THE JOURNAL
SKY HIGH FARM team and collaborators, Food Bank for New York City, 2022. Photograph by Mr Daniel Arnold
After decamping from New York City to the Hudson Valley a decade ago, the artist Mr Dan Colen, 43, found himself surrounded by land and the desire to do something meaningful with it. “I basically moved up here to build a sculpture studio,” he says. “I really was compelled towards the landscape and having a relationship with it. That was clear to me. What wasn’t clear to me was that it was agricultural land and to have a deep relationship would be to cultivate it and not just walk around it.”
What followed was the slow and considered – one might say organic – process of building SKY HIGH FARM, a farm that not only grew produce and raised livestock, but was a mission-based project that addressed food sovereignty in the Hudson Valley and greater New York City areas by providing locally grown and regeneratively farmed food to underserved and marginalised communities. Or, more simply, getting healthy, local food to the folks who needed it the most, and disrupting capitalism along the way.
Initially, Colen, who was part of a raucous group of New York City artists in the early 2000s dubbed “Warhol’s Children” by New York Magazine (the photographer Mr Ryan McGinley and the artist Mr Dash Snow were also members), kept his Green Acres pivot under the radar, telling only friends and the people who might work directly with the farm. It soon became clear that to further the mission, he would need to get the word out.
“My close friends knew that I did it, but it wasn’t something I talked about,” says Colen. “As I got more comfortable with the work and a better understanding of its urgency, I understood I had to talk about it.”
A key part of the farm’s evolution, which began as an extension of Colen’s upstate studio, was formally turning it into a non-profit organisation with all the proceeds and output going to charitable organisations, notable among them Food Bank For NYC, Project EATS and Willow Roots, a Pine Plains-based food pantry. Fellowships are also offered on the farm to teach sustainable and equitable agricultural practices and grants are available to applicants all over the world.
In 2016, Colen commissioned the illustrator Ms Joana Avillez to create some illustrations to go on the packaging of some honey the farm produced (a range of salts and jams followed). The whimsical moon and strawberry design became the brand’s logo. Older millennials might notice a nostalgic similarity to the 1980s children’s book series The Munch Bunch. “The moment I saw what we have now, I knew we captured something very special,” Colen says.
After the honey project, Colen reached out to Dover Street Market New York to do a charity event and panel discussion highlighting some of the organisations the farm worked with. It proved to be a turning point. “When I knocked on their door, I didn’t think they would embrace the idea as wholeheartedly as they did,” Colen says of the project, which included selling a line of vintage T-shirts repurposed in collaboration with some of the farm’s charitable partners as well as selling the aforementioned provisions.
SKY HIGH FARM’s Agricultural Director, Mr Phil Haynes herding cattle at Sky High Farm, Ancramdale, New York. Photograph by Messrs Chris Rahm and Devin Pickering
The DSMNY team’s surprise decision to donate its portion of the revenue back to SKY HIGH FARM was a lightbulb moment for Colen. “If you give people an opportunity to be part of this project, they will really want to be involved in what we are a proposing,” he says.
The initial DSMNY partnership was equally significant because it brought Ms Daphne Seybold, who was the head of communications and marketing for Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market at the time, into the SKY HIGH FARM project, informally at first, but not for long.
Seybold was drawn to SKY HIGH’s mission, but also the opportunity to rethink retail and philanthropic models. “We identified this opportunity that could exist at the intersection of capitalism and philanthropy,” she says. “That looks at subverting the structures that are already in existence to a greater end. I think pop culture, and culture in general, is a very obvious and good way to story tell.”
After a couple of years shepherding the early stages of the SKY HIGH FARM brand as a volunteer from her position at DSMNY, she officially joined the team last March, bringing her expertise in retail marketing and supply chain from her decade-plus at the iconoclastic store and directing public relations for Comme des Garçons. She is now a co-CEO of SKY HIGH FARM with Colen and sits on the board of the non-profit organisation as well.
Before SKY HIGH FARM officially launched in January last year, Colen and Seybold consulted a few brands for advice, others in the retail space they thought aligned with their mission. These included Newman’s Own, the food company whose revenue funds the late actor Mr Paul Newman’s charitable organisation, and Patagonia, whose founder recently transferred ownership of the company to a trust dedicated to battling climate change.
They also devised an ingenious wholesale donation structure, in partnership with Dover Street, whereby retailers who carry SKY HIGH FARM products and clothing commit to a baseline donation to the farm before any product hits the floor.
“Every single retailer signed on passionately to do this with us,” Seybold says. “It breaks with any type of traditional retail model that exists.” That list of retailers now runs at about 70 around the globe, including MR PORTER. “Each one had its own story or connection to food sovereignty from Amsterdam to Wisconsin to LA,” she says. “It’s something that everyone has experienced.” They were both surprised and encouraged by the lack of resistance they encountered to the model they proposed. They even had to turn down interested parties so they could manage growth without expanding too fast.
“We are trying to solve myriad problems in our industry. We are trying to examine the preponderance of good things that already exist in the world”
In one year, they raised $300,000 from the wholesale donation structure. “That is 300k that the farm would never have had,” Colen says. “And we are just getting started.” They have done four seasonal collections, plus a dizzying array of partnerships with megabrands such as Converse, Supreme, Balenciaga, and Comme des Garçons Shirt. Once SKY HIGH FARM the brand becomes profitable, 50 per cent of the profits will go to the farm.
The main seasonal collection, designed by a team based on the borderline of SoHo and Chinatown, is inviting – cosy sweaters, lived-in trousers and separates, cheeky printed boxer shorts – and the majority feature Avillez’s unmistakable illustrations. The collections are produced and distributed by Dover Street Market Paris.
“The [fabrications for the] clothing are sourced by dead stock, recycled fabrics,” Seybold says. “We are trying to solve myriad problems in our industry. We are trying to examine the preponderance of good things that already exist in the world.”
“The brand” and “the farm”, as they refer to it, are two distinct but united entities under the SKY HIGH FARM mission. “The farm” is the non-profit organisation, which is supported in part by the revenue from “the brand”, SKY HIGH FARM and the other product lines and collaborations that are sold. The brand is also a way to market the work and mission of the farm, which the founders see as an inviolable objective above all else.
“It’s an artwork,” Colen says of the structure of this endeavour. “That structure is defined by the values of the farm. Once those things are altered, once the product and the partnerships don’t reflect those structures, I don’t have a relationship to it. There is no point to it unless we are adhering to the structure we have set up.”
Another venture on the horizon, which speaks to the “why not?” attitude of Sky High, is a probiotic soft drink. Just in time for Earth Day on 22 April, the brand will be launching a beverage called Honey Pop to be sold at the celebrity-soaked California market Erewhon. “It’s like a very effervescent seltzer with a touch of honey. Imagine the carbonation of a San Pellegrino, but with a beautiful honey finish,” Seybold says.
With seltzer and streetwear under their belt, it’s impossible to guess what category they will come for next, but given their ambition and sterling Rolodex, the sky’s the limit.