Wild Work Farm
A Farming Family
Driving up the dirt road that ends at Wild Work Farm, I am immediately struck by how perfectly the scene matches my definition of what a rural mountain farm should be. An open valley sprawls out ahead, the surrounding High Peaks mountain range dusted with December snowfall. A wooden fence runs alongside planting beds and greenhouses, ending at a weathered red barn. The Ausable River can be seen beyond the fields, separating the expansive property from the mountains beyond. Across the driveway sits a rustic white farmhouse, the front porch well-stocked with firewood. The house is edged by maple trees, towering pines and striking white paper birch. It’s like a painting—a scene that those who idealize northern farm life have probably envisioned at one point or another.
Lissa Goldstein must know what goes through people’s minds when they visit the property for the first time, because she dispels my assumptions almost immediately after we say our hellos. “It’s beautiful,” she agrees with a smile, before adding, “I don’t live here.” The land I’m touring, Lissa explains, has been in her family for generations. Her cousin Rob, who also farms this land, lives on the property all year but in an apartment off the picture-book farmhouse since the main structure isn’t winterized.
Lissa, accompanied by her speckled gray shepherd mix, Maya, tours me around her garden, greenhouses and vegetable prep room. Though the spaces have mostly been put to bed for the winter, there are still signs of the bustling farm that operates there from early spring through late fall. Lissa grows some of the earliest greens in the Lake Placid area—peppery arugula, mixed salad greens and hardy kale—along with a bounty of herbs, fruits and vegetables that can be purchased around the region.
From their prominent presence on the menus of farm-to-table restaurants, like Liquids and Solids and the Deer’s Head Inn, as well as on market shelves, it would be easy to assume that Wild Work has been a part of the ADK food scene for a long while. That bold and blocky red logo is such a common sight (especially on their coveted canvas totes) that I still find myself surprised when I remember that the farm only began production in 2017. But while Wild Work is still young, the seeds of the operation were sown over the course of the last century.
“My great-great-grandfather Livingston Ludlow Taylor bought the Rivermede property in 1906,” Lissa explains as she shows me around. “Some years there have been dairy cows here and horses. The maple trees were tapped for sugaring at various points. My great-aunt Prue Taylor and her friend Jessie Estes farmed here starting in the ’40s. Just two women working on their own in the mountains.” Lissa smiles, continuing, “Prue seemed like a total badass. She’s always been a hero of mine.”
The long history of her family’s land being farmed continued into Lissa’s childhood, when her cousin Rob Hastings began growing vegetables and raising chickens and sheep there under the name Rivermede Farm. Rob still works part of the shared property, in addition to running the Rivermede Farm Market in Keene Valley.
“I grew up in Maryland, but when I was 14 I asked Rob if I could come work for him during the summers,” Lissa says. “I loved it up here, and I loved farming. I kept coming up every summer throughout high school. When I went to college I started to think that growing food could be a real career for me.”
Lissa spent the decade after college living in Kenya, Oregon and British Columbia, where she met her now husband, Steve, a skilled carpenter. She committed to learning all she could about vegetable farming, and was particularly impacted by seeing how organizations could affect positive social change in communities. But Lissa kept thinking about the wild, mountainous Adirondack Park, and of her time on her family land in Keene Valley.
“I’ve always felt a connection to this area. I knew I wanted to come back and start my own farm someday,” Lissa says. “But I didn’t just want to start something without having the skills to make it successful. I’m definitely a planner,” she continues. “I wanted to make sure, when I did start my own farm, that it wasn’t on a whim, because I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
Lissa and Steve returned to the North Country with clear goals. She reached out to the local food community via her friend Wynde Kate Reese, owner of Green Goddess Natural Market in Lake Placid. “I’ve known Wynde Kate since I was a teenager,” Lissa says, explaining that the two worked together on her cousin Rob’s farm for several summers. She also reached out to other farmers in the area. “Margot from Sugarhouse Creamery was particularly supportive of us coming back and farming here,” Lissa notes, adding that many others went out of their way to welcome and help her when she returned to the ADK, making the tasks ahead less daunting.
When Rob decided to scale back his own farming at Rivermede, it provided Lissa the perfect opportunity and the space to start the farm she’d envisioned when she was still a high schooler, and had been planning ever since. And once Wild Work was officially in business, things began moving quickly.
“We got into the Keene Valley Farmers’ Market that first summer,” Lissa says. “I was nervous starting out, but people were interested right away. I’ve always loved the physical work of growing, but I also really like figuring out the commercial aspects of running a farm. I was prepared to market to a much wider area,” she continues, “but desire for local produce right in the North Country was incredible. We’ve been able to concentrate where our food goes, and I’m proud that we’re feeding people who live where the food is being grown.”
Cultivating Care
Lissa, now in her mid-30s, has officially passed the 20-year mark in farming, and listening to her talk about Wild Work Farm makes it clear that, as she said, she isn’t operating on a whim. As Lissa and I discuss her passion for growing food, the word she keeps coming back to, and that speaks to her intentionality, is “care.” Care for the land and stewardship, care for her employees and their families, care for the fruits and vegetables she’s producing, and care for the people who will eat that thoughtfully grown food.
“We had a group of students from Keene Central School visit the farm this fall,” Lissa continues, “and afterward I received really beautiful notes from the kids. It was powerful to read what they got out of seeing their food being grown and getting to participate with that. I think that making fresh, healthy food accessible, and making it clear that the people growing their food care about that food, makes it more likely that people will eat things that are good for their bodies.”
In addition to being available at stores, farmers’ markets and restaurants, Wild Work’s bounty of produce and fresh greens is available to customers through a market share program—a prepaid and discounted purchase option that members can use to get fruits and vegetables throughout the season. Share members also have access to a U-pick herb and flower garden, providing consumers another way to engage not only with the land but also with the farm staff.
It is clear from talking with Lissa that another key focus of her farm philosophy is the happiness and wellbeing of that farm staff. “I want the people who work here to like what they do, and to feel valued, and I think that working on a farm should be able to provide people a healthy, living wage,” Lissa explains. “We have an incredible group of people working here, and I want to make sure that I keep the size of the farm sustainable while expanding how I can help support employment in the community.”
While Lissa has plans for the direction she’d like to take Wild Work in the upcoming years, she’s also aware that some things are outside of her control. This past fall’s heavy rains brought severe flooding to the Wild Work fields and greenhouses, and cleanup from those high river levels is ongoing and has required many hands. Lissa knows that sudden and destructive weather events will likely continue to be an issue, and the effects unpredictable. She hopes that she is able to face those challenges as they come. “Working alongside the natural world, it really is wild work, and the Adirondacks are a wild place,” Lissa says of her choice of farm name. “Farming here is intense and unpredictable and vulnerable, and you need to figure out how to be resilient.”
When I ask Lissa about her biggest takeaways since opening the farm, and how she’d advise others, her response is both simple and admirable. “I think the most important thing is to have integrity,” she answers after a pause. “I think people can tell when you have integrity in whatever you’re doing, and that you care about your work. People can see that and people will value that.”
From where I stand, Wild Work Farm’s resilience, integrity and care shine through in all they’ve done so far. I’d guess that we will only see more of Lissa, that bold red logo and her rainbow of fresh fruits and vegetables around the North Country in the future.
Wild Work Farm | @wildworkfarm
Liquids and Solids | @liquidsandsolidsny
Deer’s Head Inn | @deersheadinn
Rivermede Farm Market | @rivermedefarmmarket
Green Goddess Natural Market
Sugarhouse Creamery | @sugarhousecreamery
