Free Farm Friday-The Regen Movement Surges In The Hudson Valley’s Black Soil Counties with Anthony Branco

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SPECIAL GUEST

Anthony Bracco Bracco Farms in Pine Island, NY

Bracco Farms Website – http://braccofarms.com/home.html

• The Bracco Family, lives in Cedar Grove, NJ and also own/run a very pure, independent, small batch, naturally-grown, sustainable family farm in Pine Island NY.   After running his graphic design business for nearly 30 years, in 2009 we decided to buy a farm to have a large garden where we would grow for ourselves the cleanest produce possible while working with the individual character of each natural season.  
• We set out using Safe-Seed-Pledge Non-GMO seeds and instituting time-tested natural sustainable farming techniques along with hand-cultivation of weeds without the use of any herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, weed killers, chemicals or glyphosate.  To our surprise, so many people approached us to purchase what we were growing Bracco Farms was born.  Now, while still maintaining our original farm ethics and techniques, Bracco Farms supplies our farm stand, many farm2fork chefs and organic farmers who purchase our produce for their own farm stands.  
• 25 acre farm in New York 
• Golf resort near our farm was our very first commercial customer, they wanted fresh produce for their restaurant there. 
• It really builds character to work on a farm when you are young.
• Victory Garden – growing essential foods to sustain your family.
• Small Space Gardening 
• Raising a small flock of hens
• Saving Seeds 
• Starting a small farm
• All of these classes/talks are LIVE and they have been very well received. 
• Hudson Valley – there is an area known as the Black Dirt Region 
• What was left behind when the ice receeded. 
• A lot of low areas that were marshy they filled w/ organic material.
• Very rich peat moss on steroids b/c there is so much organic matter there.
• ANYONE can grow anything in this soil that is how spectacular it is.
• There is a big thing now with tilling or not tilling.
• Book written in 1930 Edward H. Faulkner’s book ——-  Plowman’s Folly 
• He attributes the Dust Bowl to massive tilling and using heavy farming equipment.