As a Penn State Master Gardener, I am required to take 8 hours of continuing education each year. I wanted to take the opportunity to visit a farm just outside of NYC called Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, so I chose a day that a class that interested
me was being held. I traveled with my husband, Mike, and my daughter, Jessi, on a cold, winter day through the beautiful Hudson River Valley and over the 3+ mile long Tappan Zee Bridge to the former Rockefeller estate.
We took the class Intensive Home Growing Techniques for Homegrown Edibles taught by James Carr of the NY Botanical Gardens and author of Gardening and Landscaping the Natural Way. The 3 hour class was informative and inspiring and I am especially anxious to begin using what I learned to extend the gardening season in my PA garden. I’ll try to keep you up to date in future posts.
Both before and after the class we enjoyed the 80 acre, four-season farm. We found much life for the middle of winter. Stone Barns 
raises over 200 varieties of organic crops in their fields and greenhouse beds. Many of those crops are growing right now, and not just in the greenhouses. It is also home to cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, ducks and turkeys – all pasture raised. The farm also maintains a number of bee hives. One of the most exciting things we found are a cafe and a
restaurant which are sourced from the surrounding fields and pasture, as well as other local farms. We enjoyed a fabulous lunch at the cafe which included parsnip soup, homemade bologna sandwiches on freshly baked bread (I could genuinely learn to like bologna if this is what it’s meant to be like), and parsnip cake with cream cheese icing (not surprisingly, they harvested parsnips this week). The cake tasted very much like carrot cake and inspired me to consider growing parsnips.
Here are a few more shots from the day:
Shared at Simple Lives Thursday, Homestead Barn Hop, Fight Back Friday
learningandyearning 
Wow! Must’ve been a great day! Everything looks impeccably clean. Can’t wait to hear about all you’re learning.
You.Are.My.Inspiration!
You make me blush! 😉 Everything about the place – animals, buildings, fields – is very well cared for! And the food! I only mentioned half of it. I had a cabbage roll that I drooled over. This was bread with savory cabbage rolled into it. Very unique and creative. I would have loved to have stayed and had dinner, but it would have meant bringing a change of clothing, and the prices start at $50, so it was a bit high for us after paying for the classes, etc.
Wow…I had no idea you are a “Master Gardener”…though I am not surprised 😉 That place is beautiful! I think Jeremy would love to go there some day too.
We loved it there, Kara. It was VERY windy, though, and so I didn’t take as many photos as I would have liked. A spring day when all is green would be glorious, but I am really interested in winter gardening, so I wanted to go now.
Master Gardener! Awesome. I like how it pushes you to continue educating yourself! That’s fantastic. So interesting how they covered their plants. It looked so cold! Parsnip cake? Looked just like carrot cake! How did it taste?
I have been gardening since I am 16, but I have learned more in the past 2 years since becoming a Master Gardener than I have in the previous *many* years put together. The parsnip cake tasted very much like carrot cake. I loved it!!!!!