Hudson Valley Magazine
CHRISTINA CHAN: CHOY DIVISION
Farm operator Christina Chan is cultivating her land to grow organic produce that Asian Americans across New York can’t easily find. She accomplishes this through a CSA available in the Hudson Valley and New York City. The program is marketed via churches and food pantries in English and Chinese, so that language is never a barrier. Korean and Japanese outreach are in the works.
Creatives on Making Their Home in the Hudson Valley
BIALIS FARMS : THE FARM GIRL COOKS
KASHA BIALIS runs Bialas Farms, a third-generation farm in New Hampton, with her mother and father, and is also a full-time mother to Thomas, her teenage son who loves all 55 acres nearly as much as Bialas does herself. In the early days of her career as a farmer and working single mother, however, she struggled to find balance.
As a family farmer, a woman farmer, and a mother to boot, Bialas has her finger on the pulse of the past, present, and future of life at Bialas Farms. She knows what it took to get the farm to where it is today, just as she understands first-hand the dedication and patience required of the next generation to get it where it needs to go. From her post in Orange County, she’s witnessed the changes that have rippled across the farming industry in recent years. Many of them have impacted her farm directly, including the push to become more educated about food and its origins.
VALLEY TABLE, 2020
KAREN WASHINGTON: RISE & ROOT FARM
Karen Washington has her hands in the dirt. At Rise & Root Farm, the three-acre property she runs with three other women in Chester, she keeps her pulse on the soil. She knows what it needs to grow her herbs and tomatoes, just as she knows that, if she’s not careful, it will invite a whole host of weeds to thrive within it.
A retired, African American woman from the Bronx, Washington manages an enviable for-profit farm with friends in the heart of the Hudson Valley’s Black Dirt region. More striking, perhaps, is that she didn’t hit her stride as a farmer until she ended her 30-year career as a physical therapist and pursued a passion that had long pulled on her heartstrings. With planning, perseverance, and a whole lot of guts, she made her dream into a tactile, visceral thing.
VALLEY TABLE, 2020
Rebecca Shim : Phoenicia Honey Co
In her downtime outside the kitchen, she began keeping bees, a hobby that eventually introduced her to Phoenicia Honey Co. When its founder, Elissa Jane Mastel, retired from the company and offered Shim the reins, she stepped up as an entrepreneur. Although the early days of business ownership were trying, since she had to learn branding, sales, and social media from the ground up, she found her footing. In autumn 2018, she celebrated one of her greatest successes to date when she moved Phoenicia Honey Co. into its first production space and participated in the Farm & Food Funding Accelerator through the Hudson Valley AgriBusiness Development Corp (HVADC). As part of the program, she received assistance to create a business plan, funding, and even a grant for marketing development.
VALLEY TABLE, 2020
Patti Jackson : Kitchen at Shale Hill Farm
Patti Jackson faced her fair share of obstacles in her past life as a pastry chef. Now the chef and partner at Saugerties catering company Kitchen at Shale Hill Farm, Jackson began her culinary story in Baltimore, Maryland and Washington D.C., where she came face-to-face with poverty, sexism, and cultural discrimination. In the kitchen, she grew accustomed to criticism from French pastry chefs for her American roots and often found herself as the only woman in restaurants with full rosters of front- and back-of-house staff.
