Cameron Pedigo is the Manager at Anchorage Farm as of May 1, 2023. He succeeds Graeme Stewart, our esteemed Manager for almost nineteen years. We are indeed fortunate to have him here.
Below is a photo of Cameron and his wife, Tara.
Cameron grew up in Tennessee, helping out on farms of neighbors and relatives. He served four years in the US Navy, then leapt to New York City to earn a Bachelor’s degree in political science. His first full-time farm job was at Sprout Creek Farm in Poughkeepsie, a cheese dairy farm with goats and cattle. Cameron and Tara met each other there. After Sprout Creek, Cameron was livestock herdsman at certified-organic Liberty Farms in Ghent, where he handled sheep, cattle, pigs and laying chickens. He and Tara then took a year away from farming to do Teach for America. Cameron taught math at a school in North Carolina. The couple returned to New York in 2022, with Cameron as livestock manager at a diversified livestock farm in Taghkanic at which he began silvo-pasturing and implemented other regenerative grazing practices he’d been studying for years.
At Anchorage Farm, Cameron has set a brisk, unremitting pace on short-stay-long-rest rotational grazing. He has a keen eye and strong back for providing shade and water with every daily move of the ewe mob. He has established already an empathic connection with the sheep, exemplified in the following vignette from an early week on the job: Stephen had told him that the yearling ewe group, very recently merged in the north pasture with the brood ewes, had never been over the wooden bridge to the main pasture and would likely spook at it. Cameron put all the ewes in the barn, then opened the door and ran across the bridge himself, followed in short order by all the ewes moving as one. Q.E.D.
Ever methodical, and ingenious, Cameron has posted a long to-do list in the barn. Many items have already been struck off as completed. We look forward especially to crossing-off some of the less time-bound ones, like planting more native trees and shrubs around the pastures to enhance biodiversity on these sixty-one acres. Planting is going ahead as this is written, early July 2023. Its outcome depends on being able to water the young shoots during dry weather. Cameron adapted a small trailer improved by Graeme to make a water-wagon.
Cameron’s phone number is 845 217 1974. The farm’s e-mail address has changed on May 1 from anchorage1[at]earthlink.net, which Graeme had used, to anchorageromneys[at]gmail.com. To e-mail Graeme personally, use his personal email, glstewart1950[at]earthlink.net .
For farm business, contact Cameron via anchorageromneys[at]gmail.com.
Cameron is in close connection with Graeme, with special attention to purebred sales.
Tara is closing in on a bachelor’s degree in computer sciences at SUNY Albany. This is on top of a B.S. in mathematics. Having grown up in Dutchess County, Tara has a farming background and until recently worked part-time at Hawthorne Valley Farm, a bio-dynamic operation in Ghent NY. She is a super-assiduous student, now with a summer internship, but relaxes (?) in the vegetable garden the couple started as soon as they got here.
