Hudson Valley Farm Hub

The Hudson Valley Farm Hub’s new state-of-the-art mechanical shop and farmer training center supports the mission of the Farm Hub—a nonprofit dedicated to regenerative agriculture on 1,600 acres of prime farmland in Hurley, New York.

Since 2012, the Farm Hub has been working to transition from a family-run sweet corn operation to a diversified organic farm focused on research, training, education, and advocacy to advance equitable and ecologically resilient food systems. In 2017, recognizing that their existing facilities no longer met the scale or needs of their expanding mission, the Farm Hub engaged MASS to design infrastructure that would support both their current operations and future growth.

After interviewing staff and hosting engagement workshops, MASS worked with Farm Hub to establish a scheme for their future facilities. It was determined that the most immediate needs included a new maintenance shop, equipment storage facilities, and spaces for production operation and training. 

Designing and building a new maintenance shop and offices for the farm staff was the first step in implementing Farm Hub’s vision—a larger, better-organized space that not only allowed for efficient operation but also connected staff directly to both the landscape and one another. The project’s mission was to create a simple and scalable shop design that fostered safe, efficient farm operations and educational opportunities. 

The design became a hybrid in many ways: mechanical shop and offices, large and small gable roofing, pre-fabricated and custom steel structures. The result is two (L-shaped) buildings that reach out toward the landscape. The smaller of these, clad in reclaimed barnwood, is more administrative and public facing and is visible from the bustling Hurley Mountain Road. The larger, more industrial metal-clad shop completes a set of equipment storage buildings. It features a loading dock and a separate storage room for organizing parts and tools. A benefit of connecting the office wing and the shop floor is that one of the main offices and the conference room both have windows overlooking the shop maintenance floor. 

The porch was designed to be large enough to accommodate morning team meetings for the entire staff. The building walls splay outward as one moves north towards the kitchen and porch where large full-height windows capture sweeping views of the landscape. 

A geothermal system provides a renewable heat source for the building. Radiant floor heating keeps the large shop at a comfortable temperature during the winter and large fans provide cooling during the summer. Solar panels cover the entire eastern-facing side of the roof, providing renewable electricity to the building. 

In addition to the above, MASS specified sustainable building materials for the new construction. These included using reclaimed wood cladding on the western portion of the building, finishing the floors with a low-VOC concrete densifier rather than an epoxy, and installing a rainwater catchment cistern to redirect roof runoff for irrigation. Additionally, all windows are double-paned glass with a bird-friendly surface pattern treatment. The project is LEED Certified.

Sustainable features are also present on the exterior of the buildings: the surrounding landscape features bioswales to capture and manage roof run-off and landscaping was created with a native meadow seed mix that attracts beneficial pollinators and requires no irrigation once established.

The new mechanical shop opened in 2021. Most directly, it serves the operations staff team of approximately ten people, but the staff (more than fifty) has access to the shop’s public spaces and meeting rooms. The building helps to bring diverse vegetables and crop yield into the local supply chain for Kingston, New York.