The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

Inside Press

From Nearby Farm to Local Truck

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By Beth Sauerhaft

What tastes better than a freshly picked tomato, locally grown basil and a slice of fresh mozzarella cheese? Nothing much and that’s why a group of local residents is bringing the TABLE Farm Market from Bedford Hills to Chappaqua this Fall. Combine freshly picked and baked delicacies with the already delicious mélange of fresh, gourmet food prepared by our local merchants and you get a happy belly and a healthy and sustainable local economy tying us to our farm neighbors from nearby counties.

TABLE Local Market in Bedford Hills specializes in local, regional, organic and sustainably grown food. It connects farms to families by merging community supported agriculture with the convenience and choice of a local market. “We give our customers choice while also preserving the goal of supporting local, organic farms, 88% of which are located within 200 miles of our store,” says TABLE owner Cynthia Brennan.

“Connecting these farmers with the Chappaqua community was a natural development in our mission of building the market for local and
organic food.” Because this market will be community focused, it is an important next step in helping the town become more sustainable,” notes Laura Ortiz, a member of the town’s Sustainability Advisory Board. Local volunteers will help run the Chappaqua site and bring local artisans, musicians and chefs to share their creations and tunes at the market. The Chappaqua TABLE Farm Market will begin on Saturday, September 11th, from 10:30 to 1 pm at the train station. Pitching in to support the community resonates with the memories of this day 10 years ago. And the train station, as it has been historically, once again serves as the crossroads of the village, bringing people from city, suburb and countryside together for the transport of people and goods. The market will run on Saturday mornings from 10:30 to 1:00 pm through September, then from 9:00 – 1:00 pm from October through November 2010. It will resume at the Chappaqua Train Station in the spring.

Chappaqua’s TABLE Farm Market is looking for volunteers to serve on a variety of positions. Bring your enthusiasm down to the train station
and commit to our community market on one, two or all Saturdays between September and November. Interested? Email us.

A number of shares in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program can be purchased on a first come, first served basis directly from TABLE Local Market. Shares will be comprised of fresh items from multiple farms and will be distributed during the Chappaqua farmer’s market on Saturdays. For more information, contact TABLE Local Market directly at (914) 241- 0269 or email us–be sure to mention you are from Chappaqua’s TABLE Farm Market!

A Changing Chappaqua

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“The only constant in life is change.”
– Heraclitus of Ephesus

I know that this past year, I’ve personally weathered many changes. I face “half” an empty nest in the fall, I started a new and challenging magazine title for Singles ( Single&smart and www.singleandsmart.com) and I’m embarking on new friendships and new work associations. Never underestimate how old and new relationships can impact your life. I like my routines, so when I rock the proverbial boat over here, I usually have a pretty good reason to. Either that, or have little choice but to. I bet most of you feel the same. In and around town, change is certainly in the air–in a good way, thankfully.

From the infusion of new, vibrant businesses up and down King Street, to the debut of the “new” New Castle Media Center, it’s clear that Chappaqua is an ever changing hamlet. Certainly, there are some changes we wish would just speed up…and that includes the 120 Bridge work, as Nina Markowitz reports. We’re all looking forward to a handsome and finished entry way into downtown Chappaqua and the official word is we really are almost at the finish line. Hooray! There are other changes we hope might slow down. Many of us would rather not see Bill and Hillary Clinton leave town, but should a move to Bedford Hills come to pass, we’re ready to accept that too.

Finally, in keeping with a Change theme, I am proud to feature as our cover story, the changing hats of Jen Cook. Whether holding a fire hose or a whisk or bottle of massage oil, Jen personifies the idea that change is not only inevitable but is vital to our survival. Jen talks openly and courageously about the many life challenges she has met head on. She clearly possesses a survivor spirit most of us would do well to emulate. Jen told me it was a dream of hers to be on the cover of Inside Chappaqua. Glad we could help make your dream come true, Jen!

Wishing you all positive changes!
– Grace

A Peacible Kingdom

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By Rick Reynolds

As my only child heads off for college, suddenly my head is filled with dreamscapes of her growing up in Chappaqua. Chappaqua was, in essence, my gift to her. And unlike me, she’d get to begin life there.

The Hamlet was a haven for me when I arrived as a skinny 8th grader from Long Island to rebuild my young life. North of White Plains, the landscape seemed to open up. For me the congestion, cement, smog , and well, badness of megalopolis released its grip, giving way to an oasis of frog-filled swamps, fishable ponds, pristine reservoirs, and yes—the mighty Saw Mill River. Like my pitch-perfect hero, Clemens (Samuel, not Roger), I dreamed of sidewheel steamships plying the tricky currents of the bifurcating Saw Mill River— admittedly a stretch, but soothing as I acclimated to my new home. Chappaqua had scale. Okay, it wasn’t the vast plains of the frontier, as Horace Greeley aptly pointed out, but with a little squinting, one could imagine being at Walden—not in the 12X15 foot cabin sense—but in the modest, 5,000 square foot Eldorado ranch vein, surrounded by old growth trees and lawns greener than Kermit.

It was into this gauzy image I wanted my child born. Having moved up from Greenwich Village in NYC, where I had met my wife, Chappaqua beckoned as the perfect incubator for our little hatchling.

And she took it like a true amphibian. She was catching frogs and dressing them up as ballerinas at age 2. And wrestling snakes by the age of 3.

“Look who’s living with us now, Da Da,” she’d say, holding up a confused-looking (later indignant) water snake. Turned out the snake was pregnant, and the resultant fingerlings had migrated under our house shingles, coming out to sunbath on our patio from time-totime— but I digress.

By the time she was entering kindergarten, my daughter was collecting a menagerie of dogs, parrots, rabbits, squirrels, turtles, toads, and crickets, when not riding horses at the various stables ringing North Castle. The country life Chappaqua afforded her was the Petri dish in which she evolved. Now it’s part of her DNA.

Of course, for my daughter, these romanticized images would give way to romantic interests and the angst of onset, childhood puberty, when the pool club was no longer a warm, round, splash pool to pee in—but a parade ground of lean, tan, shirtless boys in Speedos serving up hamburgers and Airheads.

She cruised right through the year I first set eyes on Chappaqua, never knowing there were belching factoryscapes and towns crisscrossed with ribbons of interstate interchanges. Where your house address was a highway exit. She was spared this.

Sitting up here in sunny New Hampshire, it’s all a blur to me now. What is it that Chappaqua does to us? Lord knows, when you wipe the Vaseline from your lenses, the town wasn’t Shangra La, but it was, and is, damn nice. The affluence that allows the town to remain bucolic does not prepare one for the realities of the rest of the country, let alone the world. But as my little girl leaves the nest, I know she’ll be drawn back someday to that Peacible Kingdom—Chappaqua—as I was, 24 years ago today.

Chappaqua alumnus and 35-year resident, humorist RICK REYNOLDS resides in southern New Hampshire with his wife, daughter and dog.