On Wednesday, the remnants of winter breezes brushed over Naomi DeWitt’s coarse hands as she tended to her family’s 22 head of cattle. Nearby, her husband Grant stopped traffic on Krumville Road in Olivebridge, New York, to usher four cows into the barn for milking. Around them, some 400 chickens clucked, a barn cat yawned, piglets squealed, and a dog begged to play fetch.
It’s a normal day at the Ingram Family Farm. But as prices rise and pressures mount on small farms, families like the Ingram-DeWitts are quietly holding on.
“The future worries everybody because corporate farms are not what you want to see farming become,” DeWitt said, standing by the weathered barn her family has worked for more than half a century. “Corporate farms don’t have the same connection to the animals and to the land. It’s different when you turn the cows out on 40 acres of pasture for the day, and they’re not stuck in a building with 700 other cows.”
Naomi helps runs the 250-acre farm alongside her father, John Ingram, her husband Grant, and their 11-year-old daughter, Elsa, who raises goats and helps care for the animals. Together, they manage a multigenerational operation where family and farming are inseparable.
Ingram, 82, has been working full-time on the farm since 1975. A lifelong farmer and Olive’s code enforcement officer since 1987, he also served on the committee that wrote the town’s zoning code in 1973. Standing outside the barn, Ingram reflected on why people should buy local.
“Better quality. Most everybody that’s tried our hamburger says that there’s nothing tastes like it in the store,” he said. Ingram pointed up the road to illustrate how the landscape of small farming is changing.
“Everywhere you go there’s empty farmsteads. These all used to be working dairy farms. Most of them are gone. So where the food is coming from is anybody’s guess at this point.”
Egg Prices Rising
A few miles down the road at Tetta’s Market in Samsonville, N.Y., owner Primo Stropoli has watched city visitors scoop up cartons of eggs.
“A couple months ago, city folks were coming in and buying eggs for $6 a dozen, grabbing all they could,” Stropoli said. Egg prices rose 10.4% in February to nearly $5.90 a dozen on average, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, driven by avian influenza outbreaks. Prices are nearly 60% higher than last year. In New York City some grocery stores have listed eggs at $12.99 a dozen.
Tetta’s Market sells eggs from two local farms — Mountaintop Farm in Kerhonkson and the DeWitts’ farm in Olivebridge. Today, a dozen eggs from Mountaintop costs $8.99. DeWitt’s eggs sell for $7.99 — and though she could charge more, she keeps them priced lower, selling to Tetta’s for $4.75 a dozen. Mountaintop Farm sells eggs to Tetta’s for $6 a dozen — up from $3 as feed costs rose.
“Maybe I’ll just gain a little market share or goodwill or something,” DeWitt said. Still, she acknowledged the rising pressure.
“My brother-in-law freaked out one day. He’s like, you’re not making any money. You know, it’s not about money. First of all, we eat well and it’s a way of life.”
Small Farms Just Breaking Even
At Mountaintop Farm, owner Desirae Wingard echoed that sentiment.
“We are a small family-owned farm that started out for just our family of six,” Wingard said. “We have continued to progress and fall more in love with the farming lifestyle as the years pass by.”
Though they’ve recently branched out to local markets like Tetta’s with their meats and eggs, Wingard said their operation runs on passion, not profit.
“Us small-town farmers aren’t in it to make a living, we just want to share our passion of knowing where our food comes from with others,” she said.
“As the egg pricing skyrocketed, we did call around to multiple stores and commercial food vendors to compare their pricing and we decided to still stay lower yet comparable in pricing,” Wingard said. “We still want to be fair for all.”
Neither Mountaintop Farm nor the Ingram family farm receives federal funding.
New Federal Cuts Blow to Schools and Food Banks
Now, new challenges loom. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced over $1 billion in cuts to local food programs on Monday, including the Local Food for Schools (LFS) and Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) programs. The Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York—one of the largest food providers in the Hudson Valley—is among those losing critical LFPA funding.
LFPA provided $1 million a year to the Food Bank, supporting purchases from businesses owned by women and minorities for distribution to pantries, schools, and shelters.
“We can make purchases through the end of this contract that ends at the end of August,” said Susan Lintner, executive vice president of the Food Bank. “But we will not be able to apply for another competitive round of that funding.”
Lintner said the impact will be felt widely: “We serve approximately 350,000 people every month. And that number is not going to go down.”
The Regional Food Bank, which partners with more than 400 community organizations in Ulster County and the Hudson Valley, recently opened a new distribution center in Orange County. Each year, the Food Bank distributes nearly 48 million pounds of food across 23 counties, including over 4 million pounds projected for Ulster County this year, according to senior public affairs officer at the Food Bank Barry Lewis. In 2023, it served more than 130,000 households in Ulster County, reaching nearly 480,000 individuals — including 133,000 children and 88,000 seniors, he told The Overlook.
The USDA cuts are also reverberating in local schools, which relied on LFS funds to buy from nearby farms.
Dr. Daniel Erceg, superintendent of Saugerties Central School District, said his district used $22,000 in LFS funds to buy “domestic, unprocessed local fresh foods from local farms and underserved producers.” Without that support, he said, “Our students, schools, and local farmers will be negatively affected by these reductions.”
Dr. Vincent Butera, superintendent of Hunter-Tannersville Central School District, said it’s too early to anticipate the full impact of the cuts.
At Onteora Central School District, Superintendent Victoria McLaren said the district sources at least 30% of its food from New York State farms to qualify for enhanced reimbursements — but federal funds have been key to sustaining that effort. “If the program were to end, we would likely need to make some adjustments,” McLaren said.
Climate Data Disappearing Alongside Funding
Farmers are also grappling with the loss of USDA climate data, removed under recent federal directives.
“Small farmers won’t make it without access to climate data,” said Wes Gillingham, a Catskills farmer and board member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, one of the groups suing the USDA over the deletions. “It’s blatant censorship,” he told The Overlook.
Gillingham is especially concerned that small farms, operating on thin margins, are being left without the tools, funding, and support they need to survive. The USDA is freezing grants that help farmers improve soil health and mitigate climate risks but also laying off staff who provide direct technical assistance. Gillingham sees these actions as politically motivated censorship of climate change and diversity-related language, which he feels undermines decades of progress in supporting resilient, diversified farming. He also worries that cuts to school food programs that buy from local farms will further devastate small farmers, potentially driving more of them out of business and accelerating the consolidation of agriculture into the hands of large industrial farms.
“A Way of Life”
Back in Olivebridge, Naomi DeWitt said small farms like hers are more than businesses — they are a way of life.
“I think it’s way better to be a small farm and to have the family connection. This is what it’s about. It’s a way of life,” she said. “And, it’s a good life,” her father Ingram said.
Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.