My name is Robert Rawluk, or, as I’m known to many young and elder people, Bob the Beekeeper.I have worn many hats in my life. A laborer, a plumber, an artist, an art teacher, a florist, a furniture store owner, a cabinetmaker, an engineering teacher, and finally, a...
Long before our contemporary chefs developed
the New American cuisine, farmers
and horticulturists were the custodians of
taste, walking their orchards, vineyards, and
vegetable fields sampling fruits and saving
seeds from the most cleverly delicious tree,
bush, or vine. For a contemporary farmer to
grow a Bronx Seedless grape is to reclaim
that custodial role after almost a century
and reposition farmers as the guardians of
flavor and their family-owned farms as the
sanctuaries of quality.
The Southern Catskill region of New York State is well known for its dairy farms, often perched on steep, green slopes, overlooking lushly forested mountains, interleaved by the rushing creeks that feed the watershed of the upper Delaware River. A drive up Diehl Road in Western Sullivan County reveals one such landscape, defined by a single family, whose legacy dates back five generations on the same hillside, and overlooking the valley of the Callicoon Creek, where its patriarchal family established its original homestead more than a century and a half ago.
Milkweed Tussock Tubers is a regenerative agricultural project that is helping to maintain a range of traditions, from seed to field to fork. Farming which has the goal of sustainability helps to return a community to a critical level of local knowledge and skill that connects humans to the environmentl.