Food

Ramps! Photo by Shira Golding; published under Creative Commons license.

It's that time of year again: Those glorious few weeks of spring when the food world goes mad for ramps. While New York diners must hunt down the savory little onions in gastropubs and bistros, lucky Catskills foragers can find them in their own backyards.

On Saturday, May 4, farmer and Ramps Fest organizer Jen McGlashan will lead interested parties on a Ramp Tramp from Channery Hill Farm in Callicoon, where she'll fill you in on the fine art of foraging for these piquant goodies, rich in vitamins A and C. And it is an art.   Read more

Above: We're giving away these seeds and a gift membership to the Hudson Valley Seed Library. Details for how to get them at the bottom of this post. 

The sun is shining, the birds are signing, and gardeners across the Catskills are itching to get their fingers in the dirt. 

Want to know where you can get your knees dirty this spring? We're tracking public garden events and projects across the Catskills. Help us list them all by posting a comment on this post via Facebook or by emailing julia.reischel@watershedpost.com with your garden project's info. We're also giving away some gardener goodies from the Hudson Valley Seed Library, so read on.

CATSKILLS COMMUNITY GARDEN EVENTS 

Today at 1pm, the Andes Community Garden opens with tours and seed sales, and an invitation to community members to sign up for a 4-x-8-foot plot this summer. The Daily Star wrote a whole article about the planned festivities. 

This Saturday, April 27, in Hobart is the Hobart Annual Seed Sale & Spring Gardening Event at the Hobart Community Center from 10am to 3pm. The seeds are Non-GMO & Organic with proceeds benefiting Project Independence. According to Nicole Day Gray, who is helping organize the event, there will be "lots of kids activities, a garden book swap (so bring books to trade), a mini farmers' market, gardening advice, garden tools for sale, the Ate O Ate Food Truck, and goats, chevre and milk from Dirty Girl Farm." For more info, email nicole@agriforaging.com. 

This Sunday, April 28, the new Shandaken Community Gardens group is hosting a groundbreaking, and all weekend long a Shokan art studio will be donating partial proceeds from a sale to support the garden. 

Also this Sunday, April 28, the Seeds to Supper workshop series continues at the Pine Hill Community Center Community Garden. Veteran farmers Madalyn Warren and Andrew Messinger help gardeners plant in the center's community garden. 

The village of Fleischmanns is building a community garden next to the park and across from the Village Pool. Raised beds are in the words and plots will be assigned in May, according to the Fleischmanns NY Facebook page. 

The town of Lexington, which is celebrating its 200th birthday this year, is building a Bicentennial Community Garden. 

On May 7, Roxbury Central School will introduce its community garden to the world, according to Farm Catskills. 

On May 11, the village of Margaretville is hosting a day-long GardenFest from 10am to 3pm on Main Street, with vendors and farmers showcasing everything from seeds to adorable baby animals. The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown will have it own booth, where you can drop off contributions of perennial herbs, flowers and foliage plants for new gardens to be established at their pond-side property this summer. You can also drop plants off at the HSM Hall, 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville, on Saturday, May 25 between 9 a.m. and noon, or earlier in the week – just leave them in the shade near the door. If you can spare some time to help plant them May 25, that would be wonderful! Call Diane at 586-4973 to make other drop-off arrangements.

On May 18th at 9am, the Common Ground Garden Club is going to erect a beautiful gate and arbor entryway for the Andes Rail Trail. They will follow that with native plantings later in May. This is a community project of the club and they are donating most of the funds for the structure and plantings.

The Halcott Community Garden's "A Natural Selection" sale fundraiser of is happening on Sunday, May 26th, 11 am  to 3 pm at the Halcott  Grange. The Halcott Community Garden is now sponsored by The Hudson Valley Seed Project, which donates 10% of online sales by supporters to the garen. To contribute to the garden, use the code "Halcott Community Garden" on the seed library website while you shop. 

The 15th Annual Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County’s Master Gardeners Great Plant Swap and Sale is Saturday, June 1 at the CCEUC Education Center located at 232 Plaza Road in Kingston. Plants to swap can be dropped off that Saturday morning between 9:00am and 10:00am. Swappers return at 11:00am to swap vouchers for plants! At 11:30 the swap will open to the public for sale. 

SEED GIVEAWAY

  Read more

The area around Vinnie's Farm Market on Route 32 in Saugerties just got a little safer, cops say. 

An investigation into ongoing complaints of heroin sales near the fruit stand has yielded an arrest. On Tuesday, the Ulster Regional Gang Enforcement Narcotics Team executed a search warrant at the Route 32 home of 29-year-old John Tyler Kuhn, just down the street from the Saugerties farmstand, after an undercover officer purchased heroin from Kuhn.

The search at Kuhn's house turned up 190 bags of heroin, an indoor marijuana grow operation, packaged marijuana, drug packaging materials and electronic scales. Police are also holding $5000 in cash and a 2003 Mercedes Benz, which are pending seizure. 

Kuhn faces charges of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree, criminal possession of marijuana in the second degree, criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree, and two counts of criminally using drug paraphernalia in the second degree.   Read more

Above: Garlic from Lucky Dog Farm in Hamden -- a hot commodity in New York City, where the demand for local food is huge and growing. 

Farmers who would like to tap into the lucrative New York City wholesale market are invited to Lucky Dog Farm in Hamden on Monday, April 8 at 2pm, where farmers and agriculture advocates will be talking about creating a local food hub to get more Catskills produce to downstate markets.

Lucky Dog farmer Richard Giles has enlisted educators from the Oneonta-based Center for Agricultural Development and Entrepreneurship (CADE) to come down and fill in attendees about the processes involved in becoming market-ready for wholesale distribution.  Read more