Back in the 1930s, when Finger Lakes resident Carl Mortensen was a kid, agriculture was his small town’s link to the rest of the state. “New York City was full of horses,” Mortensen said. “They used horses for everything. And our big thing then was to put up oats, straw and hay and like that and ship it to New York City.” What happened next is a story that’s been told so many times it hardly needs repeating: a gradual disappearance of farms and farmland to urban development, the allure of white collar jobs and mechanization and global pressure that made it hard for all but the biggest and most high-tech farms to compete. These days? Many of those bigger New York farms are actually doing very well. But this is a story from the other end of the spectrum. On any given Saturday you might find Tina DeGraff picking out produce at the farmers market in Manhattan’s Union Square. But it’s not for eating. She’s in food styling for magazines and commercials.. “You got to make a pretty picture,
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