The Berry Patch of Stone Wall Hill Farm 15589 NY 22 Stephentown NY 518-733-6772

The Berry Patch, also known as Stone Wall Hill Farm, LLC is a first generation family farm run by the wife/husband team of Dale Riggs and Don Miles. We offer no-spray or low spray berries on a picked (strawberries, blueberries and raspberries) or u-pick (strawberries only) basis in season; our own wonderful tasting tomatoes, lettuce, melons, peppers, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, and herbs; the freshest, finest, locally grown fruits and other vegetables through our farm stand; organic maple syrup; locally produced honey and jams; a wonderful array of fall ornamental crops; and Christmas trees. We are constantly experimenting with crops and growing techniques. We also offer fresh cut flowers from our own fields.

Running the farm is a life-long dream for us, something we talked about on our very first date, 3000 miles from Stephentown, over 27 years ago. We spoke of running a viable farm that would provide a full-time income for one, provide products grown using environmentally sound techniques, and would enable us to contribute to our community. All good things take time, so here we are, twenty seven years later, proud owners of 235 acres of beautiful Taconic Valley farmland, woodland, and wetland.

We bought our hillside farm in historic Stephentown (the only Stephentown on earth) in 1989. The town is named after Stephen Van Rensselaer, one of the Dutch patroons of the Upper Hudson Valley. The early settlers lived on the hillsides and mountain tops to avoid “valley fever” and you can find old stone foundations and stone fences throughout our property. All but one of our property boundaries is a stone wall, created by the early settlers, and we don’t have a flat piece of ground on the place, so now you understand how we came up with our farm name! We planted Christmas trees and started making maple syrup in 1991.

We bought “The Berry Patch” land from a retired farming couple in 1995, after returning from a six month foreign assignment in Armenia. It is one mile north of our hillside farm, right on Route 22. It is a beautiful flat piece of land on which we planted our first strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries in 1996. We started marketing strawberries in 1997, raspberries in 1998, and blueberries in 1999. We also opened the farm stand in 1999 so we could sell our own pesticide- free tomatoes and lettuce.

We bought the adjacent piece of property in February 2003 to prevent it from going into development so we are growing more vegetables, expanding the amount of vegetables and berries we grow, and will continue to provide some other great vegetables you can’t find elsewhere.

Dale runs the farm and an agricultural consulting business full-time, after working as a vegetable specialist for Cornell University for almost ten years. In 1997, she won the National Crop Production Award for her work in pumpkin production. Having won the top award of her professional society she decided, in 1998, to take on the challenge of making a go of it in farming.

Don works on the farm part-time and keeps his day job as an Environmental Health Scientist with the NYS Department of Health. He keeps track of the forest management plans for both pieces of property, chases the deer away from the berries , and is Dale’s best berry picker and unpaid hired hand on the weekends.

We believe in contributing to our community, so a portion of our harvest is contributed to local food pantries and other community service agencies each year.

We want every customer to feel that we are fulfilling our mission to provide products and services which improve the health, well-being, and quality of life for our customers, our employees, our community, and our family. To do that, we will do our best to ensure that you receive quality, freshness, service, and friendliness. We hope you will come and visit us, enjoy our products, and learn how we produce our crops by using and developing the latest scientific techniques to ensure the crops are produced in the most sustainable, environmentally sound way possible.

We hope to see you in June, when strawberry season starts!