This article first appeared in the April/May 2015 issue of Organic Hudson Valley.

Glynwood’s farm, located in Cold Spring, New York, carries on a tradition of conservation started by the Perkins family in the 1920s when they owned the farm. Prior to their ownership, it had been a functioning farm since the 1700s. “When the matriarch of that first generation passed away, they wanted to do something with the property,” Ken Kleinpeter, the vice president of operations at Glynwood, said. “They founded the not-for-profit to maintain some sustainability aspect. The Perkins family had a strong conservation ethic. They also wanted to preserve this beautiful property that was their family property.”

Through the establishment of Glynwood, the family was able to continue their mission and legacy of helping create sustainable communities. Today, the farm has evolved to include a focus on food and farming issues, something that became important when industrial agriculture seemed to take over and “farming almost died out in this valley,” Kleinpeter said. “One of the things we are focusing on all the time is sustainability.”

One solution was the creation of an apprentice program for farmers. Glynwood created the apprentice program with the aim of helping to bring farming back to the Hudson Valley and the local community. “We focus on people that we think are going to be farmers,” Kleinpeter said. “A fair amount of them have and are still working in the valley.” The farm looks for applicants that are willing to commit for a full year as either a livestock or vegetable apprentice.

“Because we are not-for-profit, we can offer more, I would say, extensive training,” Kleinpeter said. “Other farms don’t have all the resources that a not-for-profit might have. We built in some extra apprenticeships so we can get the work done, but also have the ability to free them up [the apprentices] for some formal classroom training. We have standard classes like tractor safety programs, or soil science, or guest farmers that come in and talk to the apprentices about their budgets. We run our farm around that [the apprenticeship program]. I probably would not run the farm exactly the way I run it if our only plan was to make money, but we consider the training of our new farmers our priority.”

The training extends beyond strictly farm work. “A lot of time people don’t realize the broad breadth of the other things that we do that aren’t farming,” Kleinpeter said. “What we think of as our core audience, if you will, we think of as the trade, the food and farming professionals. Those are the people we are mostly looking to serve.” Those are the people that are also the most essential to continuing a sustainable farming community in the Hudson Valley.

“There needs to be some intervention into this system,” Kleinpeter said. People used to be able to grow up in communities and get the training they need. They can’t get that now. “There needs to be a not-for-profit to get that system back in check.” The apprenticeship program is, “part of the solution to that problem, to getting that back in balance.”

Glynwood hopes to continue to expand its programs, keeping the focus on sustainability and the local Hudson Valley just as the Perkins originally did. “It became clear that farming was very, very critical to the Hudson Valley and the community work that Glynwood was doing,” Kleinpeter said. The farm is currently certified naturally grown, but they are pursuing complete organic certification for their vegetable operation. “One of the things we are focusing on all the time is sustainability.”