be given a designated picking area. Please stay within that picking area.
Additional Precautions In Consideration
If designated picking areas don’t spread people out enough, we may have to enforce a capacity limit and use a reservation system.