by Thaddeus Flint
There are some who see retirement as a time in life to sit back, relax, reflect and maybe read a book or two. Then there are those like Claudette Lefebvre – not many of course – who feel the need to perhaps rebuild a farm, open a bed and breakfast, raise chickens, found an animal rescue, start an agricultural cooperative and – in her spare time – bake homemade bread for a country store which she manages as well.
Lefebvre is the owner of Pease Farm in Stephentown. Before embarking on her rigorous retirement, she was a professor of Therapeutic Recreation and Leisure Management at New York University. The Country Store, which she has been running now for four years, opened its doors for the summer season this Memorial day weekend. “I just spent the afternoon making dough,” she said a few days before the opening. Lefebvre will be up early on mornings the store is open baking seven different types of fresh breads and brioches. She will even have some gluten free varieties as well.
Eggs Of Many Colors
The store will also feature produce from the farm, preserves, pies, bread pudding and fresh chicken eggs. Lefebvre raises around 15 chickens; “all kinds,” she said, which lay all kinds of eggs. Chicken eggs, it turns out, do not only come in the colors white and brown. “I’ve got blue and green and brown and a dark, dark green,” said Lefebvre, “people ask me all the time, ‘are they real?’”
A Warning Donkey
The chickens live next door to three mini-donkeys and four goats, residents of the farm’s animal rescue. She also has a blind horse. A larger donkey named John Henry is kept in a separate field and is used as an early warning system for the other animals against a bear that from time to time ambles down the mountain to see what, or who, could be new to eat. “He’s what we call a real American Jack-ass,” said Lefebvre of the alarm donkey.
The produce will be similarly different. Lefebvre raises what are known as ethnic and heirloom vegetables. There will be tomatoes which can trace their family roots to France, Germany and Italy. These are the ethnics. The heirloom tomatoes are what Lefebvre refers to as “ugly tomatoes.” These are fruits which have not been genetically modified to look like, well, tomatoes. Basically the average tomatoes you see today are hybrids that have been designed by scientists to ship well. “Tasteless!” said Lefebvre, of tomatoes one usually finds at the supermarket.
Square Tomatoes
Lefebvre spoke of a worrisome future. Work is currently being done with the intent of creating a square tomato, one which will pack and ship even better, and presumably not roll off of grocers’ shelves. “It’s an abomination!” she said. Lefebvre herself once raised a variety of ugly tomato called a Purple Cherokee, which is in fact purple and ugly. It looks like someone has kicked it repeatedly in the shins with a pair of paratrooper boots. And tomatoes don’t even have shins. As tasty as it was, in the end it proved too delicate for Lefebvre. “It was so fragile it would get dented just going from the garden to the shop,” she said.
Other crops will include lettuce, herbs, radishes, cucumbers, beets, carrots… The list goes on and on.
Community Supported Agriculture
Those who want to fulfill their farmer fantasies are welcomed, as Pease Farm has a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program which allows members to take subscriptions in the crops. Members can help farm in return for work credits toward produce or choose not to work and receive distributions and discounts off of crops, as well as discounts off of the other products sold at the Country Store.
The Country Store at Pease Farm will be open Fridays to Sundays until July. The remainder of the summer it will be open during the week as well. Pease Farm is located at 15652 NYS Rt. 22, 1 mile south of Rt. 43 in Stephentown. The B&B, the Country Store, the CSA at Pease and the farm itself can be reached at 518-733-0491.
