Farmer's daughter to run for office

Lauren Plocharczyk may be youngest candidate ever By Vicki Botta Goshen — They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. But don’t underestimate the soft-spoken, 20-year-old running for Goshen town council this November. There are a few things to know about Goshen’s possibly youngest candidate ever. Lauren Plocharczyk is the fourth generation of a farming family who will be the first member to inherit the family farm. The older of two girls in a business that often requires the strength and endurance of men, Plocharczyk knows how to run every piece of equipment they own. She is presently training for her commercial driver’s license so that she can also drive the produce truck to a market in Patterson, N.J., where she remembers her father taking her since she was ten years old. When she once asked her dad if he would have preferred a son, he said: “What would I want with a son when I have you?” Plocharczyk always looked up to her father, Richard, known to everyone as Ricky, who is now 48 and not in the best of health because of his years of hard physical work. She remembers when he was a committeeman on the Goshen Democratic committee. She began to attend the meetings at 17 and was his delegate for a year and a half. During the last year, when he had to step down for health reasons, she registered as a Democrat and the committee let her take his place. She hopes to take a seat on another committee in New Jersey, having to do with farming, that he serves on now. She has been known as his “shadow” all her life. Because her dad was born here and both her parents grew up in Goshen, just as she did, Plocharczyk wants to preserve the beauty that people have moved here to enjoy by helping farmers stay here. She also wants to make Goshen a place where young people can afford to live after they are done with school or college. She said she believes in open and honest government and loves talking to people and hearing what they have to say. “If you have problems, I want to know so that I can help,” she said. She knows that she can’t please everyone, but also appreciates opinions other than her own. In addition to having been an honor student and a member of both the National Honor Society and Language Honor Societies before graduating in 2005, Plocharczyk traveled with the Florida Future Farmer’s of America organization to Albany, where she met with politicians to discuss laws pertaining to farming. She started a greenhouse and Christmas tree business on the farm, which she runs herself, and is also a member of the Shawangunk Fish and Game Club in Middletown and the Orange County Trappers. Her family’s farm grows a wide variety of specialty produce for ethnic markets. She loves the way the customers say “just like we used to get at home” when they find hard-to-locate produce. She wants Goshen to feel more like home to the people who live here. Upstate, where houses are fewer and farther between, everyone knows each other, she said. Here, where the houses are becoming closer and closer together, this is not the case. Plocharczyk, a 2005 graduate of Goshen High School, started college a semester early, earned an associate’s degree from Orange County Community College, and is now attending the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she studies accounting. She said that, if elected, she would arrange all her classes to be on a two-day-per-week schedule, and keep her nights free to attend meetings. Being a farmer gives her flexible hours, she said. She said she isn’t worried about balancing her responsibilities and keeping up her grades because she is a natural multitasker and thrives on the challenge to make it all work. She plans to get her bachelor’s degree in 2008, and then pursue a master’s degree to become a certified public accountant. Her goal is to open a small accounting office on the farm, where she can serve the family’s long-term customers and, with a viable income from both businesses, eventually raise her own children on the farm. She said her father is nervous and excited about her run. “He’s worried because he’s going to lose his helper for a while, but he’s happy,” she said. Her grandmother, Rita Plocharczyk, said, “It will be a real challenge and good experience for her. She has as good a chance as any. You have to do what you believe in.”