Our Mission

To implement an integrated and adaptive land management approach with the deliberate and overriding objective of producing biodiversity while also generating other important goods and services.

Our Vision

By investing in a nature-first approach to land management, Sunnyside is dedicated to conserving native biodiversity and ensuring that our working landscape is first and foremost a diverse, healthy and resilient ecosystem.

Our Work

Sunnyside seeks to realize our overall mission and vision through implementing an integrated work program involving the following three components.

Conservation

We produce biodiversity.  Sunnyside works across the entirety of its ecosystem to create the best possible conditions for the widest range of native species to thrive. We continually assess and adapt our management practices in response to scientific research we undertake with our partners as well as careful ongoing observation from those who live and work here. 

Agriculture


We grow food and forage.  With over thirty acres of orchards, vegetable fields and high tunnels, we supply local farmers' markets, restaurants and food assistance programs with fresh, organic produce.  With another fifteen acres in pasture, we collaborate with a local farmer to make hay for cattle feed and mulch.  In both instances, we employ practices that aim to demonstrate coexistence between agriculture and conservation, even if it occasionally means tradeoffs for both.

Connection


We connect people to nature.  Our Community Supported Conservation program provides a unique portal through which to experience and explore nature and build a shared relationship with place.  It also seeks to reframe private conservation efforts on working landscapes by recognizing that such efforts both entail real costs and also deliver tangible benefits worth paying for.  As such, we hope it becomes an example of how land stewards can incorporate nature as a sustainable product to be intentionally managed for.

Our Team

At Sunnyside, we’re powered by a passionate, dedicated and experienced team committed to our shared biodiversity conservation mission. Each team member brings unique skills and expertise, working together to deliver rich and immersive experiences allowing you to build a deep and personal connection to the lands we manage and the creatures that inhabit them.  We’re excited to have you with us on this journey!

  • In these chaotic, uncertain times, nature feels more important than ever.  That’s the value proposition for Sunnyside Farm & Conservancy’s community supported conservation program — a deep, rich, place-based connection to nature and to a community of people seeking the same. 

    Over our nearly 20-year tenure here, this land and the life it sustains have pulled me through a lot. Caring for it while watching what it’s delivered in return has given strength and hope when nothing else could.  While we remain committed to continuing Sunnyside’s two-hundred-and-seventy-five-year legacy of growing food, I have come to believe that our truly essential product is nature itself.  

    I use the term product intentionally. With the collective human footprint now touching every square inch of land and sea, nature’s future lies in our hands and in our willingness to be its gardeners, not merely its observers or worse its exploiters.  This means recognizing and seizing the endless opportunities to manage and restore it in ways that nourish body, society, economy and spirit. 

    Conserving nature is more than setting land aside and precluding human enterprise, more than something that happens elsewhere and apart from our daily lives.  Private and working lands comprise much of Earth’s most biologically important territory.  The farmers, ranchers, communities and others who steward them are more than producers of food, forage and fiber.  They are nature’s custodians.  Unlocking their potential means developing a broader, more innovative tool kit — i.e., beyond government subsidies and philanthropy — to reward and incentivize conservation actions (many of which currently entail untenable economic tradeoffs).

    By deploying cutting-edge technology, hiring exceptional people and engaging world class research partners, we aim to immerse you in a working landscape managed with nature as the North Star — where we measure success in bluebirds, bumblebees and bears over bunches, bushels and bales.  In so doing, we are creating a metaphorical way for you to consume the biodiversity we produce through knowledge, inspiration, connection and simple joy.  

    As a Sunnyside All Access subscriber, you’ll be able to track an American kestrel’s movements over multiple years, peak inside his nesting box as he and his mate raise their young, and hear from leading researchers on strategies to reverse his species’ decline. You’ll be there on the one night of the year when spotted salamanders emerge en masse and migrate to the vernal pools of their birth to mate and lay eggs.  You’ll watch bears, bobcats, coyotes and foxes navigate the property and each other as they defend territory and search for food.  You’ll learn along with us as we develop and implement management strategies to attract these and myriad other species. You’ll come to know our people, each of whom bring a distinctive background, perspective and voice to their work. Whether you live around the corner or on the other side of the world, you’ll become part of a community tied to this place and to the narratives of its human and non-human inhabitants. Finally, you’ll be helping pioneer a new model for investing in nature, one I hope will return a healthy dividend to you, allow us to sustain and magnify our efforts and maybe even make some small contribution to the broader conversation about the kind of planet on which we choose to live. 

    I hope you’ll join us on the journey.