FALLS VILLAGE — Spring is springing and for Janna Berger, field manager of Adamah, the farm division of the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Falls Village, that means getting ready for the fifth year of its CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. “We’re planting in greenhouses and in the fields,” Berger said. “We’ll grow vegetables, fruits, herbs and salad greens — all certified organic — for about a hundred ‘share’ customers.” Berger has worked on similar farms for seven years and is in her second year of managing the one at Adamah. She is excited about the farm’s new tool, an antique tractor, originally built in 1949, that will allow them to work the acres more efficiently.Adamah offers vegetable shares that must be paid for in advance of the season, and which come in baskets that can be picked up, once a week, from the retreat’s refrigerated lockers. The cost works out to $25 per week for a 23-week season, approximately what a small family would spend on produce at a supermarket. People who have taken past shares cite the quality, consistency, variety and cleanliness of each week’s haul. The produce ranges from arugula to zucchini, with about 40 other vegetables, fruits and herbs. These include old standards such as lettuces and peppers, and a few veggies that most supermarkets do not carry, such as kohlrabi, which looks like a vegetable octopus and is used raw in salads and cooked as a side dish, and small spring turnips that taste very different from the larger, more fully grown turnips found at most groceries. Berger reports overhearing the child of one “share” couple asking her parents what sort of “treasures” they would obtain in their next trip to Adamah. Last year, fewer than a dozen local shares were bought; another five dozen were taken by families in the Hartford area, to which Adamah makes weekly deliveries. Berger hopes to expand the number of local shares, which go for $575 per season, and can be purchased at www.isabellafreedman.org/adamah/csa. “Whatever is not picked up each week, we donate to local food banks,” Berger said.Adamah’s farming practices are beyond organic. “The certification of ‘organic’ allows things we wouldn’t do,” Berger averred, such as the use of certain pesticides. Pest control at Adamah’s 10 acres is done through pre-treating the soil with compost and cover crops that produce the right amounts of nitrogen and other nutrients. “Well-treated soil usually deters pests,” Berger pointed out. “So does planting a large variety of seeds — the bugs prefer monocrops.” Should insect pests become a problem anyway, Adamah resorts to a “clay spray” that encases stalks and leaves in pottery armor, which foils the insects. Adamah uses a sophisticated computer program, developed through years of work by CSAs around the country, to direct the planting, feeding, fertilizing and harvesting of its produce. When there is a big problem — floods, last year, severely cut into the production in the fall — Adamah works collaboratively with other CSAs to fill in the gaps and provide enough quantity and variety for its weekly boxes. The farming program is integrated into the other programs of the Isabella Freedman retreat on Johnson Road. At “farm days,” twice a year, city folks and even some locals are introduced to organic farming, the cultivating of goats and pickling. The farm’s popular pickled beets, green beans and cucumbers can be bought as a separate share, or individually at local supermarkets; the goat dairy products are also available at Adamah as a separate share. New, this year, are June and August farm stays, in which the retreat essentially becomes a farm-based B&B. Although Isabella Freedman is a Jewish facility, Adamah produce shares are taken by people of all faiths and degrees of love of vegetables. There are other CSAs in the Northwest Corner and in nearby New York and Massachusetts, such as the Chubby Bunny Farm, also in Falls Village, and farms in Cornwall, Goshen, Wassaic, Sheffield and Great Barrington, all of which offer shares to the public at approximately the same season price.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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