Hitchcock Harvest 2024
Hitchcock Harvest Feast and Celebration
Sunday, October 27, 2024
3:00 PM – 6:00 PM
The Hitchcock Center has been sowing seeds of change and educating for a healthy planet in the Valley for more than 60 years. In October 2024, we will celebrate the harvest with local friends and businesses, present the Hitchcock Hero Awards, and share what’s brewing up next. Join us for our third annual Harvest event as we celebrate the Hitchcock Center’s mission to educate and inspire action for a healthy planet. The day will be filled with community, a delicious meal from Wheelhouse, local beer, wine, and cider in our brewer’s garden, garden and building tours, a short program—and lots of fun! Plus, don’t miss our exciting silent auction featuring fantastic items from local businesses, artists, and more!
Our 2024 Hitchcock Heroes:
Sustainable Business Award: Conklin Office Furniture
Conklin Office Furniture is one of the nation’s pioneers in office furniture recycling and reconditioning. They started off as an office supply company over 40 years ago and since 1981, they’ve made it their mission to offer facilities and businesses a way to choose “green” office furniture.
We are pleased to honor Conklin Furniture our Hitchcock Hero Sustainable business award. We used Conklin when we furnished our Living Building in 2016, as they were one of the few sources that met the very high standards of the Living Building Challenge.
“What Goes Around Comes Around” is Conklin’s motto. They believe the decisions we make today will impact our tomorrow. Their motto lends itself to the focus on environmental solutions and client satisfaction. Conklin provides Eco-New, Eco-Reconditioned, and Eco-Remanufactured furniture and also offers reupholstery and refinishing to keep furniture from the landfill. Conklin is truly a leader in sustainable furniture solutions. As their trucks say Gratifyingly green since 1981.
As a tried and true business in the region, part of their success and climate story is that they are constantly considering ways to make their operations and products more environmental sound. Facility managers, business owners, and decision-makers have the unique opportunity to lead in the movement toward greater sustainability. “With support from Conklin, you have a strong case for urging your firm to be socially responsible through the use of recycled office furniture. Our customers are given the chance to conserve natural resources, minimize waste, and maximize their investment in office furniture.”
Education for a Healthy Planet Award: Colleen Kelley
We are pleased to honor Colleen Kelley for inspiring generations of young people who are connected to nature, have their sense of wonder intact and who have become hopeful creative problem solvers.
For Colleen, the transformation of a child or family into passionate nature lovers is one of life’s greatest joys. She believes in the intelligence and potential of preschool-aged children; engaging them with a respect that helps to nurture their curiosity and relationship with the natural world. She believes access to nature should be available to all children, regardless of their circumstances.
Throughout her forty years at Hitchcock, Colleen inspired youth through their development from her nature discovery preschool up through the youth climate summit to the pre-service teachers at Mt. Holyoke College. She consistently researched the latest best practices and innovative programs for children. When new state science standards were expanded to include instruction about engineering and design, Colleen collaborated with other staff to develop challenges where students were given opportunities to envision themselves as inventors and problem-solvers in the real world, all while having fun with their peers. In addition to being up on the latest best practices and science Colleen always kept the heart and wonder in her work. She loved teaching the youngest among us, showing them the marvels and beauty of the natural world.
Colleen collaborated with Mass Audubon at Arcadia to develop Youth Climate Leaders (YCL). To serve teens at that perfect age when students are ready to become change agents for sustainability in their communities. These high school students host an annual Youth Climate Summit. After more than seven years, this summit has grown in size and community impact. Out of the summits have come community projects with significant impacts, including school and city-wide composting, community gardens, and school cafeteria food systems improvements.
The first image to come to mind of Colleen here at Hitchcock will forever be her leaning over showing a child a spider web, little beetle or exquisite flower.
Climate Champion: Phil Korman
We are pleased to honor Phil Korman for his many years in service of strengthening farms and engaging the community to build the local food economy. He was the Executive Director of Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) for sixteen years, finishing up his work there this fall. CISA Local farmers are experiencing the impacts of climate change, which threatens their livelihoods, wellbeing, and our local food security. Under Phil Korman’s leadership, CISA has developed a number of ways to support local farmers through the climate crisis. The first is emergency response: CISA’s Emergency Farm Fund provides zero-interest loans to local farms after weather-related disasters, and was a key partner on raising and distributing $3.3 million to local farms through the MA Resiliency Fund after last year’s freezes and floods. The second is technical assistance: CISA provides expert guidance and connections to financial support to farmers as they adjust their business plans, growing practices, and infrastructure to the changing climate. And the third is network-building: through events like Climate Change and Farming Week, CISA is working to connect farmers, service providers, and advocates to share information and find solutions.
Over his time at CISA he wrote “we have worked to understand more deeply how our local food system reflects the racial, gender, and class inequities of our nation. The owners of farms across the country and state are still overwhelmingly white and male. Many people who work on farms are from other countries, here to build a better life for their families, doing the hard work that few others want to do. And access to local food in our state is still difficult for folks without access to transportation and discretionary resources.”
