If the effort succeeds, New Lebanon will join an emerging rural renaissance — a movement that some are calling “rural by choice” — in which small towns are reinventing themselves by embracing local skills and artisanship (and, unlike Marfa, Tex., without monetary or artistic firepower from New York). Across the country, communities are trying a variety of approaches with varying success, from designated downtown culinary districts (Bridgeton, N.J.), to artist collaboratives spearheading small-town revivals (Arnaudville, La.), to the annual Fermentation Fest in Reedsburg, Wis., which pumps roughly $300,000 into the local economy.

“Behold!,” which has applied for nonprofit status, is the brainchild of Ruth J. Abram, the historian who founded the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York in 1968 and is credited with forging new conceptual museum ground by telling the stories of immigrant families within an original setting.

Drawing lessons from the Foxfire project, which recorded the folk traditions of southern Appalachia, “Behold! New Lebanon” wants to “create a record of people who are inventing how to live in the countryside,” said Ms. Abram, who started off as a weekender here, drawn by the heritage of Mount Lebanon, the headquarters of the Shaker community in the United States. (It is now a museum.) But like many small rural towns, New Lebanon has suffered from steady depopulation and economic decline. Over the past decade, the supermarket, a pizza parlor, a gas station, a beloved coffee shop and three restaurants have closed.

“I kept hearing, ‘This used to be a great town, but ...,’ ” said Ms. Abram, who went on a listening tour of sorts, asking residents, “What do you know how to do that people in urban centers and suburbia don’t know?” She met people like Ms. Eigenbrodt, a respected hunter, who one-upped the farm-to-table food movement in a single breath: “It’s bed to table,” she said. “It’s get up, track the deer, shoot it, dress it, drag it, hang it, skin it, cut it, cook it. It’s about as organic as you’re going to get.”

Local officials see “Behold!” as a community development project that can draw tourists — not an abundant species here. “I probably could count them on two hands,” said Kenneth J. Flood, the Columbia County commissioner for planning and economic development. New Lebanon is eager for a slice of the Hudson Valley tourism market, which is currently $3.15 billion, providing $207 million in local tax revenue, said Ross D. Levi, vice president for marketing initiatives for the Empire State Development Agency.