Organic rebirth: How a Main St. dime store became a farm

• State legislator's tour of local organic farms makes stop at Poughkeepsie building

A strange thing happened in Dutchess County Tuesday.

A state assemblywoman from New York City, where most constituents are not farmers, came to Dutchess on a fact-finding mission about organic farming.

One of the growing operations she visited is located inside a drab office building and former dime store smack dab on Main Street in the City of Poughkeepsie.

Giving the tour was the head "farmer," Brud Hodgkins, who led the way bedecked in a purple tie and gold cuff links.

If irony was in short supply Tuesday, this might have been the reason why.

Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis represents portions of Staten Island and Brooklyn. She came to Dutchess to determine whether some kind of legislation could make it easier for farmers to convert from traditional techniques to organic ones.

In addition to visiting Indoor Organic Gardens of Poughkeepsie, she also toured Fishkill Farms in Hopewell Junction and Lightning Tree Farm in Millbrook. (Malliotakis knows Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro from his days in the Assembly.)

But what struck me about the visit was the notion of innovative reuse.

First, you had Hodgkins.

Hodgkins speaks with the authoritative ease of someone who has seen and done a lot of things and isn't afraid to tell you about them.

In the short visit, he mentioned more than once his careers in insurance and maple syrup farming. He fancies himself an entrepreneur. (So does the Think Dutchess Alliance for Business, which recently named him its entrepreneur of the year.)

His latest gig is Indoor Organic Gardens, which grows organic vegetables in trays of soil under lights, but only for six days.

Then the microgreens (think baby greens, only younger) are harvested, packaged and sold to your local specialty food market or restaurant. An online business is coming soon.

Microgreens contain the same nutritional value as their more mature siblings. You just don't have to wolf down as much. Slap some microgreens on your ham-and-cheese sandwich and you can throw your multivitamins away, or so the thinking goes.

Some of his products are added to smoothies served to fifth-grade students in the Poughkeepsie City School District’s Krieger Elementary School, where many children live in poverty and are at risk of poor nutrition.

In September, Dutchess County was awarded $10,000 in seed money toward the project through a program sponsored by the Aetna Foundation, the American Public Health Association and the National Association of Counties.

"How in the world do you get the kids to drink the smoothies?" Hodgkins was asked.

"Chocolate," was the answer. (The veggies are blended with chocolate milk. Vanilla and honey smoothies also are offered.)

Hodgkins said he hires employees who also fall into the at-risk category — those who have served time or young heads of households with no parents at home.

And then there is the building itself.

The gardens live inside 316 Main St., which has served as an office building since 1982, when Hodgkins was part of a group that bought it.

Before that, it was home to the S.S. Kresge five-and-dime store. S.S. Kresge is the chain that gave birth to Kmart.

The founder, Sebastian S. Kresge, grew up in Pennsylvania, but went to school in Poughkeepsie at Eastman Business College, which closed in 1931.

He died in 1966, but his legacy has continued to touch the area. Kresge established a private foundation, which as recently as 1998 awarded grants to two local institutions, Vassar Brothers Medical Center and the Institute for Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook.

The Kresge store had been on Main Street in Poughkeepsie since 1916.

It had undergone a number of makeovers, including in 1926 when workers accidentally dislodged a piece of mortar that struck a woman, Mrs. Fred Rose of 357 Main St., in the head. (X-rays revealed no serious damage, according to reports in the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News.)

The store closed in 1981, a few days after Christmas.

Few could have imagined its future use.

"In certain depressed areas in the state, where we have office space just sitting there not being utilized, maybe the state should be looking at providing some kind of incentive to retrofit these buildings into doing this," Malliotakis, the assemblywoman, said.

On a dreary, rain-soaked November Tuesday, it was heartening to see how some entrepreneurial ingenuity was breathing new life into so many things.

"Out There" appears every other week in My Valley. Reach John Ferro at 845-437-4816; jferro@poughkeepsiejournal.com; Twitter: @PoJoEnviro