Illustration for the seed pack of heirloom tomato variety Cosmonaut Volkov. Art by cartoonist and graphic artist Will Sweeney, for the Hudson Valley Seed Library's "Art Pack" line of artist-designed seed packs.
This Friday, the Horticultural Society of New York fetes a local seed company, and the artists commissioned to design its signature line of seed packs, with an opening reception at their gallery in midtown Manhattan. Local stalwarts Brewery Ommegang and Tuthilltown Spirits will be on hand to provide libations.
Every week, we meet someone who tells us the prices are too high.
In fact, at those prices, the average net income for our family members has maxed out at $10 per hour. But part of our job is to hold our chins up and accept weekly admonishment for our inability to produce food as cheaply as it can be found in the grocery store. Read more
Above: Helen Mitchell standing with Glen and Rachel Gaetano, the brand new owners of Barlow's, a general store that has been operating continuously in Treadwell for 171 years. Photo by Cheryl Petersen.
Cheryl Petersen, a reporter who writes for the Delaware County Times, was on hand for the sale of Barlow's, Treadwell's venerable local grocery store, on January 6. She sent us the photo of the handoff, which we've posted above.
Petersen tells us that Helen and Joe Mitchell, who have operated the store since 1991, are retiring. After a long search, the Mitchells had given up looking for a buyer for the property, which has been running continuously as a general store since 1841. At the last minute, Glen and Rachel Gaetano stepped in to buy the store and keep it open.
To see more of Cheryl's story, check out the Delaware County Times.
Above: A Flickr slideshow of photos from Catskills FarmLink landowners and farmers. The first photo is of Michelle Premura, a landowner who has listed 13 acres between Delhi and Stamford on the FarmLink website. Click on individual photos to see the captions.
After graduating from West Point Academy and serving in the army for five years, Julie Zavage pursued a degree in organic agriculture from Colorado State University. Two internships and an apprenticeship later, the 30-year-old is ready to start her own vegetable farm. But Zavage doesn't own land, nor does she have the money to buy it. Leasing land is her only option.
So she turned to Catskills FarmLink, a new local website aimed at connecting would-be farmers with landowners, for help.
“I'm typical of many farmers of my generation,” she said. “We have the desire and ability to do the work and do it sustainably, but we don't have the money to buy the land we need.” Read more
Farming in the Catskills isn't easy. There are few amber waves of grain of the kind depicted on your average bank calendar in our rocky hills.
So Madalyn Warren and Tovey Halleck, who manage a farm in Roxbury along with a project called the Andes Sprouts Society in Andes, worked with DeeDee Halleck, a Woodstock-based videographer and activist, to commemorate a distinctly-Catskills brand of small-scale agriculture in a calendar of their own.
Their project, the 2012 Sprouts Farm Calendar, is available for sale now. (Proceeds benefit the Andes Spouts Society.)
The calendar's scene of a maple syrup spigot in March and the bravest of new spring shoots in April will look familiar to anyone who lives through "mud month" in the Catskills.
Here's what Madalyn tells us about the calendar: Read more
Above: Jim Eklund stands before freshly slaughtered beef at the Eklund Processing facility in Stamford. Delaware County officials toured the Catskills' new slaughterhouse on November 30, 2011. Click on any photo to read its caption. Photos by Julia Reischel.
There's a huge demand for local meat in the bustling metropolis a few hours' drive south of us, and yet it's tough for Catskills farmers to sell to it. One of the missing links is access to local slaughterhouses, which have become scarce throughout the Northeast.
Yesterday, Eklund Processing, a slaughterhouse and meat-processing facility in Stamford, NY, took a small step towards bridging the gap between Catskills meat and Manhattan tables when it celebrated the opening of its 5,600 square-foot facility with a tour for local officials and press.
Bill and Jim Eklund, the father-and-son team behind the project, have been talking recently to both local and national audiences about how vital facilities like theirs are to farmers and the rural economy. Read more
Owner Kari Blish flies the "Open" flag in front of the the Flour Patch for the first time since the August flood, on Wednesday, November 23. Photo by Lissa Harris.
In a small town, every business is vital. But it's the ones that feed people that always seem to be the beating heart of the community. When a cafe or a restaurant shuts down, a little bit of the life of the town goes out with it.
So although Margaretville still has a long way to go before its business district is whole again, it's beginning to feel a little more like itself lately, with most of its flood-damaged restaurants finally reopened.
The Flour Patch, a beloved bagel bakery and cafe on Bridge Street, reopened the day before Thanksgiving, after months of post-flood cleanup and rebuilding. Across the street, Margaretville's iconic diner, the Bun 'N Cone, opened a few days earlier. Another nearby eatery, the Cheese Barrel, has been open for nearly two months in a temporary location in the Galli-Curci building. Read more
Here's wishing you a wonderful holiday. The staff of the Watershed Post is taking some time off to celebrate, and we hope you can too. We'll be back on Monday with regular posts, unless there's some emergency, and then we'll parachute in to do the story over the holiday weekend. Feast happy!
The Albany Times-Union's Capitol Confidential blog reports today that a coalition of U.S. representatives in the House has secured $338.6 million in funding for farmers affected by the Tropical Storm Irene flooding:
Reps. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, and Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, said that $338.6 million for two programs aimed at restoring damaged farmland will be included in the budget proposals presented to both the House and Senate for final approval Thursday. The package is the work of a joint legislative conference committee which began meeting three weeks ago to reconcile a Senate minibus bill covering the Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science and Transportation-Housing and Urban Development budgets with the House-approved budget passed earlier this year.
1:30pm update: This story has been edited to remove a quote from Mauer. Martha Frankel reports from Shokan that the search for Ryan Owens continues this afternoon.
Original story: A 22-year-old man is lost in the forbidding wilderness off Moon Haw Road in the town of Olive today after spending the night outdoors with only a dog, a long-sleeve T-shirt and a bottle of water, State Police say.
Ryan Owens set out on a hike at 2pm yesterday, heading up either Friday and Balsam Cap Mountains, according to Olivebridge resident Donna Mauer. Owens lives with Mauer and her son, Max Mauer.
"He was only wearing a long sleeve t-shirt and jeans," Mauer said. "He has nothing for survival: only a bottle of water and a dog."
Max Mauer was scheduled to meet Owens after the hike at 5pm yesterday, but Owens never appeared, Donna Mauer said. Read more
