Samascotts: From flowers and plants to apples, ice cream and a daily menu

It's around six in the morning in Kinderhook, New York. For Jake Samascott, the day begins with a check on a section of the thousand acres his family commands. The land is divided into thirds. A third for fruit and produce, a third for hay and grain, and the final third is forest.

From the sky, the land looks like a circuit board with clear delineation. Samascott spots a flurry of activity in the asparagus fields. Last week’s evidence of pointy tips have grown into several inches and high season is coming up fast.

Samascott drives about a half a mile from his field to a five-greenhouse configuration on Route 9, his family’s Garden Center. Aisles and aisles of hanging flowerpots, herbs, vegetable starts, perennials and annuals receive periodic misting under automated, moving glass panels.

As he proceeds from the greenhouse closest to the Farm Store where produce, coffee, donuts and ice cream are sold, he sees his cousin’s Bernese mountain dog lying under one of the yellow metal café tables. The dog lifts his tail several times in greeting.

In the Farm Store, Samascott and his cousins Jeremy and Kristen (also Samascotts) stand by the display case of fresh cider donuts discussing the day’s events. They are among seven family members who make up the fourth generation to run the Kinderhook enterprise. Samascott’s great grandfather, Michael Samascott, had the original 111-acre farm. The land contained an orchard from which he harvested apples for sale. The family had a cow and pigs and grew crops on the land. They made apple cider from the apples that dropped to the ground.

In the early days, Michael Samascott shipped barrels of apples down the Hudson on boats to New York City residents. Today, Samascott's apples, cider and baked goods are trucked from the farm to eight year-round farmers markets in New York City and four summer farmers markets locally.

Samascott means different things to different people. To the general public visiting the Garden Center, it means access to a large variety of flowers and vegetables as well as soil and compost for planting. To those visiting the Farm Market, it means coffee, homemade ice cream and an evolving lunch menu that includes farm-fresh ingredients.

To the baker at Samascott Farm Store, and a local caterer, Samascott means getting enough Jonagold apples to produce sugar-free apple pies, apple muffins and applesauce.

For chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, access to the orchard's winter apples left to freeze on the trees will provide him with produce that has started to ferment on its own and take on a sort of “cooked” flavor, both tart and funky.

For friends catching up on a weekday morning, it means coffee and a warm cider donut at a sunny table in a sun-filled greenhouse.

For Alejandro del Peral, co-founder of Nine Pin Cider in Albany, Samascott is a source of apples for the company’s hard cider products.

For Kinderhook locals, Samascott means an after-supper trip to the Farm Store for ice cream made by hand with seasonal peaches or raspberries or the perennial favorite flavors coffee bean or cake batter.

For the 80 varieties of apples themselves, Samascott Farm’s infrastructure offers storage in which oxygen levels are calibrated depending on variety. This keeps apples crisp long after they've been picked, one of the reasons this orchard continues to produce and grow.

Although, from the sky, the Samascott acreage resembles a circuit board, what isn’t viewable is the army of trailers, farm equipment and storage units that keep the operation humming long after the last child has wound her way through the Samascott corn maze and pick-your-own apple season has wound down at the end of fall.

Of course, the Samascott family keeps the place humming off season. As Jake Samascott knows, high season may not be until next May, but May comes quickly.

Samascott's Garden Market
65 Chatham St., Kinderhook, NY 
(518) 758-9292
Open 9 a.m. - 7 p.m. daily