Sitting on the porch of his house in Tivoli, Rocco Migliorelli ponders how the sale of his vegetables at the New York City Greenmarkets mirrors his father's agricultural livelihood from 70 years ago.
"What we're doing now in selling directly to New York City customers at the Greenmarkets, my father used to do from his Bronx farm back in the 1930s," Migliorelli explains. "During the Depression, he would go door to door with a pushcart peddling vegetables. Eventually he bought a horse and wagon and then a pickup truck."
When Rocco Migliorelli took over his father's operation, the farm was the last in the Bronx. "Land was scarce, and I couldn't make a living," Migliorelli says. Driven out of business by the high cost of renting land, he gave up the farm in 1959.
A decade later, Migliorelli and his wife Benita moved to northern Dutchess County to establish a farm of their own. Starting over was difficult, he says. "This farm had been abandoned for 20 years. When I broke ground, it was all trees. I worked until 10 p.m. with lights on the tractor."
Migliorelli and son Ken now grow more than 35 varieties of vegetables and herbs, including squash, cucumbers, sweet corn, celery, string beans, peas, carrots, eggplant, broccoli and spinach.
Ten years ago, the family was forced to reconsider how they market their crops. "One day, my wife came out into the field to tell me we got the check from the wholesaler," Rocco Migliorelli explains. "When I figured in shipping, labor and planting, I had lost money!"
"At year's end, we were broke," he continues. "I was ready to pack it in. My son mentioned the possibility of Greenmarkets." I said, "I'm getting too old - do you want to try it?"
Ken Migliorelli started delivering vegetables by truck to New York City markets at the World Trade Center and Union Square. He would leave at 2:30 a.m., often arriving home after 9:30 p.m. "It was a lot of work," Rocco Migliorelli says. "But the first year of the Greenmarkets, I paid all my bills. The Greenmarkets saved us."
In the late 1990s, the Migliorellis sold the development rights on their farm to Scenic Hudson. "It's going to be always rural like this," Rocco Migliorelli says, waving out at the fields from the porch of his house. "What I saw in the Bronx won't happen here." |
|
 |
 |
|
| Benita Migliorelli is a familiar face as she sells her family's produce at a farmer's market. |
|
