Editor’s Note:  This series of stories will follow Peekskill Regeneration Farm through the growing season. It is funded by a grant from the Dominican Sisters of Hope Ministry Trust Fund. 

Peekskill Regeneration Farm is months away from its first harvest, but Amanda Armenteros, 31, the farm’s steward and manager, has already begun planting the seeds to create a bumper crop of produce at the Main Street farm. The Peekskill Herald recently took a trip to Graymoor’s San Damiano Farm in Garrison to visit Amenteros in the greenhouse where many of Regeneration Farm’s crops will germinate.

The Herald found Amenteros and volunteer Kaela Miller hard at work planting seeds on a cool March morning. There were seedlings for all types of herbs and vegetables, from chamomile and basil to a variety of lettuces. “We’re also starting flowers,” Amenteros said, “Shasta daisies. They attract pollinators, and they’re nice to see.”

The planting is a painstaking process. Large flexible plastic trays with scores of small wells are filled with soil. The farmer writes the name of the plant on a craft stick and puts it in the soil. Then, using garden tweezers, she places a single seed in the middle of each well. Because these seeds are so small, it’s important to have something like a ruler to slide along to help keep track of rows that have been planted. Once a seed has been placed into each well of the germination tray, the seeds are covered with soil and watered. But the work doesn’t end there.

The farmer has to record in a notebook the type of plant, the date of planting, the seed lot number, and the number of trays planted. This helps the farmer keep track of things like the success of different seed lots and how much of a particular crop was planted and whether or not that amount met the community’s needs. Volunteer Miller, who has lived in Peekskill since the age of eight, was doing the recording the morning of our visit.

Volunteers play a big role in this farm, doing everything from planting to harvesting. They also prepare the soil for planting and will be doing this during Regeneration Farm’s first volunteer day on Saturday, April 5. Amenteros encourages volunteers to come to the farm between 2 p.m.-5 p.m. that day to do garden cleanup so that the beds are ready for the seedlings that are growing in the greenhouse.

Volunteering is more than an opportunity to learn about farming and to get your hands dirty. It is also a way to give to the community. Peekskill’s Regeneration Farm is one of several public food gardens created by husband and wife Jason Angell and Jocelyn Apicello. Angell and Apicello live and work together on Longhaul Farm in Garrison. In 2015 they launched the Ecological Citizen’s Project (ECP), which works to nurture citizen-led campaigns for a more just, healthy, democratic, and regenerative way of life. Peekskill Regeneration Farm is one offshoot of ECP. 

“We wanted to start a program that trained farmers and connected them to the land,” Angell said. “More people need to know how to grow food,” he said.

In addition to teaching people how to grow food, Angell wants to decommodify it. His message is this: “You don’t have to grow food for the market. You can grow it for the community.” And that’s just what Peekskill Regeneration Farm does. Since its first growing season in 2021, the farm has given away many hundreds of shares of food.

Armenteros is looking forward to finding many ways to grow and share food with the community this year. She plans to involve people of all ages in planting and harvesting, she plans to host community meals, hire youth apprentices, and so much more. You can learn more about what’s happening at the farm in a series of monthly articles in the Peekskill Herald, as well as by following Peekskill Regeneration Farm on Instagram and Facebook.