Photography by Pieter Estersohn

Our product recommendations may include items from our sponsors and/or contain affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission when purchases are made. Rest assured, every item is genuinely chosen by our editorial team.

In his latest book, Back to the Land: A New Way of Life in the Country, renowned photographer and preservation advocate Pieter Estersohn explores the thriving return to rural living in the Hudson River Valley, where both seasoned farmers and urban transplants are forging a deeper connection to the land. This beautifully photographed guide offers practical advice on everything from beekeeping to vegetable gardening, alongside stories of homesteaders revitalizing old barns and creating sustainable farms. The following excerpt features Stonegate Farm, where owners Jill Rowe and Matthew Benson cultivate botanicals for their wellness brand, host farm-to-table suppers, and embrace a lifestyle rooted in harmony with nature.

Stonegate Farm, the home of Jill Rowe and Matthew Benson, is in the hamlet of Balmville, which is amusing since one of the products of their skincare line Cultivate Apothecary is named Evening Cleansing Balm. Their beauty and wellness products include whole-plant oil-based serums, elixirs, and balms, which are made using botanicals grown on the farm.

Matthew said, “There is a terroir quality to the products coming off this farm. The calendula and echinacea are already communicating in their mycorrhizal underworld while growing and continue their harmonic relationship once processed into Jill’s preparations. Our goal is to provide experiences, where what is produced here on the farm can be eaten, smelled, and put on your skin. If you are interested in the senses, this is the place.” Guests dine in fields of anise hyssop while eating food made with the same plant. The farm grows many items not readily available in the area: black currants, gooseberries, aronia berry, and quince. They also produce Baco Noir grapes, which were brought over to the region by the Huguenots in the early seventeenth century.

After journalism school at Columbia University, Matthew traveled around Europe, sometimes picking grapes in France, before settling down in Manhattan’s photo district and opening his own studio. “I was photographing gardens and food, documenting people’s wonderful lives in books like Growing Beautiful Food and The Photographic Garden, but living without a garden and with a tiny kitchen,” Matthew said. Enamored with his clients’ lifestyle, he decided to move to the country.

The name Balmville is derived from the Balm of Gilead tree, whose trunk is still preserved there. Since 2000 Matthew has resided in a collection of mid-nineteenth-century outbuildings that are located on the grounds of Echo Lawn, an estate built in 1848. Natalie Knowlton, a collector of American antiques, lived here in the early twentieth century and was one of the founders of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where her impressive collection was given.

The board-and-batten siding that was so much a part of this region’s architectural heritage unifies Matthew and Jill’s rural retreat, which reflects the tenets of the Picturesque Movement popularized in America by Andrew Jackson Downing, whose own home and nursery, Highland Gardens, was just down the road. Across the street is Morningside, the 1859 home built by Downing associate Frederick Clarke Withers, whose Gothic-Revival library was removed and installed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing. Algonac, the ancestral home of Sara Delano Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s mother, was connected by a rustic bridge to Echo Lawn.

As a child Matthew had lived all over Europe while his dad was working as a cultural attaché; hence he was well accustomed to historic buildings. “This place reminded me of some of the houses in the Swedish countryside I experienced while growing up. What they don’t have in Sweden are entrance gates like this,” referring to the monumental early twentieth-century Arts and Crafts entrance, rendered in stone and brick and lending the farm its name.

Still standing are the carriage house, icehouse, a stable, and the cow manger, which now serves as Jill’s laboratory. Matthew said, “Almost all the trees here are cultivars mentioned by A. J. Downing, whose grave is very close by. I found a guy in Michigan who creates fields for Civil War battlefield reenactments using all these heritage trees. I asked him if he had Esopus Spitzenberg and Pink Sparkle apples and was blown away when he said, ‘Yes’ and sent us ‘whips’ to get started in the orchard.”

After modeling with Wilhelmina and Elite in New York, Jill worked at Christies before taking on positions at Tony Shafrazi and Sperone Westwater galleries. Jill said, “The arc of looking at artists, what they’re influenced by, and how they get to their own expression of what they have to offer was helpful.”

In 1995 she met decorator and real estate agent Randy Florke while looking for a home in Sullivan County. They ended up opening The Kitchen, a restaurant in Jeffersonville together. For three years she was the chef and sommelier there until she sold him her share and moved back to New York. Soon thereafter she landed a managerial position at Danny Meyer’s Union Square Cafe. All of these experiences paved the way for her arrival at Stonegate. Living a few miles down the road in Newburgh, she met Matthew, and they became a couple.

Matthew quotes author Martha Beck to explain the couple’s thought process, “‘How you do one thing, is how you do everything.’ This encapsulates so much of what we’re doing here on the farm. We have no playbook . . . We are self-sufficient, completing everything needed here: the packaging, photography, and processing of the fruits and botanicals. For this enterprise to move the needle forward, we are reflecting on our aesthetics, values, and priorities. Most of the cosmetics today are produced by very few laboratories. The brands are thirsty for actual meaning. We have the eye for detail to produce a very special product within the walls of this garden.”

The farm cultivates an abundance of medicinal and culinary herbs, botanicals for topical and ingestible beauty and wellness, as well as fruit, vegetables, cut flowers.

Stonegate also hosts Thursday suppers where all the food served is from the garden. Matthew said, “We are big on fully immersive experiences. The herbs that guests are sitting next to are incorpo- rated in the sorbets. The calendula across the field is in the salad dressing.” While I was attending a dinner recently the heavens opened, followed by a deluge. Everyone moved rapidly into the greenhouse to finish eating. Then a magnificent rainbow appeared to punctuate the end of the meal.

Matthew said, “A small farm is like a stretched canvas. All the black fencing is like the borders that surrounds full frame printing; it visually isolates different areas for the eye to take in. The confinement of space can lead to great creativity.”

Shop Cultivate Apothecary

Buy The Book