EcoSpace spring 2011 a sense of place Written by Rebecca Christian Photography by Matthew Benson A young family sets down roots on a Hudson River Valley organic farm A sk the much-hyphenated organicgardener-photographer-authorspeaker-writer-workshop-leader Matthew Benson why his family bought their picturesque home and farm in the Hudson River Valley, and you’ll hear echoes of Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau famously went into the woods because he wanted to live deliberately; Benson, who previously was a photographer in New York City, says he and his family moved to the farm fulltime in 1999 “to find purposeful work that is connected and deeply rooted to place.” His family includes wife Heidi, an art teacher; son Miles, 7; and daughter Daisy, 9, who refers to her dad as a “farmographer” (farmer and photographer). An hour north of the city, Stonegate Farm was originally part of a large 19th-century estate in the Carpenter Gothic style. (Picture Grant Wood’s most famous painting, American Gothic, featuring a home with a prominent Gothic arched window.) Benson says, “Any hike through the forests of the Hudson Highlands will take you through what was once cultivated land.” But after agriculture became more industrial, new growth forests reclaimed the fields of aban- Th 80