This Month’s Featured Article

“Shopping with us keeps farms alive and operating – buying from local farms is beneficial to everyone,” Donna Staron said recently. “The land stays open and free of development, such as solar farms. And, if you don’t cultivate your land, it goes back to trees, so then you’re not looking at open space. Know your farmer, know where your food is coming from: good, fresh food.”

Locally-sourced

An added, perhaps oftentimes overlooked benefit: no recalls. No manufacturer shenanigans. “We keep our product clean. It’s all locally grown. If I source out, I’m sourcing out from other farmers I know, and I know their practices,” added Staron. 

Currently, counting the land they own and land they rent, the Starons have around 225 acres in cultivation.

Had it not been for farming, Donna thought she’d like “to do something with kids. Now that I’ve farmed, my dream is to teach kids about farming, to try to raise kids’ interest in farming, because then people would know where their food comes from. It kills me when people don’t know where their food comes from.”

A farming family

Instead of embarking on a career with kids though, she and husband, Stanley, received their own, up-close and personal education. Stanley, a Chatham High 1975 graduate, and Donna, CHS Class of ’78, started dating and farming potatoes as teenagers. While farming, dating, and still living at home with her mom and dad, Donna recalls, “Stanley would pick me up in the morning in Spencertown, and we’d go farm. We’d sell veggies at the auction in Hillsdale and go to the Chatham auction with veggies and potatoes.” 

The couple married in 1980. “Stanley wanted to farm,” Donna explains. “I fell in love with a farmer, and this is where I got. See what happens? For our 25th anniversary, we went to Pennsylvania and bought an irrigation pump. We still have it. It was our first vacation in 20 years. We stayed overnight and were on the road by seven the next morning.”

The farming life did not arrive out of the clear blue sky for Donna and Stanley. For more than a century, it’s been a family affair for the Staron clan in the truest sense of the phrase, beginning in 1922 with Stanley’s grandparents, Thomas and Mary Staron, working 150 acres in East Chatham, on to the ensuing generation of brothers Ed, John, and Stanley Sr. farming 360 acres in Valatie, and now involving daughter, Shelly Staron Mossman, and a granddaughter, Emily Gaylord.

7 days a week, all year long

Were either of them aware they’d wind up doing this forever? Early on, Donna said she told her father, “Stanley can farm five days a week, but I still get my weekends.” Her dad thought that was amusing. And it didn’t take long for Donna to learn how that would (not) work out.

In the early days, Stanley would say he didn’t want to be tied down to farming. Nonetheless, there are beef cows to tend in the winter and the stand to keep humming in the summer. “We plant a crop in the spring and harvest in the fall, so I’m not sure where the not-being-tied-down part comes in. Every day it’s something,” said Donna. 

And then there was a farm stand

In the early 1980s, the couple decided to take a shot at selling some of their goods themselves. Initially that came in the form of a self-serve operation in the front yard of Donna’s uncle, Frank Whiteman, across from Winding Brook Country Club on Route 203 in Valatie, NY. From 1984 to ’88, Donna spent her days at the stand with daughters Sandy and Shelly in tow. The permanent farm stand, the one that operates today at 4 Merwin Road, Valatie, just off Route 203, opened in 1988. Three additions to the original structure later, it is now a fixture on the landscape.

“I enjoy being at the stand,” said Donna. “I got to raise my kids at the stand. We didn’t have any daycare.”

After college, daughter Shelly took different jobs, yet found she “wasn’t as passionate about them as I was about farming. I love watching everything grow. I do more field work than stand work lately. First, I pick flowers early in the morning. Then I help open the stand, putting out all of the fruits and veggies. After checking for that day’s order, I go pick in the field. I pick more delicate veggies, such as lettuces and greens, in the morning. Depending on where we are in the season, I weed, put out irrigation, fix irrigation, lay plastic mulch, plant, replant, dig potatoes, do animal control, start seeds, check crops, and do a lot  of picking.”

Growing up, said Shelly, who started driving a tractor at the age of eight, “Farm life didn’t interfere with any school activities. I still played sports: soccer, basketball, and cheerleading. It actually made me better. I was in good physical shape from doing farm work. Preseason was never that hard. I remember being taken out of school once to dig potatoes, but that was fun.”

“Mom and dad are such hard workers – that’s what has kept the operation going. Mom has great relationships with her customers. She knows the name of everyone that comes into the stand. It’s amazing,” added Shelly. 

At times, the Starons have been known to have their dinner in the field, mainly while irrigating late in the day. “I’d take a Hibachi, and we’d grill hamburgers,” Donna said. She then added, “The food we’ve eaten, we’ve produced – and we’ve never starved.” 

Community Supported Agriculture

Some years back, the Starons became involved in Community Supported Agriculture, which they say has worked out well for them. CSA customers pay for their shares in the spring, which helps with the beginning-of-the-season cash flow and provides participating farmers with a better idea of what to plant. 

Prior to the CSA, extra goods would be wholesaled, but that’s no longer as much of a thing. During the season, the Starons travel three times a week to market in Menands, where they sell their wares and purchase things they don’t grow that can be sold at the stand. Those days tend to start around 4am. 

A sense of community is far from lost on the Starons. Over the years, Donna has been involved in Keep Farming and the Chatham Agricultural Partnership, served on the Town of Chatham’s planning board and the town’s Comprehensive Plan Committee twice, and helped rewrite the town zoning code. The Chatham Agricultural Partnership awarded her the first Farmer of the Year Award to thank her for 20 years of service to the town.

The climate

The change in climate in recent years has presented its own set of challenges to the Starons. Said Donna: “We have had more extremes in recent years – from really hot to cold or vice versa. Springs are warmer, which pushes strawberries to blossom, but then a late frost hits and kills the blossoms. It can be really dry and then rain constantly, which creates disease and bugs.” Over time, hail, flooding, and wind damage have afflicted the Starons’ efforts. 

“They can’t predict what it’s going to do from one day to the next anyway,” she said, “so we don’t pay attention to a lot of that. Last year started out really wet, but then the faucet turned off and never turned back on, and the year wound up hot and dry. One thing I’ve really noticed is we get those ups and downs. When we were kids, when the temperature changed, you would get rain. We don’t get that now. It just changes, and you don’t get the rain. You don’t get the thunderstorm. I don’t want really bad thunderstorms because they bring a lot of issues, but now when you’re thinking it’s cooled off and is going to rain, it doesn’t. And one thing we very rarely got 30 years ago were tornadoes, but now how often do we get a tornado watch or warning? When I’m at the stand, if we get a tornado warning, I’m out of there.”

“Farming is about loving the land, enjoying the animals we raise, and having a sense of pride in what we produce,” Donna says. “It’s a way of life. It’s not about being money-rich. We are rich in other ways. It’s a sense of accomplishment growing a crop every year. It’s about watching a thunderstorm and praying it doesn’t destroy the crop but still being thankful for the rain. About enjoying the seasons and what each one gives us.” 

Donna’s voice sounds wistful when she says, “We’ve been farming for 48 years. It would be nice to not work so hard. In order to farm we bought land over the years. Our land is our retirement. We struggle with how to retire but still keep the land open. We are not ready to give up what we have worked so hard for. We want to have time to enjoy the land we treasure so much.”

In the meanwhile, however, “There’s always fun on the farm.” •

Staron Farm is at 4 Merwin Rd, Valatie, NY 12184, or visit them online at thestaronfarm.com.