Photo by Kaylin Markart Photography
Treiber Farms is reviving the craft of farming as a creative collaboration with nature’s raw materials. Opened by Peter Treiber Sr. and son Peter Treiber Jr., the farm is located on the North Fork in Long Island. The farm opened in 2014 after Peter Treiber Sr. retired from the family business in the insurance industry. Since then, the father-son duo and their team have turned Treiber Farms into more than just a place for harvest, but a creative space for the community.
“We've been coming out to this area of Long Island, the North Fork, my entire life. My grandparents retired out here in the eighties. My mom used to come out here as a kid. My parents got a summer bungalow out here in the mid-nineties. So, when my dad was looking at land, he looked here, and he found some land. What's really cool about farmland out here is that there's a land trust, and there's a lot of folks interested in preserving land,” co-owner Peter Treiber Jr. says.
Photo by Peter Treiber Jr.
The farm sits on sixty acres and has slowly turned into a place for creative collaborations. Peter Treiber Jr. left the Brooklyn art scene to join his father in starting this next chapter. “When I first moved out here, I was still doing a lot of collage work, but I tried to keep being a farm hand and the art very separate. And at some point, someone was like: why you gotta be like a split personality? Why can't all just sort of be part of your existence.”
Photo by Kaylin Markart Photography
Photo by Vasily Kozyreff
Treiber farms partnered with Cooler Gallery in Brooklyn to create Cooler Ranch, an artist residency program at the farm which is now in its second season. In their most recent collaboration _The Broom Show,_ the gallery partnered with the farm in the last year to grow traditional broom corn (Sorghum Multicolor) for the artists to use freely in the production of their brooms.
Not only that, but the farm has hosted, and will continue to host, all sorts of musicians, chefs, film screenings, and dance performances. Their most recent collaboration includes a color garden with natural dye artist Cara Marie Piazza. Piazza began selling bundle dye kits on her website and has partnered with Treiber farms to grow flowers for the kits. This project has quadrupled the amount of indigo the farm grew last year as well as introduced a number of other dye plants to the farm. “So it's just, in the greater scope of us trying to sort of meld the world of arts and farming,” Treiber shares.
This summer the farm will be hosting a show with VSOP Projects, a gallery in Greenport, NY, titled _Art Basil_ (get it?)_._ Treiber Jr. explains of the the international art fair, “I don’t know, just trying to make light of the art world and trying to make it a little more fun and, you know, not so a hoity-toity.”
The farm has also collaborated with the popular ice cream company Van Leeuwen to craft flavors like “Blackberry Danish” in 2018 and the vegan flavor “Ice Cream For Breakfast” in 2019. Treiber farms often collaborates with their friends at Matchbook Distilling Company, and this summer they will be offering a number of CSA (community supported agriculture) shares in order to better serve their community.
Photo by Chad Arnholt
Photo by Vasily Kozyreff
Treiber farms reimagines the way we interacted with natural goods through consistent creative collaborations, melding the worlds of art and farming. Check out their website to see what is happening at the farm [now.](https://www.treiberfarms.com/)
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