![]() ![]() ![]() The goal was to supply its 150 members year-round (up to 200 now) with ingredients for three organic meals a day – not just vegetables, salad greens, herbs and a few fruits, but also grains, flour, beans, eggs, meat, dairy, honey, maple syrup, cut flowers, even soap. It currently comprises 1,100 acres and is managed with horsedrawn farm machinery rather than tractors, using no chemical pesticides or fertilizers. Kimball left city life behind and, with her new husband (who adopted her surname), took on the immense job of starting and running a 500-acre CSA near Lake Champlain, known as Essex Farm. She was surprised how deeply the hands-on work appealed to her, soon concluding that “Humans are hard-wired to be agrarians.” She also fell quickly in love with the “wingnut,” who had grown up in New Paltz, the son of environmental educator Ann Guenther and “Farmer Dan” Guenther, co-founder of several local CSAs including Phillies Bridge Farm in Gardiner, the Poughkeepsie Farm Project and Brook Farm in New Paltz. ![]() But in pursuit of an interview with Mark Guenther, whom she pegged at the time as “a wingnut farmer,” Kimball took up his challenge first to hoe broccoli and then to help slaughter a hog. ![]() Gardening hadn’t ever been part of her skillset. In 2002, at age 31, Harvard grad Kristin Kimball was living in Manhattan, working as a freelance writer. ![]()
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