Slow Food Hudson Valley Celebrates Spring Foraging at Liberty Farms Benefit

Spring arrives in the Hudson Valley as a series of edible signals: ramps pushing through damp soil, fiddleheads coiled like green question marks, nettles demanding gloves and respect. “Wild Hudson Valley,” a spring benefit for Slow Food Hudson Valley on April 26 at Liberty Farms in Ghent, builds an afternoon around those fleeting ingredients—less a tasting menu than a snapshot of the landscape in its brief moment of abundance. The event marks a reintroduction of sorts for Slow Food Hudson Valley, a volunteer-run chapter of the international movement devoted to “good, clean, and fair food for all.” For co-chair Mona Talbott, the gathering is both celebration and statement. “It’s our first spring fundraiser,” she says, “and the purpose is to bring awareness to the organization, to the Hudson Valley, and to come together to celebrate the first food of spring, which is the wild forage food.” That celebration takes a distinctly Hudson Valley form: a roster of chefs deeply embedded in the region’s farm network—David Israelow (Four Corners), Gaetano Arnone (Via Cassia), Hannah Black (chef and consultant), Colby Miller (Hotel Tivoli/The Corner), Lauren Stanek (Dove’s Diner), Pierre Friedrichs and Phil Hayes (Overlook Farm and Sky High Farm), and Kate Arding and Hadley Kreitz (Talbott & Arding)—cooking from what’s available now, not what’s been flown in or stored. Expect ramps, wild mushrooms, and early herbs alongside handmade pastas, local meats, and cheeses that speak to the region’s dairy tradition. Bill Buford and Alice Waters at a Slow Food Hudson Valley event last fall. Photo: Ralph Gartner Talbott, whose résumé runs from Chez Panisse to the Rome Sustainable Food Project, frames the event as part of a broader effort to reconnect people with food as a shared, participatory act. “We want to bring people back to their senses and back to their roots,” she says. “Knowing your farmer, knowing where your food comes from, how it’s grown, how to prepare it—that’s how you build