PLaCE – PLaCE is a working farm and conservation landscape growing native, perennial crops in order to rebuild people to people, people to Wild, and Wild to Wild relationships.

What we do

PLaCE is continually asking, “How can we serve the Wild in the process of meeting human needs?”—not in spite of human needs.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Plant Nursery

We grow and sell native plants that have a history of human use as food, herbs, and/or crafting materials. Each plant is an invitation for human connection and carries co-evolved relationships with native insects and the entire food web they support.

Public Programming

We host workshops, community events, and family-friendly art residencies that build relationships among neighbors and with the Wild on which we all depend.

Affordable Workforce Housing

We create permanently affordable housing — for volunteer firefighters, Taconic Hills School staff, veterans, farmers, and farmworkers — integrated with our working farm.

Indigenous Partnership

We work directly with the federally recognized, sovereign Stockbridge-Munsee Community (aka "Mohican Nation") in Wisconsin, to build meaningful relationships and partnerships with the Tribe and its members. In dialog with the Tribal government, we actively seek ways to serve Tribal interests and those of its members — re-establishing relationships between the land and its original people.

PLaCE’s work is based on three relational pillars:

People <> People

Relationships between people build community and resilience. We build these relationships through:

Picnics, workshops, and family-friendly programs.
Native and non-Native artists, seed-keepers, farmers, soil scientists, ecologists, architects, and neighbors working together.
Community investment opportunities

People <> Wild

PLaCE cultivates connection to the wild ecosystems we all depend on by:

Growing native plants—with human food, herb, and craft-use histories—that invite people and the Wild into active relationships.
Building agriculture, architecture, and human cultures that serve the Wild in the process of meeting human needs.
Teaching how to grow, harvest, and use plants for food, herbs, and crafts

Wild <> Wild

We facilitate the Wild’s re-establishment of its own life-sustaining relationships:

Native plants feed co-evolved native insects. These insects feed other wildlife, building the foundation of the entire food web.
Habitat regeneration expands biodiversity
Improved and maintained wildlife corridors repair the long distance connectivity animals depend on.

About the Land

PLaCE is working with 150 rolling acres in Copake, NY. Formerly part of a larger dairy farm, it‘s a beautiful mix of diverse habitats in the headwaters of the Taghkanic Creek — the primary drinking water for the city of Hudson.

Currently the land is being farmed conventionally for feed corn, silage, and hay. PLaCE will be transitioning the land to regenerative practices in phases as our capacity grows.

Follow along

Living Land Acknowledgment

“Ultimately what we inherit are relationships and our beliefs about them. We can’t alter the actions of our ancestors, but we can decide what to do with the social relations they left us.”

Land acknowledgment full text and additional resources

— Aurora Levins Morales

PLaCE is a working Copake farm rooted in conservation, growing crops to restore relationships between people and the Wild.