During his 16 years of leadership at CISA, Phil made it possible for the organization to develop this suite of climate change responses. During his tenure, CISA’s staff doubled and its budget grew fourfold, putting it in a strong position to continue this work and Phil’s forward-thinking, creative approach to new challenges. We here at Hitchcock were particularly moved by his dedication to understanding the fundamental importance of addressing environmental justice as a key piece of climate and agricultural change work.
At our 2023 Hitchcock Harvest event, we honored three Hitchcock Heroes:
Sustainable Business Award: Barstow’s Longview Farm
Hitchcock Center honors Barstow’s Longview Farm, a sixth and seventh generation owned and operated dairy farm in Hadley, Mass. Their motto is, “Looking Forward Since 1806,” which speaks to the daily commitment to their herd, soil, workforce, community, and food systems. They have 600 head and milk 300 dairy cows using Lely robotic milkers. They are proud to be one of the 500 farm families, a part of the Cabot Creamery Cooperative, a B-Corp with big sustainability goals and accomplishments.
Barstow’s grows 100% of their own forage for their own herd on 450 acres. Here in the Pioneer Valley, open farmland is good for wildlife habitat, clean air and water, climate resilience, and food security. Barstow’s uses no-till equipment for all crops including their cover crop. They feel lucky to live in an area with so many active farms, which enables them to lend a helping hand to neighbors, share ideas, and share equipment such as a no-till planter, which makes our local food system more efficient, sustainable, and connected.
Barstow’s Longview Farm is also home to an anaerobic digester, a system that takes the energy potential (methane) from cow manure and food waste and turns it into enough electricity to power 1,600 homes. In addition to renewable energy, the digester also provides the farm (and neighborhood) with a fossil-fuel-free heat source and a chemical-free fertilizer for fields. This technology has increased crop yields, enhanced soil health, and decreased their chemical fertilizer usage by 90% all while diverting food waste from landfills, reducing farm odors, generating green electricity, and bringing in an additional revenue stream that supports their family dairy farm right here in our Western Mass community.
Thank you, Barstow’s!
Education for a Healthy Planet Award: Faith Deering
Hitchcock Center honors Faith Deering for her many years of educating for a healthy planet, a core part of our mission. Faith most recently was a museum educator at Historic Deerfield. Before Deerfield, she worked at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History as an entomologist and educator, and was an environmental educator here at the Hitchcock Center. She is a world traveler who has been to Thailand, Senegal, Central America and Europe in search of insects. One of Faith’s many talents is making connections between the natural world and human cultural history. From honey bees to silkworms, shellac scale to Cochineal dye, Faith enjoys talking about the myriad roles insects play in people’s lives.
Faith is masterful at bringing connections of nature and cultural origins to whatever she is teaching. She has created several traveling programs that go into the deep natural history and cultural history such as silkworms and broomcorn or hot chocolate programs; weaving the science, the interdependence, and the magic through the storytelling and lessons.
Faith is a model for creating relationships of deep care and respect with children as learners and future leaders, as well as for the material she is teaching. Hitchcock Center looks to her gentle way of connecting with young people and to her subject matter for inspiration.
Most recently, Faith is a founding member of the David Ruggles Center for History and Education in Northampton, Mass which honors the contributions made to the abolition of slavery by courageous individuals in the Valley. Their staff grows flax, sugar beets and broomcorn and interpret their use by the abolitionist community in Florence.
Thank you, Faith!
Youth Climate Leader: Julian Hynes
Julian Hynes is being honored as Hitchcock Center’s Youth Climate Leader. He has participated in Hitchcock Youth Climate Summit as well as other environmental programs with us throughout his youth. Julian is an active community member and already has a long history of advocacy work. He has been an invited speaker at several local climate events such as the League of Women Voters “The Intersection of Race and Climate” event and for the Community Land and Water Coalition.
He is the co-hub lead of Sunrise Amherst, a local chapter of the nationally youth-led Sunrise Movement which works to combat climate change and achieve racial justice. Climate justice is a main priority of Sunrise Amherst, and an essential part of Julian’s work. In his work for our local future, he envisions a town and town council that prioritizes climate justice through improving infrastructure, like repairing and adding bike lanes and sidewalks to major arteries in Amherst.
Julian is also the Co-chair of the Amherst Public Shade Tree Committee and a Governor Healey’s Youth Climate Council Inaugural Member. He and two other Amherst youth crafted the Winning Submission of Gov. Healey’s Portrait Essay Contest, which emphasizes his commitment to environmental justice. “Look to the young, the poor, the people of color, and the ones who need the most help…ask, ‘Who is not represented here?’ Then, break free from the symbolic fetters that bind you and invite them….”
Julian is committed to harnessing the power of community and honing climate science to positively impact the region through local political action.
Thank you, Julian!
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