Candidate Profile

Orion Russell Blake is a young farmer who grew up in Warwick from the age of 5, transplanted from Manhattan’s Upper West Side. A scholar athlete on the Purple Wave cross country team, after graduation he pursued a career at sea, but while standing at the bow during a winter voyage across the North Atlantic, felt adrift in the universe and decided he didn’t want to live a life so disconnected and returned to land to become rooted in community. 

Years later and back in Warwick, he was struck by inspiration at a summit to safeguard Warwick’s major watershed, that led to starting Flooded Farm and now to public service. Flooded Farm strives to make economical new sustainable crops for peatlands, practices known as paludiculture, for what we call the black dirt region, and will protect against degradation and subsidence there. Flooded Farm’s first enterprise is growing rice. To further protect our natural wealth and the quality of life of Warwick’s residents, Orion is running for district 8 county legislator, to represent the villages of Warwick and Greenwood Lake and roughly the eastern half of the township. He will work to tackle the affordability crisis.